Upload your photo and win!!!. This is the slogan of the Cutest Baby Photo Contest.

Al you have to do is to go the the website, register, upload a photo with a baby and they will pick the winner.

I’m really a supporter of this photo contest and I recommended to all my friends to enter in the contest so click here and register.

Places Honorable Mention
In Japan, ancestral spirits come back to their families in mid-August every year. People gives repose to the ancestors’ spirits for three days and send them back to where they came from by putting them on lanterns to drift down river. Ms. Setsuko Sugino took this picture of a small girl praying for ancestral spirits and lanterns waiting to be set adrift into foggy river in Shikoku, Japan.
by Setsuko Sugino, Japan

People Winner
Old women in Mozambique – by Ilvy Njiokiktjien, Netherlands

Judges’ Comments
“This is one of those wonderful moments when everything comes together visually,” says freelance photojournalist Maggie Steber. “There is a musical rhythm to the image.” National Geographic design editor Darren Smith agrees: “The composition is intriguing with the mirroring of the women’s bodies. I find it to be very harmonious and soothing. There is something reassuring in the play between the colors, shadows, and light. It appears simple at first but gets more complicated the more you look at it.”

Check out winners from the 2008 International Photography Contest along with honorable mentions from each category at National Geographic 2008 International Photography Contest Winners.

Overall winner:

Steve Winter (United States of America)

Snowstorm leopard

‘After 10 months and a winter with little snow in Ladakh’s Hemis High Altitude National Park, India, I was running out of hope of getting the picture I wanted. But one freezing morning I checked my remote-controlled camera and found a snow leopard had triggered it the night before, in the frame I’d dreamed of – in its true element.’ Snow leopards are adapted to life in the mountains of central Asia. They have long, waterproof outer fur, dense woolly under-fur and large nasal cavities that warm the air as they breathe it in. This allows them to survive temperatures as low as -40°C. But the leopards can also tolerate the heat of the Gobi Desert, where temperatures can reach 40°C.

Canon EOS Rebel XT + 10-22mm lens at 16mm; 1/200 sec at f16; ISO 100; waterproof camera box + Plexiglass tubes for flashes; Trailmaster 1550-PS remote trigger.

This is the photographer whose picture has been voted as being the most striking and memorable of all the competition’s entries. The award-winner receives a big cash prize and the coveted title Wildlife Photographer of the Year.

The rest of the winners of each category, can be viewed here.

The winning photographs will be displayed in an exhibition at the Natural History Museum until 26 April 2009. The Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition can also be seen at venues around the UK and internationally. The stunning images from both the 2007 and 2008 exhibitions are now touring worldwide to a venue near you. Use this website to find out where.

Have you got what it takes to become an award winner in 2009? The competition judges will be looking for originality and images that are creative, fresh and surprising. Details of the 2009 competition and information on how to enter will be sent to you in January. In the meantime, if you have any questions please email wildphoto@nhm.ac.uk

This video shows photography during and after World War II that was not yet seen.
But is only a small part of an historical documentary about photography. You can find out more about “The Genius of Photography” on the BBC website.

Follow the story of photography in BBC Four’s six-part series ‘The Genius of Photography’. See some of the most famous photographs ever taken and find out more about what made them so very special.

We hope you like our idea, and you help us to make this 1st. International
award well known on the gaming community. You are invited to participate!

The Festival Internacional de Juegos de Mesa Córdoba 2008 (International Boardgame Festival) will take place in October 10-13 (Last year Reiner Knizia was here, this year Wolfgang Kramer will come…). As a part of the Festival, the organization’s new idea is to start the 1st. International Gaming-Photo Award – that is, an international photography award based on games and gaming.

For years, we have seen many good and impressive pictures about games and
gaming hobby on BGG or other sites… Now is the moment to recompense these good
photographers.

Pictures about games and gaming can be presented to the award. The selected
pictures will be exposed in the Festival Internacional de Juegos Córdoba 2008.
The prize for the best picture: 500 € + 150 € to buy games at masqueoca.com.
And there are more little awards.

You can find all the info and the rules on the web:
www.festivaldejuegoscordoba.es

There, you can find: Spanish rules, English rules and French rules.

For US citizens I found an interesting contest with really nice prises:The Rainforest Alliance Picture Sustainability. The winner will not only win a Fujifilm Finepix S100fs 11.1MP Digital Camera with 14.3x Wide Angle Dual Image Stabilized Optical Zoom, but also a trip for two (2) to Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands and a wildlife photography book. Five first prize winners will receive the Fujifilm Finepix S100fs 11.1MP Digital Camera with 14.3x Wide Angle Dual Image Stabilized Optical Zoom and the Art Wolfe wildlife photography book (plus Rainforest Alliance membership). Up to seven (7) honorable mention winners will receive the and Art Wolfe wildlife photography book and Rainforest Alliance membership.
The contest deadline has been extended to March 30, 2008, 4pm EST.
To enter enter the contest you must complete the on-line submission form and submit your original photograph electronically at www.raphotocontest.org. There you will also find more details about the rules of the contest.
The Rainforest Allince is looking for photos in the following categories:

* Landscape/Scenic
• Tropical forests
• Temperate forests
• Boreal forests
• Rivers, streams and waterfalls
• Flowers and plants
• Beaches
• Wetlands
• Coral reefs
* Conservation in action
Children and/or adults conserving natural resources, including water, flora and fauna.
* Wildlife on coffee, cocoa and fruit farms or forests
• Insects
• Birds
• Reptiles & Amphibians
• Mammals
• Fish
* Sustainable tourism in Latin America
• Hiking, bird watching, mountain biking and other land-based nature activities
• Surfing, scuba, kayaking, snorkeling and other coastal or marine activities
• Other eco-tourism-related subjects
* Flora and fauna (macro)

The Art of Photography Show 2008 is a world-class international exhibition featuring all forms of photographic art — images shot on film, shot digitally, unaltered shots, alternative process, mixed media, digital manipulations, montages, photograms, etc. The Art of Photography Show will be exhibited at the two-level Lyceum Theatre Gallery, a perfect venue for exhibiting a large showcase of awesome photographic art.

The online entry process is very easy, simply filling out a short registration form and then uploading your JPEG image files. Due to numerous requests for a little more time, we have extended the entry deadline to March 3rd at 11:59 pm (California Time).

Entry Fee: $25 for the first entry, $10 for each additional entry. There is no limit to the number of entries an artist may enter. Artists who entered work in any previous Art of Photography Show or the Art of Digital Show will receive a $15 discount towards the Art of Photography Show 2008.

$1,000 1st Place Award
$ 800 2nd Place Award
$ 600 3rd Place Award
$ 400 4th Place Award
$ 200 (11) HM Awards

This is the fourth year of this annual photographic exhibition. Approximately 20,000 people are expected to view the Show during the four-week run at the Lyceum Theatre Gallery. One of our key aims is to sell the work which is exhibited at The Art of Photography Show. Additionally, we will be pursuing a vigorous marketing and publicity campaign, to bring maximum media attention to the artists who are juried into the exhibition. Our great love of this art form (and being photographic artists ourselves) prompts us to ‘pull out all of the stops’ in order to showcase a truly excellent presentation of photographic art, to elevate and promote this art form, and to provide substantial benefits to the exhibiting artists.

More details and participation

The Photography Prize worth £30,000 is awarded annually to an international photographer who is judged to have made the greatest contribution to photography over the previous year. This year’s finalists are John Davies (UK), Jacob Holdt (Denmark), Esko Männikkö (Finland) and Fazal Sheikh (USA). Founded in 1996, the Photography Prize has become one of the most prestigious international arts awards.

This year’s shortlist for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize shows a welcome shift of emphasis. Whereas 2007′s nominees had rather intimidating, introspective themes, this year each of the artists has flung his net outwards with a keen, almost evangelical fervour, to create social observations which make full use of photography’s talent for conferring beauty on the ordinary. Walking around this exhibition, you begin to feel optimistic that these works herald new ambitions for the medium.

John Davies (b. 1949, UK) has been nominated for The British Landscape at the National Media Museum, Bradford, UK (13 October 2006 – 4 February 2007). His panoramic black & white photographs, taken between 1979 – 2005, document the changing post-industrial British landscape.

Jacob Holdt (b. 1947, Denmark) has been nominated for his publication Jacob Holdt, United States 1970 – 1975, published by Steidl GwinZegal, Germany (2007). In the early 1970s, Holdt spent five years hitchhiking across the US, living with and documenting the lives of the people he met – from the poorest Southern sharecroppers to some of America’s wealthiest families.

Esko Männikkö̈(b. 1959, Finland) has been nominated for his retrospective Cocktails 1990 – 2007 at Millesgarden, Stockholm, Sweden (1 September – 4 November 2007). A portraitist of isolation, Männikkö documents with great humour, warmth and integrity the lives of those who inhabit the periphery.

Fazal Sheikh (b. 1965, USA) has been nominated for his publication Ladli, published by Steidl, Germany (2007). Sheikh is an artist-activist who uses photography to create sustained portraits of different communities around the world.

Exhibition Catalogue:
The Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2008 exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, edited by Stefanie Braun. The catalogue includes a short story by Riikka Ala-Harja inspired by Esko Männikkö’s work, a fictional response to John Davies’ photographs by Sarah Hall and essays by Dr Caroline Blinder and Mary Warner Marien contextualising the work of Jacob Holdt and Fazal Sheikh.

I’ve just been informed that the search for the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2008 has begun.
If you have broadband you can enter the competition online. Alternatively enter by post.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition
The Natural History Museum
Cromwell Road
London
SW7 5BD
UK

However, it costs £20 to enter online and £27 to enter by post, due to the increased administration this involves.
Deadlines:
Monday 31 March 2008 for online submission.
Monday 24 March 2008 for postal submission.

New award for 2008: Photographer’s Award for Lifetime Commitment to Wildlife Photography
This award will be given to the photographer whose work and commitment to wildlife photography is considered worthy of commendation. This can either be through the sheer power and beauty of their imagery or the positive impact the imagery has made. All entrants can nominate candidates for this award.

Your nomination must be based on the criteria above, you must include a valid reason.

Online entrants can nominate from within the upload area.
Postal entrants can email a nomination or alternatively enclose the nomination with their package.

The title of Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2008 will be given to the photographer whose single image is judged to be the most striking and memorable of all the entries. The winning photographer will receive a cheque for £10,000, which will be presented at an awards ceremony at the Natural History Museum, London, in October 2008.
Other awards are: Eric Hosking Award (Prize: £1,000), Gerald Durrell Award for Endangered Wildlife(Prize: £1,000), One Earth Award(Prize: £1,000), Photographer’s Award for Lifetime Commitment to Wildlife Photography New for 2008.

The categories are:

1. Animals in Their Environment
2. Animal Behaviour: Birds
3. Animal Behaviour: Mammals
4. Animal Behaviour: All Other Animals
5. The Underwater World
6. Animal Portraits
7. In Praise of Plants
8. Urban and Garden Wildlife
9. Nature in Black and White
10. Creative Visions of Nature
11. Wild Places

For more details about this and how young photographers under 17 can participate, click here.

Celebrating the beauty and delicacy of the marine environment, popular websites Wetpixel.com and DivePhotoGuide.com, in association with Our World Underwater, one of the largest consumer dive shows in the US, announce a final call for entries for their 3rd annual, international underwater photography and video competition. Truly an international competition, last year winners hailed from 17 different countries.

The official competition website has links to entry forms, guidelines prizes and more information: UnderwaterCompetition.com

Photographers will compete in seven still-image categories and two video categories, to win more than $50,000 in prizes including trips to some of the top dive destinations in the world, including Socorro, Wakatobi-Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Ambon-Indonesia, the Red Sea, Grand Cayman, the Solomon Islands and Vietnam. Other prizes include housings, strobes, lighting systems, signed books and other valuable items. All compact camera entrants will receive one free lesson from TheUnderwaterPhotographer.com

The competition includes a category for images that focus on conservation and the marine environment, and one specifically for entries taken by compact digital cameras.

Deadline for submissions Jan. 15, 2008

Winners will be announced live on stage at the 2008 Our World Underwater film festival in Chicago, Illinois (February 15-17, 2008), and will be published by supporting media partners worldwide. Winning videos will be broadcast via podcast as episodes of the iTunes-featured DiveFilm Podcast Video and DiveFilm High Definition Podcast Video

As with all UnderwaterCompetition.com events, 15% of entry proceeds will be donated to marine conservation efforts.