Upcoming Photo Competitions 2020-21
2021 Sony World Photography Awards
A total prize fund of $60,000 (USD) plus the latest Sony digital imaging equipment is shared between the winning photographers. Always free to enter, there is a competition and a category for everyone – from Architecture, Documentary, Landscape, Portraiture, Sport, Street Photography, Wildlife, Travel, Culture and more.
Deadline: Jan 14 2021
Smithsonian Photo Contest 2020
Natural World: Animals, plants and landscapes; geological or climatological features; and scientific processes and endeavors. Travel: Locales, peoples or activities in the United States and abroad that convey a sense of place. People: Portraits and photos of groups or individuals. The American Experience: Events, objects or activities connecting the American people to their history or their cultural heritage; photographs that tell us what it means to be an American and provide a sense of what it is like to live in this country. Altered Images: Photographs manipulated for artistic purposes by applying digital and/or traditional special effects (i.e., colorizing, toning, collage, photo composites, HDR, etc.). Mobile: Any photograph taken with a mobile device (phone or tablet). You may submit no more than 15 photographs per category for a contest total of 90 submissions. Online submission of digital photographs via the website.
Image requirements: jpeg, .jpg or .gif format, edited for web, at least 2,000 pixels wide and no larger than 10 MB. Finalists will be asked to submit an original, unedited digital file or an original negative, print or slide.
Judging criteria: creativity, quality, originality, responsiveness to the prompt and overall impact.
Deadline: Nov 20 2020
Overcoming COVID PhotoCompetition
Overcoming COVID in 2020 has become a challenge for billions of people all across the globe regardless of their occupation or social status. The pandemic has affected all areas of our lives, becoming a series of trials and tribulations for many professionals, including photographers.
Far behind hospital front lines and on deserted city streets, photojournalists have been striving to capture the most vital moments of the global fight against coronavirus. Their work is as essential as that of other professionals, who have to battle a pandemic of this magnitude. Thanks to their images, they have frozen in time how our lives have dramatically changed over a short period.
Not only does this contest seek to preserve such a unique moment in world history, but it is devoted to those who witnessed these unparalleled, poignant, and at times heartbreaking episodes impacting people’s lives.
Winners will be announced on March 11, 2021 – the anniversary of the announcement of the coronavirus pandemic by the World Health Organization.
Deadline: Dec 1 2020
White by Blank Wall Gallery
Submit your photos for free Deadline: Thursday December 3, 2020 White is the colour of purity and innocence. It symbolizes pure feelings and thoughts. White is good and positive, in contrast to black which symbolizes bad and dark feelings and thoughts. But apart from signifying good and pure, white symbolizes a whole season as well, winter. It is connected to snow, cold and festivity. White Christmas, white mountain slopes, cosy atmosphere in wooden huts, while outside everything is covered by snow.In BWG we would like to see what “White” signifies for you and how you can relate to this colour. Is it something that creates positive feelings or the opposite.
Choices Announced: Until Monday December 7, 2020 Exhibition: Friday January 8 – Wednesday January 20, 2021
Deadline: Dec 3 2020
Science Photographer of the Year
The Science Photographer of the Year Competition celebrates the many realms of science and the powerful role that photography has played in its development.
We’re looking for images that show science in action, telling stories behind scientific exploration and application, and illustrating the many ways that science impacts our lives, and our natural world, every day.
New for 2020 is the category ‘Climate Change’ for images that address global environmental and ecological issues.
Shortlisted photographs will be exhibited at Manchester Science Festival 2021.
There are two age groups: Young Science Photographer of the Year (aged 17 and under) and Science Photographer of the Year (aged 18 and over). Prizes by Olympus to be won by Under 18’s.
Submissions are free and open to all, irrespective of scientific knowledge, photographic experience or equipment used. From a DSLR to a smartphone, all entries are welcome.
Deadline: Dec 4 2020
31 Memorial Maria Luisa Mountain/Nature/Adventure Contest
The Maria Luisa Memorial is calling, one more time, photographers and filmmakers, both amateurs and professionals, to the thirty first edition of their contest. We start a new decade and we do it with the same initial purpose of trying to meet new, innovative and suggestive images that allow us to continue with the promotion of the artistic work of the work of the contestants, at the same time as with the diffusion of the natural environment and its necessary protection.
Mountain, nature, wildlife, mountaineering, climbing, landscape, underwater world, biodiversity, flora, extreme and adventure sports, etc. will be the reference of the edition in this contest one more year, not only in the photography categories but in the section dedicated to videos, films and documentaries as well. In addition, on this occasion, a new thematic category dedicated exclusively to black and white photography.
Year after year photographers from all over the world take part in this contest, having done it already from more than 100 different countries. With the passing of the years the contest has become a meeting place not only for widely recognized international photographers, but also for undiscovered talent and new photographers.
With the rules, instructions and advice provided you will easily be able to prepare your photographs and/or videos to compete in a contest that lacks any commercial purpose, and in which, as usual, only you and your work will be the true protagonists.
One more year, one more decade, good luck to everyone and good light.
Deadline: Dec 1 2020
LIFE IN QUARANTINE
The competition aims to discover photography that shows the mark that the pandemic has left in our lives, the photography that is executed from a different point of view, from a different situation, from an agonising environment and from frustration, denunciation and hope. The contest is open to professional and amateur photographers who are 18 or older. The Jury is composed of six members working in the field of visual arts. Judges look for photographs of good composition, creativity, and exceptional quality. The main Prize is 500 EUR cash awards. There will also be a winner of the public vote through likes on the social media of Art Gallery 5’14. Public Choice Prize is 150 EUR. All genres and styles of photography are accepted: Architecture, abstract, fine art, landscape, lifestyle, nature, wildlife, portrait, street, travel, food, fashion, science, sports, documentary, etc.
Deadline: Dec 1 2020
LightsFlare International Photography Award 2020
LightsFlare International Photography Awards is one of the largest award giving bodies for a community of artists ushering an era of new trends in the world of photography. This competition is a melting pot for people where passion, interest, sense of beauty and openness to diversity in photography collide in intergalactic proportions. At LightsFlare Photography, we seek to find artists and unique souls who breathe and live for creativity—where we provide a platform of promotion and support in their pursuit of self-realization and development.
This contest caters to individuals actively attuned to experimentations and new trends in art. LightsFlare Photography delights in providing an avenue for talented souls to brandish the world’s eccentricity, variety, beauty, and even ugliness from the artist’s lens. And yes, you can have it your own way! Delight in the crazy beautiful fusion of simplicity and complexity of the world with us!
In a world dominated by a traditional approach to photography, we know how difficult it is to break the great divide between two seemingly polarizing styles, with modern approach on one hand and traditional on the other. But take heart, for this is what LightsFlare Photography is all about—it’s about you showing your own vision of the subject. At LightsFlare Photography Awards, you can take center stage and allow the judges to get a glimpse of how you dissect beauty in the harmony of your photographs. In this competition, everyone is free to use any technique. Obligatory devices and other coercive methods is not how we roll. Only the final effect counts. We break all the rules, and we want you to break them with us by creating new trends in art.
Deadline: Nov 20 2020
BIKE Magazine Photography Contest 2021
BIKE Magazine is the UK’s worldwide publication for getting out and enjoying your cycling. With specialist features on leisure, touring, sportives, commuting and family cycling we aim to inspire regular riding. We offer product reviews and eBIKE feature. BIKE Magazine covers the whole world of cycling, including enjoying yourself off the bike too. So we do feature cycling book and film reviews, and regularly cover cycling in the arts.
We reach 30,000 readers globally every months via our website (https://www.bike-mag.com), app, e-reader, social media.
This photography contest is a new way to show to the readers more divers artworks through the pictures. We would like to give this opportunity to photographers to publish their works, show the pictures to the readers and cycling community.
You can enter in eight categories
• Sport
• Nature
• Cycling during pandemic
• Pro Cycling
• Cycling Holiday
• Touring – Exploring a city
• Touring – Exploring the wild
• Open theme
Deadline: Jan 20 2021
CEFF International Environmental Photography Contest and Exhibition
Each year our contest seeks creative photographic images ranging in style and technique from traditional to avant-garde, symbolizing the many different world communities that need to come together to overcome today’s daunting environmental challenges. Images selected for prizes and exhibition successfully educate, motivate, or passionately move audiences to engage in preserving our environment!
DEADLINE: 10 Jan 2021
NOIR BLANC 21 Photography Competition
Not just another photography contest, NOIR BLANC 21 is a bold and modern international event showing off the works of new and emerging black and white portrait photographers and their creative teams from around the world.
We’re on the lookout for extraordinary portraiture work that captures the dynamic relationship between subject and photographer – presented in black, white and all the tones in between.
Our aim is to uncover photographers and creative teams from diverse backgrounds and experience levels, and connect them with global audiences and career-changing opportunities.
Finalists and winners will be announced in June 2021, ahead of each entrant’s work being exhibited in Paris, Milan, London, New York, Los Angeles and Melbourne
Deadline: 31 Dec 2020
The Hopper Prize: $1,000 Grants for Photographers & Artists
The Hopper Prize was established to provide grants, visibility, and career enhancing validation to artists who demonstrate a serious commitment to their work.
We accept submissions for grants through a bi-annual open call. Each grant cycle is juried by a new team of contemporary curators who select grant winners on the basis of artistic excellence and the promise of future potential.
We view the field of visual art in its broadest and most inclusive sense and therefore make our awards available to artists working in any media.
Deadline: Nov 17 2020
AAP Magazine#15: Streets
Encyclopedia Britannica defines Street photography has "a genre that records everyday life in a public place."
Photographers have been documenting their environment since the invention of photography. The image "View of the Boulevard du Temple" by Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, shows a Parisian street in 1838. Later encouraged by improvements in the portability and quality of cameras many photographers decided to record urban life. Charles Nègre, Eugene Atget, Alfred Stieglitz, Andre Kertesz, Berenice Abbott, Henri Cartier Bresson, Brassaï, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Diane Arbus, Vivian Maier, Garry Winogrand, Lee Friedlander, William Eggleston... are amongst the many iconic photographers who captured changes in the fast-paced world of life in towns and cities.
Capturing the essence of the urban lifestyle is now both a popular form of art and an important medium of communicating the heart and soul of a society and its people.
Send us a cohesive body of work or portfolio - capturing the weird and wonderful moments unfolding around you! The subject is completely up to you. Any capture method or process, whether digital or analog, including monochromatic toning, is welcome.
Winners will receive $1,000 in cash awards, their winning image(s) or full portfolio published in AAP Magazine #15, extensive press coverage and global recognition.
All winners will have their work published in the 15th printed issue of AAP Magazine, a free copy of the magazine and their portfolio showcased in the Winners Gallery of www.all-about-photo.com.
Deadline: Dec 1 2020
