Is it normal for a photographer to have 100% of their LFI uploads selected by editors?

[CuriousPhotographer42]

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I’ve been active on the Leica Fotografie International (LFI) platform for a while and recently came across a photographer’s profile that made me pause.

This person started uploading in late 2022 and already has:

• Over 1,200 images selected by editors

• Including hundreds of Mastershots and Gallery Selections

• And seemingly zero unselected uploads

Every photo in their portfolio has been either a Mastershot, Gallery Selected, or featured in some editorial category.

That kind of perfect selection rate—100% across such a high number of uploads—feels statistically unrealistic. Most excellent photographers I follow on LFI have far more modest ratios, even with outstanding work.

Is this a known phenomenon on LFI? Does anyone know more about how the editorial process works, or whether prior selections influence future ones?

I’m not here to call anyone out—just genuinely curious if this is common or if the platform tends to favor specific contributors once they’re established. It raises fair questions about transparency and how selections are made.

Would love to hear from others who’ve submitted to LFI or had similar observations.

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[LUF Admin]

Can you provide a link? Would help to take a look ourselves…

Andreas

[evikne]

22 minutes ago, CuriousPhotographer42 said:

• And seemingly zero unselected uploads

Every photo in their portfolio has been either a Mastershot, Gallery Selected, or featured in some editorial category.

That kind of perfect selection rate—100% across such a high number of uploads—feels statistically unrealistic. Most excellent photographers I follow on LFI have far more modest ratios, even with outstanding work.

He can delete photos if he sees that they are not being selected. But it sounds very impressive anyway.

[CuriousPhotographer42]

50 minutes ago, LUF Admin said:

Can you provide a link? Would help to take a look ourselves…

Andreas

Hi Andreas – sure, here’s the profile:
https://lfi-online.de/en/gallery/Chris-Mozyro-749931.html

According to the page, all of the photographer’s uploads have either been selected for the LFI Gallery, awarded Mastershot, or featured in editorial categories. That’s over 1,200 images – and no apparent rejections or unselected uploads aside of 10 pictures!

I don’t mean this as criticism of the photographer – it’s just such a statistical outlier that I thought it might raise some broader questions about how selections are made, especially for newer contributors.

[costa43]

He probably deletes the ones that are not selected. 

[evikne]

All the photos in the “Others” album were uploaded very recently (today, in fact). So I guess his approach is to upload photos there first, and wait some days and see if they get selected. If they do, he puts them in their respective albums; otherwise, they get deleted.

[GFW2-SCUSA]

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I noticed his pictures were take with a Q. Could it be that not a lot of people using a Q (doesn't say which) submit? My opinion of LFI is quite high and I enjoy it and respect it, but not all the pictures are great in my opinion. The job of an editor must be a nightmare! How to decide, based on what, etc.? 

[pedaes]

6 minutes ago, GFW2-SCUSA said:

but not all the pictures are great in my opinion.

Couldn't agree more. Probably knows someone at LFI or knows someone who knows someone!

[evikne]

The Mastershots selections feature a lot of wide angle, high contrast, colorful places and colorful people (Cuba, India, etc.). It is easy to see that the jury has certain recurring preferences. But they should also contain something extra (humor, surprise, etc.) that captures attention. A normal, nice picture is rarely enough.

Edited July 18 by evikne

[250swb]

The street photos do seem to be in the generic 'people walking about' genre, so maybe a algorithm that pushes them up the list based on overall user interests on LFI? But people do game photo web sites, like Flickr for example where if you want to get into it 'give a like and get a like' etc. which results in a lot of awful photos getting a lot of likes. 

[ronaldc]

I noticed this also, if you look at the Selection category with Q, his photos seems to be always selected, literally every couple he has his selected, scroll down and his work is consistently always selected, as a test, he uploaded a batch of photos yesterday, I said to myself right one of those 10 photos he has uploaded will be selected, boom I was right, scrolling down all the selected photos it kinda feels to be unfair his name is there literally every 2-5 photos. only 1 or 2 are selected per day out of everyone, I am sure a lot of people are uploading so the question has to be asked how is this guy getting so many selections and Master shots.. is he gaming/tricking the system ? 

Edited August 7 by ronaldc

[pgh]

I don't generally look at LFI and this is a perfect example of why. Whatever this actually is, it looks like someone just using other people strictly for the purposes of stroking their own pointless online ego. You'd think LFI would want to avoid that, and probably the photographer in question if there was any degree of self awareness. That's not even touching on the work itself.

[ronaldc]

seems bit unfair to me at least that this one person is getting all the selections regularly..

Edited August 7 by ronaldc

[250swb]

14 hours ago, ronaldc said:

, I am sure a lot of people are uploading so the question has to be asked how is this guy getting so many selections and Master shots.. is he gaming/tricking the system ? 

I don't know how it works on LFI (when I had a subscription I never took part in submitting work) if it's on 'likes' for example it's usually a case of gaming the system. They do it on Flickr with 'likes for likes', or submit 'one and like two' which means people posting on small groups soon get automatic likes whether other photographers actually like their photos or not. The other tactic is to swamp a small group with large numbers of photos and statistically one or more will gain approval.

You don't have to take part in those shenanigans but it's surprising, to me at least, how many photographers/camera owners seek to productionise their approval ratings, I guess it's like feeling the glow of approval if your mother in law says something nice about you for a change.

[nykv]

This, if you say something nice about her, or anybody - at times. I like your photos a lot, though.

[Amalgamboy]

Dear all,
In order to bring a little more fact into the discussion and dispel the misguided assumptions, I have asked the LFI Gallery editorial team for a statement. Here it is:
 

Zitat

 

To properly evaluate the image selection made by our editorial team each day, the only reference point is the Exhibition page, where all the images we have selected are displayed in chronological order.

Here is our editorial team's image selection from the last few days:

06.08.25 – 32 images by 30 photographers
07.08.25 – 23 images by 21 photographers
08.08.25 – 51 images by 45 photographers
09.08.25 – 15 images by 15 photographers
10.08.25 – 33 images by 30 photographers
11.08.25 – 18 images from 18 photographers

We have some good photographers who submit 10 images every day, while other good photographers only upload one image per week.
Out of 10 good images submitted by a photographer in one day, we delete 8 to 9 images, even though they actually deserve to be featured. If the same photographer uploads 10 great pictures again the next day, we will probably only select one picture and delete 9 pictures, and so on.

If this photographer now works with a Q and you only look at the Q selection from the last few months, this photographer is represented about 7 times more often than a Q photographer who only uploads one picture per week. In fact, 90% of the images submitted by the frequent uploader were rejected, while 100% of the images submitted by the one-image-per-week uploader were accepted. (Always assuming, of course, that the quality of the images is good.)

In fact, the rejection rate for photographers who have more images on our site than other photographers is many times higher than that of occasional uploaders. We hope we have been able to clarify the actual problem and the facts.

And one more thing: the LFI Gallery does not use any algorithms or similar automated processes that could favour certain images or photographers.

 

 

[pedaes]

4 minutes ago, Amalgamboy said:

We have some good photographers who submit 10 images every day

 

4 minutes ago, Amalgamboy said:

Out of 10 good images submitted by a photographer in one day, we delete 8 to 9 images,

10 'good' images every day - wow. Must be like drug addiction for some poor souls. Still, if that is what gives them a kick...enjoy!

[ronaldc]

I will upload 10 a day and see how long it takes to get selected, will report back in two weeks. That will be 140 photos uploaded. Chris is uploading 10 a day with a minimium hit rate of 1 a day. 

Edited August 13 by ronaldc

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[ronaldc]

So guys report after 140 photos uploaded, 0 selections… but Chris got over 20 in the same period with same freq of upload as me. Absolutely he is favourited.

I cancelled my Subscription.

 

 

 

[S Maclean]

I started submitting August 23 and so far I have three selections in the galleries, one street and 2 portraits. After reading this I realize I actually submitted too many shots, as a good number of them must have been discarded.

i did not submit all to master shots. But when I have I have submitted 6 to 10, as I was testing myself. It would have probably been better to submit no more than three a day to give myself a better chance.

the first two picked up where picked up on the same day I posted for the first time, one on portraits and one on street. The third one today. 

Altogether I have uploaded 49 images.

No master shots for me ( yet) but that’s probably because I didn’t submit a good enough shot.

i find the curating quite good. Some shots are more my taste than others, but that’s the same in any gallery, and any photographer.  I don’t appreciate all street photography, as some just seems snappy to me.

on average, though, there are less “trendy” shots like you see in instagram and Flicker where every photographer copies one another and images are impactful visually, but devoid of soul.