Great Escape Publishing

Posted April 17th, 2008 by Bonnie Caton & filed under Travel Photography.

If you’d like to get your photos published, one virtually painless way is to submit them to photo contests. Some contests accept thousands of submissions before they choose a winner… but if your shot takes first place, you could win an all-expenses-paid trip, a professional digital camera, your photo on the cover of a popular magazine, or up to $5,000. Some in the list below award prizes to runners-up, too. The best part is, it doesn’t take much time or energy to enter online photo contests. You can usually register with a site, read their rules, and submit your photo in a matter of minutes. Then you can move on to other things while you wait for the results. Here is a list of four photo contests from reputable sources that might be worth your time. There are entry fees for a few of them; it’s up to you to decide if your photo is a strong enough contender to warrant the fee. Also, check the rules of each contest as some of them have specific entry requirements for image size, post-processing, etc. WORD TO THE WISE: Read the terms and conditions carefully before you enter any contest. Before you submit a photo, you should know how it will be published and what rights you’ll keep if it wins. In some instances, photo contests keep the rights to your photos as soon as you submit them, whether you win or not. In others, you only give up certain rights when you win. The deadline for the first contest on the list — and the one with the biggest prizes — is coming up at the end of this month, so take a look through your best shots and mark your calendar if you’d like to enter.

Four Big Online Photo Contests:

PILSNER URQUELL INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY AWARDS

Publication: Annual International Photography Awards Deadline: April 30, 2008 Grand Prize: $5,000 for amateur photographers, $10,000 for pros. Plus, your photo published in a hard-bound book. Entry Fee: $25 amateur, $35 pro http://photoawards.com NATIONAL WILDLIFE PHOTO CONTEST Publication: National Wildlife Magazine Deadline: July 1, 2008 Grand Prize: $5,000 plus your photo published in the magazine. Entry Fee: $15, which also gets you a membership in National Wildlife Federation, and a subscription to National Wildlife Magazine. http://www.nwf.org/photozone/enter_photo_contest.cfm THE EVERYMAN PHOTO CONTEST Deadline: September 1, 2008 Prizes: Vary by category from $20 to $100. Entry Fee: None. Note: You can also submit old photos you’ve found in the “From the Attic” category. http://www.theeveryman.com/index.php Before you submit your photos to any — or all — of these photo contests, you might want to have a professional photographer look at your photos and tell you whether they’re saleable or not, just to be sure. Especially if you’re going to pay an entrance fee. Good luck! [Editor’s Note: Learn more about how you can turn your pictures into cash in our free online newsletter The Right Way to Travel. Sign up here today and we’ll send you a new report, Selling Photos for Cash: A Quick-Start Guide, completely FREE.]