About the Competition
Landscape Photographer of the Year is an annual competition open to British-based photographers, and founded by the famous professional landscape photographer Charlie Waite.
The competition categories are (2023):
- Classic View
- Cityscapes
- Black and White
- Intimate View (macro and detail)
- Expression/Impressions of the Landscape
- Bird’s Eye View (Drone)
There are also three special categories with well-known companies sponsoring them:
- Change in the Landscape
- My Railway Adventure
- Coast
It is a very popular competition and attracts tens of thousands of images, with prizes for winners including the honour of winning and commended photographs being published in the annual book.
There are very strict rules for entering including that most of the categories demand an image with very minimal editing, and you must also provide your camera, lens and settings which took the shot. See below for a summary I made for reference:
A panel of esteemed judges have the task of sifting through all the images with multiple shortlisting rounds to get to the winning images. Those who reach the shortlisting will have to send in their RAW file(s) for various checks to help with the next round of shortlisting.
Why did I enter?
I knew about the competition but had never thought about entering it myself.
It was a chance conversation initiated by a fellow club member at one of our evening club meetings. He said he’d been looking at the photographs from the book, and in his opinion we all had images which were just as good as those winning entries.
This inspired me to enter, so I checked out the details and went about selecting some images. It was also motivational that other club members have entered and I think it would be great if any of us won and got published.
Some members have entered this competition in previous years and been shortlisted before.
You can enter a single image for £9.99, eight images for £24.99 or twenty images for £34.99 so I decided to go for eight.
My Entries
May 2023
Below are my submitted entries with the text I submitted to go alongside. I have to say the text was rushed and if I enter next year, I may try and be a little more ‘wordsworthy’ with it. Not that the text gets you anywhere of course.
Cityscapes
My first entry was my cathedral shot which had been a winning entry in the club’s POTY competition under the category of ‘Working with Light’. I felt this was a strong image and was an easy choice.
Classic View
I entered the following two images in this category.
The Stiffkey Saltmarshes image was one of four images on display in the club’s 2022 exhibition at Norwich Cathedral and I had two visitors ask me for a mounted print which I duly sold. I felt that an image which people would want to buy was worthy of entering.
The next shot was of the abandoned house shot from the Isle of Lewis which achieved a 9/10 in club competition.
Coast
It should be of little surprise that my five remaining entries were all in the Coast category.
I had to enter my Sunrise Mooring at Thorpe Bay shot which had been published as Picture of the Week in Amateur Photographer magazine back in February 2023, and also came third in the club’s Image of the Year competition.
Two images from Southwold in Suffolk were submitted.
The first one was another exhibition shot which is a favourite of my Wife’s and one that I’ve sold to the woman that does her massages. The image is on the wall in her massage room and it’s of great pride to me that visitors can admire my images while their ‘knots’ are being pushed out (ouch!).
The other Southwold image is a scene I really like for the swooshing of the waves, although now I look at it again and ponder why on earth would that get shortlisted?
My penultimate image is from Caister-on-Sea which I like for the textures and stormy feel.
My final choice is a shot from a bitterly cold Winter club sunrise shoot at Landguard in Suffolk.
This particular morning, we experienced the most amazing sky fire sky and I got the following capture, which was on the shortlist for me to enter into the club completion round ‘Abandoned’ but the house in the Hebrides shot was chosen instead.
Winner Winner? No Chicken Dinner!
Unfortunately I didn’t even make a shortlist with any of these images, and expecting to do so given the vast quantity and quality of entries would be quite something.
However, despite it taking some effort in selecting a shortlist of images, re-editing, checking over and writing a narrative for each, I know I learnt a bit along the way.
I’ve noted that these eight images were taken with two different camera bodies and four different lenses. Perhaps a bit random, but interesting to me.
One thing that brought a little satisfaction was that these eight images in particular were ‘clean’. What I mean by that is that they had few problems and needed basic and straightforward editing. This is ideally what you want when taking images, something that is pretty much there straight out of camera.
I am likely to enter this competition again next year and I am also now buying the books for reference and inspiration.
Onwards and upwards…