It turns out that not all weekly Twitter competitions are equal. If you are not familiar with the ‘weeklies’ then let me fill you in…. Every Monday on Twitter there are a few competitions that a photographer can enter by just simply ‘hash-tagging’ their images. Undoubtedly the popular ones are Wex, Fotospeed and Sharemondays. The idea being to share an image you have taken in the previous week. It has become a seriously competitive thing with the standard and number of each entries each week phenomenal. Images being submitted could easily win national or world photography competitions let alone a weekly fun competition on Twitter. With Wex all you need to do is tag your image with #WexMondays and be in with a chance to win a some points and a Wex voucher. The overall winner for the year winning a handsome prize and title of Wex Photographer of the Year. With Fotospeed it is #fsprintmonday with the chance of the winning image being printed on the Fotospeed paper but also in with a chance of being crowned the Fotospeed Photographer of the Year.
Sharemondays works very much the same, using the hashtag #sharemondays2020, however there is no prize. Instead the winner of the previous week has the responsibility of choosing the weekly winner and each weekly winner being published in a book at the end of the year. I was fortunate that my image ‘Shangri-la’ was a weekly winner and published in the 2019 book. With the competitive nature of the Wex weekly competition it sometimes appears there are some strategic choices by Wex to keep the leaderboard ‘interesting.’ This is where sharemondays is different in my opinion. No hidden agendas, just passionate photographers choosing their favourite images for no reason other than because it is the work they like the best. This also results in a varied selection of work, because not every photographer likes the same genres.
So if you love photography, or you just enjoy looking at a spectacular set of work then for a very affordable £5.22 you should pick up the sharemondays2019 book here on Amazon. It is incredible value, with no one making any profit, just sharing great photography and giving a small voice to a set of passionate photographers producing some incredible work.
