Since 2015, I have submitted over 50 images a year to an amazing photography contest called Shoot & Share. Enter up to 50 photos in 25 categories. Anyone can enter photos, and it’s totally free!  The images are anonymous and who votes? We all do. This is my favorite part! View the photos randomly and vote for your favorites. No one knows who took the photos, but everyone votes for the winners.  Throughout the open voting weeks, the bottom images start to fall away and they narrow down the best of the best. It gets extremely hard to vote for only one of your favorite of four images as the images get better and better towards the end. The photos with the most votes in the end wins!

Last year in 2017 alone, over 330,116 images were submitted from over 159 different countries, 150,000 people were involved and over 60,000,000+ votes took place during the contest.

The number of entires blows my mind. In 2017’s contest, one of our favorite images of our sincere and adorable bride Erica below, won 20th place in the “Emotion & Excitement” category out of 9,197 images submitted. Wow. To say I am shocked and honored is a complete understatement. I would’ve never imaged one of our images would make it with so many phenomenal photographs I saw while voting. This was the kind of contest I took a chance on two years ago because it was free, never expecting anything, and to say we were in the top 20 is a little surreal. Thank you to all the voters who chose this as one of your favorites. This beautiful bride of ours also made the top 100 in the “Dolled up” category (see below this image)…

Ironically, Allie’s little one eyed winking puppy made the Top 100 in the “Details” category in 2016 as well. Her wedding was quite the hit in this photo contest it seems. Same to Erica winning in two categories. People were so moved by her emotion when reading her groom’s letter to her the morning of her wedding that she made top 100 in TWO categories.

And our little golden doodle Floyd made top 100 in the “Pets” category as well. Hurray!

If you want a chance to enter, you can submit up to 50 of your favorite images before January 29th, 2018. Enter free by clicking head over to Shoot & Share’s website now.

Here are a few of our other submissions and what awards they won if any. I’d highly encourage you to take that leap of faith, jump out of your comfort zone and just see what happens. You never know, you might end up getting 20th place or even FIRST without even expecting it. This is a great way to really push you and get you thinking about how to creatively photograph in 2018 with photo contests in mind. // wink //

Good luck to everyone this year. I’ll be submitting some of our favorites so be on the look out.