So, recently heard a rumour about Gurushots players who are achieving Guru status in less than a month. Sounds incredible right? Well, I managed to track one such player down. Manfred Fink, he was kind enough to answer a few questions for me and I wanted to share his responses with you.

Hi Manfred. Can you tell us a little about yourself?

My name is Manfred Fink and I am from Austria. I’ll be 60 years old this year. I am a Software Engineer and I specialize in Oracle databases. My hobbies are all kinds of sports as well as hiking and, of course, taking photos.

How long have you been taking photography seriously?

I started taking photos with the birth of my son in 1986. That year I bought a small Olympus camera and took analog photos of his first steps. 2 years later I had a daughter and my first Canon SLR camera. Soon after I upgraded my equipment to a Mamiya 6×9 medium format camera.

Since then photography has been a constant companion of mine and I spent many hours improving my skills.

Of course, I switched to a digital camera a long time ago, the list of my current equipment is too long to list here. But I have been loyal to Canon all the time. With the change to digital photography, Photoshop has become more and more important in my workflow.

Education has also been an important part of my professional development. I intensively use online courses and videos, but I also attend a lot of workshops and training.

My photographic interest is wide, it includes travel, people, architecture, events, products and panoramic photography. However, I am taking more photos of people at the moment.

Since 2012 I have had my own studio which helps a lot to realize new projects.

I won many awards and honors at competitions in different categories. I am a national champion in artistic photography, national champion of an association called “Naturfreunde” and I won a gold medal at the Trierenberg award. Nevertheless I am happy to have another profession and I am pretty sure this is the reason why I have still so much fun with this hobby.

Ok, so you’ve had some successs before. How and when did you discover Gurushots?

A short time ago a friend of mine told me about GuruShots during a visit. He himself is a Master at GuruShots and was excited about the game. He showed me the first steps. I immediately uploaded some of my photos and registered myself for 3 challenges. In one challenge I won instantly, another I was 10^th place and at the third, I could only reach 210th, but I did get the Guru Top Pick Winner award :)

Wow, that’s amazing! what a great start! So, when did you reach Guru status?

I reached the Guru Status after just 12 days. The one thing that slowed me down was that I needed to get the necessary 150,000 Points. As I won the first challenge as a Newbie and I got the Gurus Top Pick Winner on the second day the biggest challenges were already made. The 30 All-Star finishes and the 5 Guru Picks I got in just a few days. Therefore, I just had to wait for my points build up. 

12 days! That’s incredible. That might be some kind of a record. Did you know anything about the platform beforehand?

Although I spend a lot of time with photography and I am active on many platforms, I had never heard of GuruShots. I have to admit, that I completely underestimated the effort to be on the top. It seemed easy to start with. I will now try to concentrate on just a few challenges where I can vote by myself and do not need any buy Fills.

I know that a picture has to be grasped quickly and create a very good first impression

Did you have any special tactics from day 1? (was spending money on swaps/boosts & fills part of this?)

As I saw on the first day that I was far forward I voted at least every 5 minutes to keep my Exposure Bonus up. Apart from that I had no other tactics. What I have benefited from, of course, was my experience in photo contests. That’s why I know that a picture has to be grasped quickly and create a very good first impression because the voters have such little time to decide. This applies to GuruShot as well as all other photo competitions.

I will now try to concentrate on just a few challenges where I can vote by myself and do not need any buy Fills.

How did your tactics change during the 12 days?

To reach the Guru Status fast, I played in about 50 different challenges and as I realized that it is impossible for me to vote in every one of them. So, yes I bought one pack of 250 and 3 sets of 15 fills. I gained all the swaps and keys thanks to my wins and the daily tasks were enough to keep me going. During the time I found, that it is helpful to change the photo between 2 and 4 hours before the challenge ends. Sometimes I used this tactic and used the 2^nd best picture for the start of the challenge and replaced it just before the end with the best one.

Yes, the late entry/swap tactic seems to work well for many players. Do you have any other thoughts on tactics?

A photo which has won is not allowed to be used again for a challenge. But also pictures which are (just) very good also wear off over time because players have seen them before in other challenges and do not vote again for the same pictures.

Through the game you get a very good feeling which pics are favored. This knowledge helps tremendously for challenges.

Thanks, so much Manfred. I’m sure everyone will agree that this has been an intereseting read and that your photos are fantastic. Is there anything else you’d like to add?

I want to thank the developers of Gurushot. This is a very entertaining game and you can also learn a lot. But you I recommend you limit yourself to a few challenges to focus your time.

You can see more Manfred Fink’s work here

I think you’ll all agree that Manfred’s photos are worthy of Guru status and it’s interesting to note that he puts his success down to the quality of his photos rather than any special tactic. Let us know what you think in the comments