Following on from the huge success of its selfie competition, from selfie to self-expression, the Saatchi Gallery has just launched a brand-new mobile photography competition called Self Expression. This time around, the selfie is outlawed and in its place will be an open forum for creative photography using the camera on your smartphone, so it’s time to throw your selfie stick away and focus on something other than your own sweet kisser.
The competition opened earlier in June with the hashtag #SelfExpression and its already had a fair few entrants ranging from the wild and wacky to the more artistic, beautiful and thoughtful. There’s a relatively short competition window that closes on the 9th July 2017, so if you want to enter, you’ll need to get moving pretty quickly.
You’ll need to upload you pics at https://www.saatchigallery.com/selfexpression, where you can also find out more about the entrance criteria and check some of the existing entrant shots. If you’re looking for ways to improve your own mobile photography before submitting, you can check out our 5 creative photography tips below for inspiration.
The Self Expression mobile photography competition will be reviewed by a judging panel made up of artists, photographers and creative self expressionistas, who will select ten winners.
The prize for each of the shortlist winners is the latest Huawei P10 smartphone, which has the world’s first 8MP Leica front camera and dual Leica lens for exceptional mobile photography. If that isn’t enough, they’ll also have their work featured at an exhibition similar to the recently extended From Selfie To Self Expression exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London.
The 10 shortlisted winners will then be put forward for a chance to be named as the overall winner of the competition, which will be announced as a special event at the Saatchi Gallery on 19th July 2017. Their reward will be the priceless honour of having their very own solo exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery at a later date, following in the footsteps of Dawn Woolley, who won the Saatchi Selfie Competition.
You’ve only got a look at the success of the Selfie To Self-Expression exhibition to see how big the prize is in terms of the massive audience it can give a budding artist and its work. Not only does it benefit from the reputation and prominence of the Saatchi Gallery in the London art scene, but it is also picked up a certain amount of it’s own media buzz thanks to the sheer number of entrants (14,000 from 113 countries) and creativity of the work submitted.
In fact, the Selfie To Self Expression Exhibition has been so popular that the Saatchi Gallery has decided to extend its run until the 23rd July 2017. If the #SelfExpression mobile photography competition goes on to get the same level of submissions and media attention then the resulting Exhibition could be just as successful.
Creative mobile photography tips:
1 – Take photographs from interesting angles and unique perspectives to make your shots more unique
2 – Look out for light variations and distinction through colour
3 – Professional photographers always think in terms of composition, so try to work on how you set a shot, what’s included in the frame and what goes where and why
4 – A picture tells a hundred word, but a great picture tells a story, so think about what story you want to tell with yours
5 – Go beyond the conventional – Dawn Woolley won the Saatchi Selfie Competition by printing off a series of pictures to create herself composing within the final shot, which is a million miles away from your traditional selfie
