For most of my working life, image quality was something you measured. My engineering background, including doctoral work in video compression and image quality analysis, rested on the idea that you can put a number on how good a picture looks.
Then I started entering photography competitions, and I found out what it feels like to be on the other side of the measurement.
A jury doesn’t run an algorithm. Instead, it looks at hundreds or thousands of images, often for a few seconds each, and decides which ones stop it. After several years of submitting work, I’ve had acceptances, rejections, ribbons and one Gold. Here’s what that path has looked like, and what it has taught me.
Where It Started: Local Juried Shows
My first competitions were close to home. Between 2019 and 2021 I entered the Cary Photographic Artists Annual Open Juried Photographic Exhibitions with still lifes like Harvest Abundance, Porcelain Coffee Pot with Pears and Midnight Cuban Diary.
A juried exhibition works a little differently from an awards program. First the jury decides which entries make it into the show at all. Only then does it award prizes among the work on the wall. So simply getting in is the first hurdle.
In 2023, at the 16th annual exhibition, something happened for the first time: the jury accepted all three of my submissions. One of them, Forsythia in Bud Vase, took second place in the Color category. Forsythia also earned second place at the Chatham County SilverArts.
In fact, it has turned out to be one of my most decorated images.
A Blue Ribbon at the State Finals
SilverArts is the arts side of the North Carolina Senior Games, a statewide program founded in 1983 for adults 50 and older. Alongside the athletic events, it holds competitions in painting, sculpture, poetry, woodworking and photography. Artists qualify at the county level and then compete at the state finals.
In 2025, Wildflowers on Rustic Wood won first place in Photography-Digital at the Chatham County SilverArts. A few months later it won first place at the North Carolina SilverArts State Finals, in a field of 65 photographers from across the state.
Winning at the state level, against photographers from every corner of North Carolina, meant a great deal to me.
Going International: The London Photography Awards
This year I entered three still lifes in the Still Life category of the 2026 London Photography Awards, which drew more than 4,000 entries from over 30 countries. The jury recognized all three:
- Gold — End of an Era: The Cathode Ray Tube
- Honorable Mention — 71 Seconds to Midnight
- Honorable Mention — Midnight Cuban Diary
The Gold is personal in a way the judges couldn’t have known. The Simpson meter, the soldering iron and the test probes in End of an Era are tools of my former profession, and the cathode ray tube is the technology that powered much of the early television and video world. It’s a picture about the passing of the analog era, made by someone who spent a career inside it.
Midnight Cuban Diary has a longer story. It was one of the still lifes I entered in Cary years ago. It took until 2026, and a different jury on a different continent, before anyone recognized it.
Also in 2026, Forsythia in Bud Vase received an Honorable Mention at the PX3 Prix de la Photographie Paris.
It Isn’t Only the Still Lifes
The nightscapes have been through juries too. In 2024, Al’s Diner, Chatham County Courthouse and Davenport’s Cafe Diem made it into the Cary Photographic Artists Open Juried Digital Exhibition. Then, in 2025, The ArtsCenter in Carrboro accepted The City Tap Bar and Goodness Gracious Juice Bar & Car Wash into A Light in the Dark.
My 2026 Goals: How I Did
At the start of 2026, I set two goals for my work:
- Get invited to exhibit at a gallery or museum.
- Earn at least an honorable mention in a competition.
With three months left in the year, here’s where I stand.
Goal 1: An invitation to exhibit. Not yet. I applied to three juried exhibitions this year: the Mid-Atlantic Juried Show at the McGuffey Art Center, Night Works at Decagon Gallery and the 2026 North Carolina Artists Exhibition from the Raleigh Fine Arts Society. None of them invited my work. This one is still open.
Goal 2: At least an honorable mention. Met, and then some. I set the bar at one honorable mention. By mid-September, three international programs had recognized my work five times:
- Gold and two Honorable Mentions, London Photography Awards
- Honorable Mention, PX3 Prix de la Photographie Paris
- Official Selection, International Photography Awards (IPA), for End of an Era: The Cathode Ray Tube
Still, not every entry landed. The LensCulture Art Photography Awards and the European Photography Awards both passed on the work I sent them.
What’s Still Out There
Competitions involve a lot of waiting. As I write this:
- I have three still lifes in the Neutral Density (ND) Awards, with results expected in late November.
- Four more are in the Fine Art Photography Awards, which announces its winners in spring 2027.
- Forsythia in Bud Vase and the nightscape Pittsboro United Methodist Church are in the New York Photography Awards.
- Finally, 71 Seconds to Midnight is in the Global Lens Photography Awards.
I’ll share results here as they come in.
What Entering Competitions Has Taught Me
Choosing is the hardest part. Picking three images to represent a year of work forces a kind of honesty. You can’t hedge, so you have to decide which pictures you believe in most.
The same image can land very differently. Midnight Cuban Diary hung in Cary shows years before London honored it. Forsythia placed in a regional show and, years later, in Paris. A result says as much about a particular jury on a particular day as it does about the picture.
Awards don’t change the work, but they change who sees it. An award puts a photograph in front of people who would never have walked into a gallery in Pittsboro. For an artist working in a small town, that reach matters.
See the Work in Person
Limited edition prints of these award-winning still lifes are available at the Pittsboro Gallery of Arts, 44-A Hillsboro Street, Pittsboro, and you can see the full list on my Artist CV.
A Question to Consider
If you could enter just one photograph you’ve taken, or one piece you’ve made, in a competition, which would it be, and why that one?