We’ve been working hard these last couple of months to create a new feature on our site designed to integrate users of our site and award recognition to our talented community of photographers. After months of tireless effort, we bring you SLR Lounge Awards! Watch this video to learn all about our amazing platform made to honor your technique & artistry:

why we created this platform

We are a little exhausted with the state of industry award competitions. The process for submitting to award platforms is often overly complex and time consuming. We’ve also seen an increase in the amount of bias/nepotism going on within the award winners in these platforms. Often times, the same people judging (along with their friends) are the ones winning all of the major awards year after year.

Our goal is simple: we want to grant distinctive, reputable awards to honor excellence, creativity, and audacity in photography. Our system draws on a formula for judging that we continually reshape and modify with the goal of removing all pretense and bias from the awards selection process.

Currently, the platform is only viewable and not open to public submission. Starting June 1st, we will be opening SLR Lounge Awards up to free users and Premium users of the site so stay tuned! 

the evaluation system

Every submitted image will have 7 days to accumulate an average community score based on a set of criteria. Instead of using a universal set of criteria for every image, a unique set of four criteria is assigned to each image according to the image category.

Free users receive one submission per month, while SLR Lounge Premium users can submit up to 3 images per month. This ensures that each image is scored on a consistent set of factors, applicable and accurate for the type of image.

the criteria

The set of four criteria are assigned to each category from the following:

The weighted system

For additional accuracy, the scoring criteria are weighted, with more weight on criteria that have more influence and category and less weight on criteria that have less influence and impact.

Of our available categories, the criteria weights are as follows:

Wedding portraiture

Creative wedding images that are posed or set up by the photographer. These include portraits of the bride or groom, couples portraits, family formals, and wedding-party photos. This category does NOT include photo-journalistic (i.e. candid) moments at a wedding.

WEDDING photojournalism

Storytelling wedding images of moments that occurred naturally, without photographer interference. This category does NOT include images that were posed or set up.

the awards

The following awards will be granted to the top images on our site (starting from left to right):

  • Ascent Awards are reserved for the top 3-5% of images.
  • Summit Awards are reserved for the top 2-3% of images.
  • Apex Awards are reserved for those whose images are hand-picked by Curators from the top 1% of images.

*These percentages are used as goals. The actual number of distributed awards will vary.

the curators

Scoring is done by all community members, however, the final selection of award winners is made by a team of curators. The curators are comprised of industry influencers, SLR Lounge editorial staff, and select previous award winners.
While the curators take into account the final community score of an image, they will use their expert opinions, based on the criteria of the image category, to determine the final winners.

Currently, the platform is only viewable and not open to public submission. Starting June 1st, we will be opening SLR Lounge Awards up to free users and Premium users of the site so stay tuned!