Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Always read the fine print.!.!

One contest I saw gave them exclusive rights to the entry.
Another was for unlimited use in any way, shape, or form, altered or not.
I don't do contests.
Not that mine are worth anything, simply on principle.

It's a great way for a company to get a ton of stock photos.

Sidwalkastronomy Loc: New Jersey Shore

any photo taken at Oscar's is property of screen actors guild if your a member

FotoHog Loc: on Cloud 9

Who establishes the "arbitrary" rules?

gessman Loc: Colorado

Hey Ron, you might want to read the following thread and following the included links might be the more important part... https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-3882-1.html

Be sure and look at the dates of the posts.

joer Loc: Colorado/Illinois

Some things lend themselves to competition and have definitive metrics to determine the out come. Fishing is one such endeavor, i.e. number of fish, size, weight, time. Part of the appeal for me and my fishing buddies was the competition. It made for excitement.

OTOH photography is so arbitrary any decision is strictly up to the whims of the judges. I look at it as non-competitive, but its very enjoyable..

dsmeltz Loc: Philadelphia

Try the UHH Photo Contests, Challenges, Periodicals at https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/s-25-1.html

dsmeltz Loc: Philadelphia

I think it is called the gallery.

Tea8 Loc: Where the wind comes sweeping down the plain.

I used to run contests here once upon a time. It was fun at the time, but I started to get busy getting into a new career field and someone else wanted to take them over and run them so I gave it up. As long as people didn't take the ones here too seriously then it could be quite fun at time and you'd get to see a lot of interesting stuff from different photographers. Plus it was always peoples choice as the winner. Not sure if the system is still in place for all of that to happen here anymore or not.

larryepage Loc: North Texas area

My last contest entry was "berated" by the judge solely because of what he described as a "totally unnatural color palette." He also said "It looks like this might be a panorama or something," although it was presented in a conventional aspect ratio. (It was...three shots.) The colors were actually rendered just as they appeared...the image just happened to have been captured a couple of hours after a nice summer rain in the semi-arid setting. It was displayed in my image as it appeared. That's when I decided that I did not require any arrogant, ignorant judge commenting on any of my images. So no, I have no interest in contests.

bshine3742 Loc: Florida

yes I have looked, I havent seen any for quite some time, the last ones I have seen were in 2016 posted, So I really don't know if the site has stopped, or if still doing them, nor do I see what the contest consist of, the prizes , or what rules, photographs of what, so I am curious if the site is still doing them , but will keep eyes open, Im not a great photographer by all means, but it is fun for me to see what all the talented individuals are able to do, I love the art in photography, I love all of it.
I need to sell my two cameras and get a really good one thats for sure.
sunshine

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

What would you hope to accomplish with a photo contest on UHH?

via the lens Loc: Northern California, near Yosemite NP

There are many opportunities aside from this forum to enter competitions if someone is so inclined. Entering competitions can be a good thing if someone is serious about honing the craft of photography and becoming more skilled but many people on this site do not seem interested in that. A good many of the people on this site are simply snapshot shooters and are not interested in creating more of an art piece with their work. Plus, managing any kind of competition takes a lot of time, patience, and a thick skin so why would someone want to take it on.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

A long time ago I subscribed to dpreview. They have a challenge section. I tried it out. I thought I could learn something by entering my images in a challenge. The closest I ever came to something was placing second in "my worst image ever".

The challenges were crowdjudged. They did not have a dedicated panel of judges, so the judges were just the hoi-polloi who frequented that section. And of course, there were people who would subscribe to dpreview with many different names (no subscription fee) so they could add many votes to their images. After a few attempts I gave it up as a bad job. Not only did the results not really mean anything, there was no incentive to provide any sort of feedback with the results, so that you had no idea just why your favorite photo came in 75th out of 93.

I have stuck by dpreview as a source of technical information.

Brokenland

Same here DF, I've tried DPR, Gurushots, Viewbug, 500px, Fstoppers and a few others only to be out done by what is known as ringers. Those sites secretly add ringer or professional photographers at the last minute to steal your thunder away from you.

Gurushots: never made it past veteran. You don't win anything other than points and respect. Plus users tend to be using this site merely for photo storage and get votes from friends of friends on poor pictures.
Viewbug: couldn't participate because most of the challenges charge a fee. You could win cameras and gear here.
500px: never made it here either and you could win prizes.
Fstoppers: all you'll win here is the possibility of gaining respect, But don't count on it. I've submitted several of my images towards their challenges and the closest I've ever come to placing, was 50th for my Birch trees Image which was later deleted by Fstoppers.
Those "other" sites, I'm waiting to see how well I've done. But even those require a fee to participate some fees are as high as 100.00 per image with no guaranty that you'll win anything or even have your work on display in a gallery.