What we learned & what’s next for Competitions
Our first-ever PortraitMode competition has come to an end, and we’re happy to say that it was a success.
Black & White Everything brought together photographers from around the world and resulted in a great collection of images. More importantly, running our first competition gave us a chance to see what works, what doesn’t, and where we can improve Competitions moving forward.
Separating submissions and voting
One of the biggest changes we’re making is separating the submission period from the voting period.
With our first competition, photos could be submitted and voted on at the same time. While this worked, we quickly realized that it creates an uneven playing field. Photos submitted later simply have less time to collect votes.
Going forward, there will be a dedicated period to submit your photo. Once submissions close, voting will begin and no new photos can be added.
This means every submission gets the same amount of time to be seen and voted on.
What else are we considering?
There are still a few things we’re thinking about.
One is hiding vote totals during the voting period. Seeing how many points other photos have received can naturally influence how we vote. We’re considering keeping the results hidden until voting closes so that everyone can judge the photos on their own.
We’re also considering whether our current 100-point voting system is more complicated than it needs to be. A simple like-based system could make voting easier and more intuitive.
We haven’t made any final decisions on either of these yet. We want to take our time, listen to your feedback, and find a system that makes competitions as fair, fun, and straightforward as possible.
Next up: Light & Shadow
With the first competition behind us, it’s time for the next one.
Light & Shadow is all about contrast. Whether that comes from dramatic shadows, silhouettes, deep blacks and bright highlights, or simply a striking relationship between light and dark.
The competition will once again be completely free to enter, with one submission per participant. This time, the top three photographers will receive an exclusive PortraitMode competition badge on their profile.
The submission period begins soon.
We’ve put together all the details, including the rules, voting process, and prizes, on the competition page:
Light & ShadowWe’re excited to see what you come up with.
And as always, if you have thoughts on how we can make PortraitMode Competitions better, let us know.
Until then, happy shooting 📸
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10 Comments
I agree that voting totals should be hidden until voting is closed and winners are announced.
Thanks for the hard work you are putting in this application tocmake it better, am really happy to be one of those who attended the improving progress of this app, all the best!!
All your effort is appreciated.
This is a superb platform simply because it specialises in Street Photography.
We look forward to your effort to develop this platform. If there’s more the community can do to support you, even if we can all support financially (whatever one can afford) if it helps.
Thanks.
Hi, thanks for all the work you put in the app and newly in the competition. All the changes look good to me and I would even mention an other one. I think it would also be good to hide the photographers name. So everyone would only vote for the picture itself and not for a preferred or followed photographer.
Hope you get what I mean…
Best regards, Jef. 🍀👋🏻
I agree to hiding names and points from competion.
And for some reason when submitting photo I cannot access all my photos uploaded to the app. Or am I missing something?
@monkseal will check, thank you for pointing that out!
@monkseal yes, I have the same problem, I can only see my last 40 pictures… 😅
@davidvongries 🙏🏻😉
@davidvongries hi, whatever you’ve done, it worked…! 👍🏻🙏🏻
@jefabel works for me too. Thank you