#Runner Up – Koudelka facebook competition, Athens house of photography


On 25th of March one of my photographs participated into this competition from which the concept is new to me. Even when I participated I just forgot about the whole competition and just last Friday I reminded myself about this. I checked the website and without doing anything I already got many likes on my photograph. Although it sounded strange to me just to get as many likes as possible in order to win I started to share my post. Saturday evening I saw I had 98 likes and then it came to my mind that I actually had a change of getting into the prizes, while there were just 22 participants. Not all the photographers were so active at Facebook, so it was just a matter of getting you photograph into the publicity. In which the winner was quit good by asking a radio channel to help getting him votes, wish I thought about this.

Anyway on last Sunday realizing that I just needed 20 more like to win a prize I called some friends back home to help me out and so they shared as other people did on Saturday my post and so just before the deadline of 1800 I had enough likes (votes) to win a prize.

In the meantime I cannot stop wondering what this exactly has to do with photography, in a way it doesn’t really matter which photograph you send in. Quality is not the main thing, which made me doubt this competition, while it was all about getting as much votes as possible. I discovered that Facebook changed there website in a way that it is very hard to send a post to the big mass of people, there is some real anti spamming policy going on. In which I am always in favour, but just of course of wanting to win I disliked this fact for now and even saw how much harder it is nowadays to mass deliver a message. Because of this I made an email and sent it to some of the people I know, from whom I know they got quit some network going on or they are close friends of mine and actively on Facebook of course.

Then I start to see in a way this definitely has everything to do with photography since making photographs is not enough nowadays anymore. Just a good photographer cannot exist because the flood of existing photographers forces you to network, making contacts and so on getting on your way of becoming somehow a name/famous. Even though this is a thing I don’t want to pursue, since I just want to make good photographs of experiences I had and doing this try to tell a story of the place where I am at this particular moment. Because of this I should travel which I love to do and think about where I will be for the time being so that the story I have to tell is interesting for a wider audience, in which case I can hopefully survive while selling my work.

So in the end I want to thank all the people for linking my photograph in this competition but way more important of liking my work! There fore I hope that this will lead to more visits to my website and who knows what else more….

For now I will continue my focus on my Greek research project in which case you will be informed through my blog.