I was browsing through my old photos when...

It was 2013 and League of Legends was the game I'd play quite often. One day I saw the ad for a League of Legends photography contest in the game and thought to myself, "why not?" The contest was based in Taiwan and based around the Lantern Festival, so the theme was to photograph lanterns of the characters in the game.

When I found out about the contest, it was literally the day before the deadline, so I rushed to the place where the lanterns were on display and took this shot:

I placed my Canon 450D on a tripod, using a 10-22mm lens, I set the exposure to around 1 second. Just before the exposure ended, I zoomed the lens out, creating the bursting of light sources effect.

All the other shots I made after this one were pretty bad, so I entered the photo above for the contest.

A few weeks later I was notified that my photo had placed in the top 10, and another round of voting was to take place. League of Legends players could vote on their favorite out of the 10, and influence the outcome of the eventual top 3 winners.

I remember feeling ecstatic and told all my friends to vote for my entry, as well as asking players in the game to vote, after all, this was my first time entering a photography contest and I made it this far. It was all really exciting.

Then came the day when I was notified that my photo had won 1st place. I had to fill out a form and then eventually I received in the mail a Canon EOS M with a 18-55mm lens as my prize. It would be my first mirror-less camera.

I guess I was lucky to have won first place, since I didn't prepare much for the photo. My later attempts at photography contests were not so lucky.

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Questions on technique employed or gear are also welcomed!