Submitting images for competitions & curators

When submitting images to competitions or curators, follow these important conventions to ensure you meet guidelines, as well as provide easy access to information about the images. The key messages in this post might improve your exposure and chances of selection.

Submitting to a competition or prize.

Competitions will stipulate entry requirements for images. These can be quite general, such as a time requirement, or specific to a theme, or they can be open. They will also provide guidelines on how to submit images, such as these from the Australian Photography Awards, and this will often include how to name images and the size of the files. Be mindful, sometimes they will want names, other times they will want to be anonymous. When submitting images for competitions, always follow the guidelines.

Submitting to galleries or responding to requests for images.

When a curator or gallery asks you for images, it is often because they are considering you and your work for a specific show. In this case you will want to be as helpful as possible, and provide as much detail as possible. This will work in your favor and may increase the likelihood of your work being selected. Consider the instructions below for information on how to name and submit files.

Naming files

When you submit digital files, it is worth including as much information in the filename as possible. This will ensure accuracy in reproductions, as well as make it easier for curators and managers to work with your images. The best artists and photographers are the ones curators don’t have to chase for details!

An example of a badly named file – FN_NKLS_1PRINT.jpg

There is a myth that filenames need to include underscores, no full stops, no commas, cannot contain any spaces and must be less than 10 characters in length. It is not 1990, so none of these old rules apply. Apple OSX runs on a UNIX shell, so 255 is the maximum number of characters, and you should avoid using ‘/’ or ‘:’ in filenames – more information available here. Windows filenames can also include up to 255 characters, but you cannot include a range of characters, including ‘/’, ‘:’, ‘\’, ‘*’, ‘?’ and some others, see Microsoft for more information.

The same file named correctly – Shane Hulbert Ned Kelly’s Last Stand, 2015 (135 x 105cm) Archival inkjet print.jpg

The curator will now have your name (correctly spelt), the title of the work, the date, print dimensions and medium. No more emails asking you for these details.

Some competitions will ask you to follow specific naming conventions, in which case you would follow these.

File size & format

Most competitions will specify details for the files to be submitted – follow these.

When sending to a curator or gallery director, it is important to ensure your images are in the correct format, easy to view, and that the gallery does not have to make adjustments.

Consider sending multiple versions of the same file!

1 Submission file for viewing. This should be a jpg file with dimensions of 1000 pixels on the height side (most monitors will have a resolution of at least 1080 pixels high by 1920 wide).

Name this file as above with the prefix ‘Viewing’

2. Submission file for printing. If you want your image in the catalogue, give them the image at the start. If it gets close to publication time and there are spaces in the publication, they may be looking for images, so give them one! This file will should also be a jpg, with dimensions that fit within an A4 page (210mm x 297mm @ 300ppi).
NOTE: ppi is an abbreviation of pixels per inch, and is often confused (and substituted) with dpi, which is an abbreviation of dots per inch. Technically they are not the same, but not everyone understands that, so where you see dpi, think ppi.

Name this file as above with the prefix ‘A4 print’

3. Submission file for social media. This should be a small version of the file. Note the following summary of required dimensions for social media

Social Media Site	Pixel width	Pixel height
Facebook	1200	630
Instagram	1080	1080
Twitter	1024	576
Pinterest	900	600 (or scaled)
LinkedIn	646	220
Weibo	2560	1440

More information available here or here

Name this file as above with the prefix ‘Social’

About file types and images size

When preparing images for online submissions there are two factors to consider.

Image size.

Your camera (or even your camera phone) will capture more pixels than is needed to send or submit images online. Even an 8MP photo is 3264 x 2448 pixels, which is more than is needed to view on a screen. This means you will likely need to reduce the size of your images. When you export an image from an application (Photos, Lightroom etc) you will have the option to change the size. If a competition provides you with pixel dimensions, follow those guidelines, otherwise, for viewing on a screen, keep the dimensions within 1080 x 1920. Often curators and selectors will view images in groups on a projector (which will have a display resolution of 1080 by 1920). There are some websites (or this one) which will allow you to change the size of your images if you do not have an application to do this (Capture One Pro, Photoshop, Lightroom etc).

Image compression

jpg (jpeg) is a compression format that is excellent for taking large images and making them easy to distribute via email or online. A 300MB image file can be compressed down to 15MB. Read this article on image compression if you are interested. For images being submitted online to competitions or curators, use the minimum amount of compression you can. In most applications this would be a compression setting of 12. Anything less than 8 will significantly compromise the quality of your image(s).

If you follow all of the above, your submission to a curator for an exhibition should like something like this;

Featured image licensed under CC (Creative Commons) from here

Submitting images for competitions & curators

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