Photo Contests & Competitions

The Digital Photography Club of Annapolis scheduled a Panel Discussion on Photo Contests and Competitions on January 28, 2008. Chuck Gallegos, Karen Messick, and Steve Bruza agreed to be the panelists for the discussion. Some helpful resources that they have recommended, as well as other online resources for photo contests and competitions are listed below.

Karen Messick recommended the guidelines in the You May Already Be a Winner article from Adorama as well as the Contest Guidelines from Better Photo.com.

The Photographic Society of America web site is recommended by Steve Bruza for their contests.

Although it is not a contest site, Chuck Gallegos recommended Onexposure.net as a good place to send photos to be critiqued.



Some local photo contest web sites, as well as some national photo competition web sites are listed below:

Outdoor Photographer Winter Contest

Friends of Prime Hook Nature Photography Contest

Maryland Wine Photo Contest

Maryland Renaissance Festival Photo Contest

Schooner Woodwind Cruises Photo Contest

Washington Gardener Photo Contest

Civil War Preservation Trust Photo Contest

Maryland Zoo Monthly Digital Photo Contest

National Wildlife Federation Annual Photography Awards

Maryland Department of Natural Resources Photo Contest

Smithsonian Magazine 5th Annual Photo Contest

Nature's Best Photography Awards

Slideshows on the Web

If you would like to share your slideshows with others, you can sit down at a computer together, send the slideshow or movie through email, or burn the files onto a cd. You can also post your slideshows online to make viewing the slideshow easy for anyone who has a computer and can go online. I have tried a few sites, and these are just a few examples.

If you create a slideshow with Picasa, you can post your slideshow online with Picasa Web Albums. You will need to sign up for a free google account, or use your existing account. Here is an example of a slideshow using Picasa Web Albums.




You can sign up for a free flickr account, post pictures online, and organize them into sets. Each set can be viewed as a slideshow. You can send the link to the slideshow to friends and family. Here is an example of a flickr slideshow:





If you use PowerPoint, you can upload your slides to Google Documents and post your slideshow online. You'll need to sign up for a free google account, or use your existing google account. I created a very short Robins Slideshow
that shows a mother robin feeding one of its young so that you can see how Google Documents works.

If you use iMovie to create a slideshow/movie, you can post it to YouTube. You will need to sign up for an account and follow the directions they provide in the help section. There is a video that helps explain how to upload videos on this page.

Time Lapse Photography

There are two amazing and inspiring time lapse videos by Rufus Blackwell at TimeLapseVFX! In these videos, the camera pans smoothly through some beautiful sequences. The music is well-suited to the video and adds to the inspiration.

Here are two more ideas for using a digital camera to create a time lapse series of photos. Both of these time lapse series can be set up at home and done inside during a cold or snowy day.



Note that in the time lapse video below, the artist moves back and forth between tight and medium shots several times. Sometimes we see his lighting set up and the still life he has set up and is painting from, and other times we move in close to focus on his canvas and his hands at work.