I know Shoot and Share for this year is loooong gone, but since this is my first year doing it, I’m still pretty jazzed about my results! I thought it would be fun to do a quick post about the contest and how I did!

Since most people don’t know about Shoot and Share (unless you’re another photographer or a member of my family (sorry I was so crazy about this whole thing at the beginning of the year, guys)), let me explain a little what it’s all about. It’s literally the biggest photo contest in the world, but it’s also FREE and 100% fair. And anyone can enter!! So if you’re thinking about entering next year, just do it :) You won’t regret it!

Some stats for the contest this year: 583,150 photos were submitted (if you go to the contest website, it says you can explore over 1.1 million photos from the contest. I’m not sure where the difference in the numbers comes from, but I got my number from the contest update emails they sent me for the duration of the contest), there were 74,215 unique voters that participated who come from 144 different countries, and altogether, more than 15,809 cumulative DAYS were spend casting over 90 MILLION votes!

And for context, here is a little background on the contest itself. There are a total of 12 rounds of voting, how they determine when a round ends, I’m not sure! Typically though, each round last a few days and they cast out the photos with the lowest amount of votes before starting the next round. And they keep doing the same thing for 12 rounds (so much anxiety). By the time you get to round eight, only the top 30% of photos from the entire contest are left! In round nine, the top 18.3% are left, round 10 has the top 11%, round 11, the top 4.5% and in round 12, only 2.2% of photos are left! And because of that, round 12 is also known as the Finalist Round! From the results of round 12, they sort all the photos from first place to 20th place. It is SO much fun to go through and look at all the photos that placed, because they are amazing. There are 25 different categories that you can look through!

So… how did I do you might ask? Okay, even if you didn’t ask, I’m going to tell you anyway!

I had seven photos in the top 30%, three in the top 10%, two in the top 10%, and one that made it to the Finalist Round, the top 2.2%! I am absolutely blown away, and so grateful to have done so well my first year! Thanks for everyone who humored me and voted, and you bet I’ll be telling you about Shoot and Share next year, too!

Here are the photos!

Finalist

Top 10%

Top 20%

Top 30%