Quote Originally Posted by Longshots View Post
Well I'm immediately going to dispute your claim that you've only given away rights to a "couple of photos"

Utter rubbish. Sorry I dont believe that to be true.

Sorry, but that cannot be correct if you've entered 10 competitions, and won 4 - I know, I review them all of the time.

If you've listed four competition wins, you would have even under the best conditions as a term of receiving a prize at the very least agreed to, as a condition of entry, given a limited licence limited to the competition use, given away an unlimited licence for the competition use and beyond, or given away an unrestricted licence and given away the copyright making it impossible for even yourself to use within your own portfolio. By entering 10 then you have either been extraordinarily lucky, which I doubt severly, or you have not bothered to read or understood the terms and conditions of the competitions you've entered. Stastically it just doesnt make sense.

And I'm not saying all competitions are bad either, but I would be intrigued that you found 10 competitions to enter, that you won those amounts, and just 2 of the competitions you entered you only had to give the licence for use or copyright away ? no sorry, that doesnt happen.

If you said that out of the 10, you had to agree to give away the licence for use in ALL OF THEM, if you win - I'd believe that - as that is a standard.

If you said that out of the 10, you had to agree to give away the licence for use in 80% of them, just by entering - I'd believe that, as that is the statistics show.

If you said that out of the 10, you had to agree to give away the copyright for use in 40% of them, again just by entering - I'd believe that, as again that is what the statistics show

I would have to also say that you must be remarkably lucky if you're also suggesting that by saying you only had to give away rights to 2 images, you've won four competitions with just 10 images entered. Most people I know who enter competitions enter a number in each. So again I would surmise that you have very likely given away a great deal more images than the 2 you've suggested.

Now its your choice to do that, I have no argument with that choice - but please dont incorrectly defend competitions on this basis.

If you want to send me the competitions and relevant terms and conditions privately, I'll read through the T&Cs for you. If Im wrong I will write you a grovelling and lengthy apology. As I've been reviewing competitions T&Cs for over 15 years now, and on average check 300 a year, I have a fairly strong feeling that I wont be needing to provide you and the forum with that apology.
You're making the assumption that these are pure photography comps, rather than competitions that require a photo entry so creativity has a large role in the comp rather than pure photography. I'm also very selective about the comps I enter so I don't just go out and enter 25 comps, I see a comp, think of something really good I can use as an entry and then submit an entry based on that. If I can't think of anything that is very likely to give me a win, or if the comp is based on something like number of votes (in which case there are voting syndicates that will get more votes irrespective of the entry), I don't bother.

The giving away rights to a couple of comps was a reference rather than an exact number. The photos I've used have generally been ones I've created for the comp and never intend using again so even if I gave away all rights to the photo, I couldn't be bothered because I don't intend using them again.