John M. Setzler, Jr.

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Originally uploaded by John Setzler.

When I first decided that I wanted to take photography seriously as a hobby, one of the first things I did was look for some online digital photography competitions. When I did a Google search, one of the first sites that came back was DPChallenge. When I found this website, it was only a few months old. I discovered it in in early April of 2002, and it had only been up and running since February of that same year.

I signed up for the website and started browsing the competition photos that were available for public voting. I was amazed at what I was seeing and what people were doing with their digital cameras. I decided to give it a try myself. I started entering the weekly themed competitions. My photos performed well, but the photo above is the first winning entry I had in one of their contests. This photo was entered into a “Black and White” challenge, and it won first place out of 153 photos.

During the five years since I won that competition, DPChallenge has grown beyond my imagination. There are multiple competitions each week now, and each of those challenges usually has upwards of 300 entries. The competition is fierce.

If you are a digital camera hobbyist, serious amateur, or even a professional photographer, I suggest signing up on this website and participating in some of the competitions. You can participate in the open challenges without having to become a subscriber to the site, or you can subscribe to the site and participate in additional challenges each week.

Maybe I’ll see ya there :)