2026 Australian Photographic Prize: Judging and Winning

A few years ago I stopped entering awards. I’d been entering for over 20 years and used to love it. More the whole being there with people to see the award prints being judged at the Australian Professional Photography Awards. But since they ended, and most awards moved online, the spark wasn’t there.

I did get a slight pang of regret each time the award judging came up. I was still judging, just not entering.

So this year, when the Australian Photographic Prize was about to close entries, I had a spare moment and went in and found some images to enter. Ones I’m proud of. Ones that if they got an award it would just make me feel happy.

There are photographers who photograph for awards. They can do quite well. But when I’ve tried to do that I just fall flat on my face. So the images I tend to enter are ones I’ve produced for clients, with the exception of the occasional “I was photographing this for my daughter” kind of sport event.

I may go in and do some tweaking to the images, but I’m not a heavy photoshopper. I love entering the classic categories because they’re about the pure image, not one that’s been altered heavily with retouching.

This was the first time I’d ever entered Sport and Commercial. The images did well, competing against some serious talent entering work from the Winter Olympics and the Australian Open.

Commercial is typically a very styled category, generally with lots of retouching. My friend Kylie suggested I enter one of my comedian portraits in there. I’d never thought of that before. Glad I listened to her. That image took a Silver Distinction, which placed me 3rd in Commercial.

Family and Portrait typically has winners with deep emotional content in them, and those heightened emotions can weigh heavily with judges. So to get silvers in there, with images more on the lighter side, is always brilliant. One of my family shots earned a Silver that placed me 3rd in Family.

Across the whole prize I came away with six Silver awards: two in Family, two in Classic Portrait and two in Sport. Plus the Silver Distinction in Commercial.

The two Sport images came from very different places. One was from my daughter’s IRB (Inflatable Rescue Boat) racing team. The other was from the Oceania Para Standing Tennis Championships, which I was commissioned to photograph.

As a judge, I choose not to judge the categories I’ve entered in. That whole conflict of interest never sat well with me. There have been times in the past where I’ve judged a category, been swapped off the panel for a break, and one of my images comes up. It gets judged, and whether it’s a good or bad result, it takes some effort to bring myself out of my own emotions and give full credit to the next images I’m judging.

This year I was asked to judge Aerial, Creative Landscape, Classic Wedding and Travel. All categories I’ve picked up awards in over the years.

So that’s the full circle. I stopped entering, felt the pang each time judging came around, and this year I finally went back in. Not with images made for awards, because that’s never worked for me, but with real client work and a couple of shots I took because I wanted to. They placed against people entering the Winter Olympics and the Australian Open. And I got to judge four categories I’ve picked up awards in myself over the years.