National Geographic

National Geographic has an area on their website where photographers can submit one image per month. This area is called "Your Shot." A National Geographic editor choses what they call "The Daily Dozen" each day. These twelve images then appear on the "Your Shot" page. Viewers can then rate each image. National Geographic then choses two of these images for publication in the magazine. One is an editor's choice and the other is the one with the highest viewer rating.

I submitted an image to "Your Shot" once. I spent days looking at the images that were already in "Your Shot" to get a feel for what kind of shot the editor likes. I then spent hours looking through my photos to see if I had anything that might have a chance. Remember, thousands of images are submitted each month and only a very few make it.

I finally decided on a photograph of a bird I shot at Flamingo Gardens in Davie, Florida.