Judging Bird POTY: How we decide the winners
The competition sees more than 20,000 images entered from around the world each year. With so many images to look through, how exactly do we come up with a winner? Let’s take a look at the judging process this year!
How many rounds of judging are there?
Once we close the doors to submissions, the judges begin looking through the images. Our judging panel is varied and made up of photographers from around the world that each have different styles and tastes. We feel this means our panel is not biased towards a particular format, style, or location.
Judging a competition of this size is a lengthy process. After all, we want to make sure that we do your images justice and take the time necessary to choose a winner.
This may mean, however, that you are left twiddling your thumbs in anticipation of competition updates and hearing how your images have faired. But we greatly appreciate your patience whilst we complete this careful process.
We have a number of different rounds of judging:
The first round - many images will pass this round, provided they meet some basic criteria.
The semi-final - where we will select the photos which we want to examine the high resolution files of.
The final round - where we will rank images against each other in order to determine our winners and commended images that feature in the final collection.
What information do the judges see?
The most important thing to remember is that our competition is judged anonymously. This means that when the judges see your photos, there are no names attached to the images. In fact, the only time we see your name is once we have selected our winners.
Sometimes photographers are awarded multiple times in the competition. Whilst some may think this is on purpose, this is purely coincidental — we have no idea who took particular photos when we are judging entries.
The process is done online, and so we can show you exactly what the judges see (and what they don’t see) when making their choices:
Behind the scenes: a view of the judging process.
As you can see, as we are looking through entries we are able to view them full screen and large enough to fully appreciate each and every image.
During the final round of judging, our panel is given the opportunity to view original raw files and high resolution images. This allows us to check the authenticity of images, and ensure that images adhere to our competition rules.
What makes a winning photo?
Photography competitions always invite debate about winning photos. After all, what one person thinks is a great photo might not be to the tastes of another.
This is exactly why we have more than just a few judges on the panel. Therefore, when a photo is awarded in the competition, it means that it has appealed to multiple judges each with their own individual tastes.
Of course, we all look at a number of things. Typically, an awarded photo will:
Be properly in focus,
show good use of exposure and lighting,
display technical excellence in its execution,
and capture a unique moment, behaviour, or story.
Do birds have to be rare or exotic to win?
Not at all. Having travelled across the world on expensive trips does not mean you will be chosen as a winner of the competition. Specifically, we do not judge our competition based on the species in the image.
It is important to remember that Bird Photographer of the Year is a global, international competition that invites photographers from all over the world. So birds that may seem “exotic” to some, will be local residents to others.
Of course, we will take into consideration the efforts gone to for an image. Perhaps you spent a month trekking through the rainforest after a rare pitta bird. Or, you spent a long time in your garden trying to capture the most perfectly lit, action-packed shot of a pigeon.
Do captions matter?
Whilst we appreciate that inputting captions for your photos can be time-consuming, it really helps the judging panel to appreciate the story surrounding your image. Without a caption, we don’t have an understanding of how you achieved the image we are looking at.
When entering the competition, it’s a really good idea to include a short caption to tell us what we’re looking at, and how you obtained the image.
If you are shortlisted, you’ll be given the chance to upload an extended caption of your image. However, it is a great idea to include a least a short description from the first point of entry.
Do we care about ethics?
Absolutely. We have tightened our rules around ethics - specifically the live baiting of birds. We do everything we can to ensure the legitimacy of images.
Sometimes, we’ll spend quite a while looking into one image to determine how it was taken. If you’ve had a message from us asking about the methods used to take the shot, then this is one part of that process in action.
We know we will never get things perfect — there is only so much we can determine after all, without being on location with the photographer. However, we hope that we have put enough controls in place to ensure that our rules on ethics are not broken.
We’re always happy to clarify our rules on ethics over email, too. If you are worried about your photo and its ethics when entering the contest, one of our team will be able to advise you.
See you in 2023!
Hopefully this has provided a useful window into the judging process of Bird Photographer of the Year. The 2023 competition will close for entries on the 11th December 2022, and we look forward to seeing your entries!