Competitions, Awards, and Why They're Important to Me by Mateusz

I come from a classical music background, education that is extremely deeply rooted in tradition and carrying the torch of arts through many centuries. One of the reasons I left music for photography is that after studying it for more than 20 years I felt like it became a kind of a corporate equivalent in the art world – I felt like I was playing other people’s music and not my own. On top of it I had to play it in an extremely specific way if I even dreamt of winning an audition to a major orchestra one day and therefore fulfilling the classical musician dream. That to me was not art and it became the clear reason why I fell in love with photography so hard and deep immediately upon picking up my first camera.

That is why in photography I cherish originality, expressiveness, and honesty above technicality, setups, and soulless copying of what others might be doing. Why do I send my photographs to competitions then? Isn’t that the exact opposite of why I fell in love with it in the first place? Absolutely, definitely, positively yes. BUT. I also took and transposed (hehe) a lot of the training I received as a musician into learning and exploring photography. When I was a musician, I was constantly growing in an environment where natural and institutional competition was a constant thing. We were constantly judged – in lessons, in rehearsals, in our own practice time by ourselves. On top of it, students would often ask their friends and peers to perform mock auditions in front of each other in other to gather critique and insight into the things we might be not hearing ourselves. These types of rituals were sometimes extremely stressful and nerve wracking but they also often hardened all of us and made us better faster than any other way ever could.

This does not really exist in photography. Back in the day there used to be photography clubs and community meetings that worked in a similar way but nowadays in the age of internet, it became exponentially easier for people to upload something to the internet and just watch the number of likes and reactions, rather than having a real conversation about art and deeper meaning of it. Critique became unwelcome because most photographers out there do it just for fun – it’s their hobby and they don’t need to challenge themselves in these more stressful and sometimes tough situations.

Competitions for me are a great way to stay in touch with myself. I value opinion of other professionals who are at the top of the industry looking at what I create and giving me a feedback. What is the most important to me though, is how I react to it. For example, if I send a photograph to be judged and it scores high, perhaps even gets to the final round, and gets an honorable mention but does not win – I am actually sometimes even more happy because of it. I look at the comments and other photographs that won. If my photograph did not win because I “should spend more time on editing and making sure skin looks spotless” or I did not win because “the pose is not the greatest” etc. I often take such comments as a badge of honor. It is a check for me whether I stand behind what I believe in. I want my photos to be real, authentic, organic, and emotional. I want people in my photographs to be themselves and fall in love with who they are. That is why for me it does not matter if I score high or low – I send my photographs there to look at myself in the mirror and not get twisted by all of the echo chamber of Instagram, Facebook, and other social media platforms which push trends, fake images, and completely insane standards onto photographers, artists, and more importantly people and teenagers.

All of my awards make me happy and proud but what is my truest greatest achievement, is seeing our clients happy with the experience of creating with us and with the photographs that we create. This is my most important compass and all of the awards will always be secondary to the magic that is created between a person behind and in front of the camera.