Test your photography skills with Gurushots.com

First Achievement

As curious I am, I visited this website and I thought: "Cool!" I can use my pictures in challenges and see what people think about my skills. So I joined my first challenge, it was about ground floors and I did quite a nice job. I ended as elite level. 

These were my chosen pictures:

Most of the time I am joining multiple challenges. When i got back to Gurushots, I wished for a better ranking 🙂 for every challenge. I have already played about 19 challenges and the results are in the higher rankings, quiet satisfied for so far. I can do better!

So you might think, Nice to hear... but I don't still understand the game.

Let me get into the game:

Gurushots.com is a website where you can use your own pictures in many different contests. Every week multiple contests are started in a variety of subjects, sometimes there are some interesting challenges, sometimes there aren't. You need to have the right picture to join a challenge. And if you don't have the right picture at the moment, you can shoot one. This will also help you try to shoot a different kind of pictures and will help to enhance your skills.

If you have joined a challenge, you can add up to four images. To make a change and get a higher ranking, add up to four pictures for sure. You can win a challenge in multiple ways:

• Best Photo
• Best photographer

There is also something special:

• Guru Pick

You can have the best photo. Be the best photographer and your picture selected by the Guru as the Guru pick.  But how do you win a challenge and what is Guru?

If you have created your account. You start as an amateur level photographer. Guru level is the highest level you can achieve and if you can achieve this, you are a truly talented photographer, because your level lies in the hand of other Gurushot users. For every level, you need to achieve certain milestones.

It is all about voting

In this game, it is all about voting for other pictures and get votes from other members. You need to vote to get a better exposure of your pictures, so people can hopefully vote on your pictures. You level is important with the votings. If you start as an amateur, your voting power is one. What does this mean?

If a member votes your picture, his/her level depends on how many voting points you will get. If an amateur votes your picture, you get one point. If a guru votes your picture, you will get 9 points. A number of votes is not always important. It is about who votes your picture. 10 Guru's is much better than 10 amateurs. But here comes the challenge. A guru will not only look to your picture, but he will think about your composition more than an amateur. The higher the rank, the more critical he/she will become. And to win a challenge, you need these votes of the higher members. So think about which pictures you are going to use.

Tip:

You can join a challenge on every moment you want. A challenge has a duration of about 14 days and if you join at the first moment or the last day, no problem. Before you join. I always check the type of images different kind of members are using and which kind is in the top ranking. Sometimes the top ranking is amazing, sometimes I think.. is that all. So you can always win with your picture. Choose the pictures you think these could be a winner and join the challenge.

It can happen that you shoot a better picture for this challenge at a later moment or you don't get many votes for one of the pictures. There is support in the game called a "swap". You can during the game swap as many pictures you like. Okay, you need to have enough swaps. You start with a couple and you can win extra, but if you like to buy these, yes you can!

If you have a made a swap and that picture got more votes, you get an achievement of a successful swap. To get to a higher level, these achievements do you need to achieve. You will going to use them, they are very useful in the game. These tools are so called Perks. Besides Swaps, there is the boost perk. To temporary boost a certain picture and the autofill perk. If you don't want to vote or don't have time to vote. You can use this perk to fill-up the exposure levels of you pictures in all your challenges.

It would be great to win challenges, but most of the newbies dream to win challenges, but it takes time. Not only in the game. You need to enhance your photography skills to the max if you want to challenge the Guru's and be a Guru. 

To keep you motivated, every challenge has a different kind of levels:

- Popular - 50 votes

- Skilled - 250 votes

- Premier - 600 votes

- Elite - 1200 votes

- All Star - 1950 votes

After the end of a challenge, your rank will be recorded.

My current status:

I have done 19 challenges with 37 achievements so far and my results are:

Current member level: Advanced

Popular - 0 achievements 

Skilled - 0 achievements

Premier - 7 achievements

Elite - 9 achievements

All Star - 3 achievements

Successful swap - 15 achievements

Top 30 % - 2 achievements 

Guru Pick - 1 achievement

Gurushots achievemens

If you interested in my profile check: 

https://gurushots.com/stefan.burgerhout/photos

Winning a challenge brings you nice a nice prize because Gurushots is getting sponsored by companies. From a camera store to a website who provide you with interesting and great courses.

I love this game and sometimes you have weeks you are less active until they launch a challenge that fits your style or your current gallery.

The most of my photos are stored in the google photo cloud. You can search very easy, because of artificial intelligence within the google platform. If I see the start of a challenge. I always check my photos to see if I have some work that fit the subject of the challenge. Sometimes you get surprised by your own "old" photos.

Gurushots gives me also a lot of inspiration how other members doing their composition and their view of photography.

If you already play this amazing game. Please add me: Stefan Burgerhout

Looking forward to seeing your work and let the game begin!

Ciao,

Steve