Journal · Awards
What do architecture awards judges want from photography?
A judging panel almost never visits the building. They are judging the photographs, which means the images have to carry the entire design argument on their own.
Awards
The images are the entry
This is the part that is easy to forget when you have lived with a building for three years. The panel has not stood in it, walked its approach, or felt how the light moves through it. They have a small set of photographs and a few hundred words.
So the set has to do the arguing. If the whole idea of the scheme is how it meets the street, there must be a photograph that makes that legible to someone who has never been there. If the idea is the section, there needs to be an image that reveals it.
Awards
Fewer, stronger, ordered
Most submissions allow a limited number of images, and the temptation is to use every slot. Resist it. A tight set of eight strong photographs beats twelve where four are filler, because the weak ones drag the average down and dilute the argument.
Order matters too. Lead with the image that states the idea, then support it. A set that reads in sequence is far more persuasive than a gallery in arbitrary order.
Awards
What loses entries
Leaning verticals, blown-out skies, and visible distortion all read as carelessness, and a panel looking at hundreds of entries notices immediately.
So does an incomplete story: exteriors with no interiors, or interiors with no sense of where the building sits. And so does a set shot on a flat grey day when the scheme clearly deserved better light. Photography for a submission is worth planning around the weather in a way that a routine record shoot is not.
Common questions
Frequently asked
How many images should an architecture awards submission include?
Whatever the entry allows, but fewer strong images beat a full set padded with weak ones. A tight set of around eight photographs that argue the design clearly is usually more persuasive than twelve of uneven quality.
What makes a good awards submission photograph?
One that makes the central idea of the building legible to someone who has never visited. Technically it needs straight verticals, controlled highlights, and light that suits the scheme, because a judging panel reads carelessness quickly.
Should awards photography be shot differently?
It is worth planning around the weather and the time of day more carefully than a routine record shoot, and worth deciding in advance which single image has to carry the argument.
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