Although I tend not to enter that many competitions these days I do look out for photo comps (especially if they don’t require votes). However, photo competitions attract a fair bit of cheating. That in itself is pretty annoying, but not as annoying as a promoter who doesn’t do anything about it or when told that images amongst their entries are suspect reply that they don’t have enough time to do a little bit of background checking.
How Do Cheats Enter Photo Competitions?
I know by posting this it will potentially encourage people to do it – but hopefully it will also make more people aware that it happens!
Let’s say there’s a competition that requires you to portray the word “environment”. A quick search of Google Images and hey presto you’ve found this beautiful image of the Bolivia Salt Desert. You enter the competition!
Perhaps a promoter is looking for a place where you enjoy taking exercise? You like an area in Ireland but don’t have your own photo to hand! What do you do? Well perhaps a photo of the Green Canyon in Turkey will suffice – no one will be able to tell anyway!
In other words a quick look through Google images, an upload to a competition and you could be on track to winning a prize…. unless of course you get caught!
So What Can Promoters & Compers Do To Catch The Cheats?
Google image search may be useful for cheating, but it’s also useful for combating the problem too. From conversations with those running photo competitions not many promoters are aware that they can upload an image to Google Images and see where that image appears. In genuine cases it shouldn’t bring up any matches or a match should be easily attributed to the entrant (e.g. their Flickr account).
If we get something like the above,using our Bolivia Salt Desert example, then the promoter (or eagle eyed comper) should question whether the entrant has ownership of the photo. This kind of search takes seconds to do – although promoters seem reluctant to do it. When we informed one recently they lamented that they didn’t have time… tough! A bit of image checking is better than spending time explaining to entrants how a plagarised photo has just won a competition or explaining to a photographer why you’re breaching their copyright.
More importantly, no brand wants to be known for running a competition where cheats have won do they?
If time is a real issue then a bit of common sense is needed. Some images in photo competitions stand out a mile as being photo-shopped. If it looks too good to be true then do a little Google search. It may well be that you’ve got a fantastic entrant on your hands – at least you’ll know for sure.
But What Can Promoters Do Better?
The thing with photo competitions is that promoters can at least make life difficult for would be cheats.
For example they could require that the photo is date stamped (a lot of new cameras can do this), that the image includes their products or perhaps the image is watermarked with the entrants own copyright. On top of that when the entries are shown online the promoter should include the entrants name as minimum. Perhaps they could also include location of where the image was taken (for landscapes), how things were made (for cakes, crafts etc) and perhaps even camera details (e.g. exif data for really serious photo comps).
One promoter I spoke to this week argued that their competition was “just a bit of fun” – as though that was some kind of an excuse for allowing plagarised entries! But where’s the fun in allowing cheats to win? It’s most certainly not fun for those who follow the rules and definitely not fun for the photographers who’s work is being used.
We advise that any promoter thinking about a photo competition to take a look at Photobox and Jessops on Facebook. They both do regular photo competitions and do some of the above mentioned and for the most part do it well. Of course there will be the occasional entry that slips through the net – but hopefully picked up before the prizes are done and dusted. Learn from them and remember Google Image Search is your friend!
I totally agree. And the cheating going on is one of the reasons i do not enter photo competitions, or photo competitions requiring votes which are equally susceptible to the cheating fraternity.
Completely agree with you. I’ve entered one of those photo comps where the promoter runs a 24 hour competition with a different subject each hour and the theory is that the participants will take a photo within that hour and upload it.
I racked my brains to come up with something to match the theme and to snap it within the time but the winner of the first challenge was using an image already on google images.
In this case the promoter did actually respond to comments that this photo obviously did not belong to the entrant and they withdrew the winning announcement but it would have been better if they’d checked it out first.
The one thing I would say about photo competitions is that since I started entering them I’ve begun snapping indiscriminately at anything and everything. Hubby is sick of hearing me say ‘you never know when there will be a competition asking for a photo of a …..’
Whatever did we do before we had digital cameras? I wouldn’t have ever been able to afford to print all the pics I take – but I do smile when I’m looking through my old photos and see a shot of something odd that I’ve obviously taken with the ‘you never know when..’ thought in mind
I love photo competitions and I do get frustrated at promoters’ reluctance to accept that people will cheat in them – the percentage of people cheating is growing all the time! Many compers now know about Google reverse image search and we do need to try and educate promoters about it too. A Google search BEFORE approving entries will result in a much fairer competition with much less fuss. And it really doesn’t take that long to do…
The same is true of recipe comps, especially those that ask for a picture of what you have cooked. Those of us who blog about food spend a lot of time taking photos of our food – for some people it is their livelihood. And taking random pictures from the net is THEFT as is copying entire recipes word for word from recipe sites, blogs or online magazines.
In both cases, the owner of the original rights can sue both the thief and the competition promoter. Would you shoplift? I hope not!…so why steal photos and recipes?
I’m not at all sure that i regard “photoshop”, or indeed any other software as “cheating”.
In my experience a raw file can benefit from some adjustment.
I would say read the rules for any given photo competition, and see what is and isn’t permissible.
@tautau – at no point in this blog have we said or inferred that photoshop or software manipulation is cheating.
We have said that an image that has been photoshopped can often stand out amongst other entries and it may be worth checking these for ownership as described as above.
Thanks
Sorry Jason, fair enough, i have been accused in the past of lifting pics from the web, when they are mine.
I enter occasional photo comps and had had my images stolen. After a post from Jason I had a bit of spare time and searched for a couple of my favourite images through Google Images – and, yes, there they were on other people’s sites with no acknowledgement. I haven’t seen one of mine win a photo comp yet but, if I did, to say I’d be hopping mad is an understatement! As fmclean1 says, theft is theft.
I never enter photo competitions as most of the entries look like they’ve been taken by professional photographers using top of the range kit (so your average Joe Bloggs with his tiny compact camera has little to no chance of winning ).