Samantha Haan
- Apr 3, 2023
- 2 min read

Shoot & Share Contest 2018

As some of you may have seen on my social media pages, I entered the Shoot & Share contest again this year! If you're not familiar with what that is, let me explain. Thousands of photographers from all over the world enter up to 50 photos each in 25 different categories. Once submissions close, voting starts, and most photographers will tell you that it's basically the most addicting thing ever! It's pretty simple - 4 photos from the same category will come up on the screen, and you choose which one you'd like to vote for. Since there are literally hundreds of thousands of photos, the chances of seeing one of your own are basically nil, but it does happen once in a while! There was one day I saw 3 of mine, and I was pretty convinced that I should go buy a lottery ticket ;) The voting is split into 12 rounds, and after each round, more photos are eliminated until you get to the last 500 in each category in round 12. These are called the 'finalists'. Some of the larger categories had over 36,000 photos in them, so to be in the top 500 is a pretty big deal, even if it doesn't sound super impressive!

The badges awarded are as follows: 1st-20th place, Top 100, Finalist (Top 500), Top 10%, Top 20% & Top 30%

This year, over 412,000 photos were entered. Most of my entries were in the larger wedding and engagement categories, but 35 out of my 50 entries placed in the top 30%!! The contest is just a fun thing that helps photographers pass some time in the off season, and it doesn't define my work or measure my worth as a photographer by any means, but it is definitely exciting to see my results get better each year!

To compare:

2016

(2015 was my first year in business)