Before submitting your entries to a competition, try to look at them with fresh eyes. Sometimes an important or key subject is really small in the frame or hidden away. This is something that is easy to do because the human eye is very good at zooming in on what the brain is interested in. This is especially so when you look through the viewfinder of your camera and what appears to be quite large to you when taking the photograph, can end up being relatively insignificant in the final image. Get in close with your zoom or macro lens so it's really obvious what the judge is supposed to be looking at, or look at the images you have and crop them so the subject is more important.

Of course, making your subject obvious doesn't mean it has to be large in the frame. A car in the middle of a flat desert doesn't need to be large to be obvious. However, a car on a busy city street will be lost with all the other cars unless you move in a bit closer with your zoom, or you crop the image during post-production.

Having convinced you that your subject should be strong within the frame, this doesn't mean you automatically crop in tightly and exclude everything else. Space around a subject isn't a problem if the space is subservient to the subject. Essentially, generally we want your subject to be obvious.

Entries into the 2022 Better Photography Photo of the Year Awards close on 15 July 2022, so there's still time to enter - and who knows, you could be part of the $5000 prize pool too! And every entry gets a judge's comment to assist them improve. For more details or to enter, visit www.betterphotographyphotocomp.com now!