All About Photography Website Design

Friday, September 24, 2010

Cool 2010 Photo Contests

If you are fond of photography and full of creative ideas there is a great chance to try your hand at photo contest and showcase your best art works to the world. Except expressing your own point of view and being noticed by the other professionals from all over the world you also get the possibility to win some honorary prize or a pretty sum of money. You don’t have to be obligatory a master of photography since even if you are a newbie there is a bunch of great contest to take part in.

We’d like to familiarize you with the relevant photography competitions of 2010 which you can enter just right now. They are both free and member fees based but you have an opportunity to make yourself known and share your talent in very enjoyable way. So here is an overview of 10 photo contest of 2010 which are still waiting for your participation!

1. The National Geographic PHOTOGRAPHY CONTEST



National Geographic runs a photo contests inviting you to take part and win $10,000 with your photo publication in National Geographic magazine. Your task is to submit qualitative and creative photos corresponding such categories as People, Places and Nature. You can submit as much art works as you want but the entry fee is $15 per photo.

Deadline: November 30, 2010, 9:00:00 a.m.

Prizes: the First Place winner in each Category will each receive US$2,500, and his/her winning photograph will be published in National Geographic magazine. One Grand Prize winner will receive, in addition to the First Place prize, US$7,500 and a trip to the District of Columbia, USA from Jan. 11 to Jan. 14, 2011 to participate in the National Geographic Photography Seminar.

Info: the photos must be in digital format and only online entries will be eligible. The photograph need not be taken with a digital camera; scans of negatives, transparencies, or photographic prints are acceptable. The photographs must have been taken within 2 years before the date of entry and may not previously have won an award in the National Geographic International Photography Contest or any National Geographic Traveler photo contest in the last three years.

2. Travel Photographer of the Year 2010




If you want to be the Travel Photographer of the Year 2010 you need to submit the most striking two portfolios from 3 categories - Encounters, World in Motion and Amazing Places. However, there is much more chances in other categories of the contest!

Deadline: 9th October 2010

Categories:
- three portfolio categories - Encounters, Amazing Places and World In Motion
- a One Shot category - Adventures
- First Shot (for less experienced amateur photographers) - Festival of Colour
- New Talent (if you want to start a photography career) - Sell It!
- Young Travel Photographer of the Year (two age groups) - Big World Small World

Prizes:
- trips to South East Asia, Botswana, India and Nepal with Intrepid Travel
- TPOTY cash bursaries
- Adobe® Photoshop® CS5 and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom® software
- a Wacom Cintiq 12WX interactive pen display and Intuos4 and Bamboo Fun pen tablets
- the latest Lexar® Professional CompactFlash® memory cards and card readers
- LEE filters, customised leather portfolio books from Plastic Sandwich
- fine art Giclée exhibition prints from Genesis Imaging and copies of the latest TPOTY book, Journey Three.

Prizes for new and emerging photographers include Young Photographers Alliance portfolio reviews and places on the YPA mentoring programme, the chance of representation from Axiom Photographic Agency, and Photo Iconic photography tuition and image critiques.


3. The Sony World Photography Awards




The Sony World Photography Awards welcomes amateur and professional photographers to show their best talents to the world! There is both professional and open competitions for you to choose.

Professional Competition
Deadline: 5 January 2011
You need to submit your photo to become the new Professional Photographer of the Year and win the coveted prize, L’iris d’Or, as well as prize money of $25,000.
Submissions must be based on a body of work and may contain from 3 to 10 images. Image entered in to any of the 15 professional categories must have been completed or first published in 2010.

Open Competition
Deadline: 5 January 2011
If you are a true photography lover you get the chance to win capturing the perfect moment. No ages and levels of expertise restrictions. Whether your passion is animals, places, people, sport, or travel, you get an opportunity to win $5,000 and a trip to the next Sony World Photography Awards ceremony and World Photography Festival in London!

4. The Nikon Photo Contest International 2010-2011



Nikon holds free photo competition both for newbies and professionals who are able to amaze the world by the most creative and inspiring shots.

Deadline: Tuesday, November 30th, 2010.

Categories:
- free subject: works that convey your unique perspective and creativity.
- energy: works that capture the energy of sights and subjects that inspire, motivate or excite you or viewers.

Prizes:

One Grand Prize:
-Nikon D3S D-SLR camera
-AF-S NIKKOR 24mm f/1.4G ED
-AF-S NIKKOR 24-70mm f/2.8G ED
-Winning photo to be included in the Mini Gallery on the Nikon Photo Contest International 2010-2011 website

First place (1 award from each category):
-Nikon D300S D-SLR camera
-SB-900 Speedlight
-AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR II
-AF-S NIKKOR 16-35mm f/4G ED VR

Second place (5 awards from each category):
-Nikon D5000 D-SLR camera
-AF-S DX Micro NIKKOR 85mm f/3.5G ED VR

Third place (10 awards from each category):
-Nikon D3000 D-SLR camera
-AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G VR

Emerging Talent Award (4 awards, regardless of category):
-Nikon COOLPIX P6000 digital camera
-Photos to be included in the Mini Gallery on the Nikon Photo Contest International 2010-2011 website

Emerging Talent Award (Runners-up) (16 awards, regardless of category):
-Nikon COOLPIX S1000pj digital camera
-Photos to be included in the Mini Gallery on the Nikon Photo Contest International 2010-2011 website

5. The International Aperture Awards Competition



Capture the most exciting moment and submit your eye-catching work to win a great cash prize! The International Aperture Awards Competition offers all photography lovers to compete for the profit!

Deadline: 15th October 2010.

Prizes:
1. Major Amateur Awards Prize: Nikon D5000 DSLR with 18-55mm and 55-200mm VR Lenses valued at $1,500 RRP and a GigaPan EPIC PRO valued at $1,495 RRP.
The winner of of each of the 3 Amateur Categories will win;
1st - Pixel Purity Online Mentoring Package RRP $1,700.00
2nd - Polaroid 300 camera. RRP $150.00

2. Major Open Awards Prize
The image with the highest score will be awarded,US $20,000.00 cash prize.

6. The People & Planet International Photography Competition



People & Planet: Social Justice & Environment Diary & Calendar 2011 looks 55 captivating photos of people, places or things which tell a story about a social-justice or environment issue. Hurry up to become one of the authors!

Prizes:
-1st Prize: $1,500 AUS
-2nd Prize: $750 AUS
-3rd Prize: $250 AUS
-All 55 winners will recieve a free copy of the 2011 People & Planet Diary.

Info: you can submit portraits, landscapes and animals photos, but up to 4 works per entrant. All submitted photos must have 2-5 sentences describing the image and the social-justice or environment issues which are raised by the photo. The images can be colour or B&W, but should be at least at 300 dpi resolution, supplied in JPEG format, with a maximum file size of 10 MB. We like minimal Photoshop-ing, and will usually exclude photos where Photoshop-ing is obvious.

7. International Year of Biodiversity Photography Competition 2010



International Year of Biodiversity Photography Competition 2010 is open for amateurs in photography art of 5-11, 12-17 years and adult which want the world to estimate their talent. The task is to illustrate an aspect of the biodiversity found in Devon over the summer months.

Deadline: September 30th, 2010

Prize:
- for the youngest category: a bird watching trip on the River Exe with the local ranger, for them and their family.
- for 12-17 years category: a private tour of a closed Devon Wildlife Trust reserve accompanied by the Warden, for them and their family.
- for the adult category: winner will win a trip to Lundy Island, with a tour accompanied by the island Warden, along with three of their friends or family.

8. Image International Photo Contest 2010



Photo Life and Photo Solution Canadian magazines present the Image International Photo Contest 2010 and invite every photographer from a newbie to a master from any country to participate.

Deadline: November 2010

Categories:
-People: Friends, Family, Strangers
-Nature: Scenery, Animals, Environment
-Varia: Choose your subject, use your imagination!

Prize: image publication in Canada’s leading photography magazine and more than $40,000 in prizes including some of today’s hottest photo equipment and a Grand Prize 9-day cruise expedition for two to the Arctic (estimated at $10,500) sponsored by Cruise North Expeditions Inc.

9. BJP's International Photography Award



BJP's International Photography Award is not dedicated to any particular theme - use your imagination! You are allowed to submit photos in any format and style.

Deadline: September 30th, 2 p.m.

Info: international participants are invited to submit their work for the contest by using the on-line facility. You can also participate by regular mail using the Official Participation Form found within the pages of Photo Life magazine or by downloading, printing, and using the PDF file of the Official Participation Form.

10. International Observe The Moon Night Photo Contest




The Moon gives you a great chance to become a famous lunar photographer! All you need to do is to capture the Moon till September 23th, 2010 and submit it to become a winner.

Deadline: September 23th, 2010

Categories:
- landscape
- wide-angle
- narrow-angle

Info: the top five images from each category will be chosen by the InOMN coordinating committee. The winners from each individual category will be chosen by online voting from the public. Voting will take place through theMyMoon website beginning September 27 and ending October 1, 2010. The winners from each individual category will become finalists for the grand-prize. The grand-prize winner will be chosen by online voting from the public. Voting for the grand-prize winner will also take place on the MyMoon site between October 4 and October 8, 2010. Winners will be contacted by email. Announcements of the winners will be placed on the InOMN website’s Contest page by October 12, 2010.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Great Photography Wesites Review

Just posing a small update that presently we are working on a big comparison table of all photography solutions reviewed on our blog that should be complete in about 2 weeks time. If you would like some website reviewed do not hesitate to contact us at webphotocms at gmail.com!

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Printroom Review

Company name: Printroom

Website: http://printroom.com/

Printroom is another integrated solution created to solve both frontend and backend photographers’ issues. This company entered the market in year 1999, so it has a solid experience in the industry. Printroom provides photography products, web services and pro lab solutions. The overall number of offered features is divided into groups which make up 3 levels of membership – Classic (Free), Pro ($10/mo or $99 yearly) and Premium ($20/mo and $199/yr).

Choosing a Classic plan you get 300MB image hosting, custom HTML storefronts, print offering, pro photo lab and galleries to display your photos. Pro account gives you an opportunity to create a customizable Flash website, link images to Facebook, create slideshows and gain some more options. Upgrading to the Premium membership level you get premium support, custom photo and gift product templates, e-commerce plugin, possibility to build flash websites for customer events, etc.

There is a live preview of the flash homepage tool available, so you can play with the admin interface right away – no registration required. Of course, I couldn’t miss this opportunity and took a look at the admin panel. At first, I was pleasantly surprised with the editing environment – it’s completely WYSIWYG-based. You just fill in necessary data into the small pop-up window and all changes are immediately displayed on the page, no need to click on “preview” button or switch to another window. That’s pretty cool. However, I was not that impressed by the system’s functionality. In fact, it offers rather limited opportunities: 15 images in the slideshow, 3 content pages, no ability to upload a background image and boring design elements that can be fully customized. Hopefully, the general site building application is more flexible and well-executed.

I browsed several websites built with Printroom application and all of them have very simple, primitive designs. But I guess we should take into account the fact that Printroom is not a full-blown flash photo website CMS, and as a part of integrated photography business solution it works quite well. Unfortunately I didn’t find any testimonial section or forum on their website, it would be very useful to know what professionals think about solution provided by Printroom.
If you are on the lookout for a serious business organizing solution, examine Printroom carefully and decide whether it might fit your needs.

Pictage Review

Company name: Pictage

Website: http://www.pictage.com/

Pictage is a complex solution for professional photographers, which includes image hosting, printing and sales solutions. It’s geared mostly at wedding photographers and covers various features a photographer might need both online and offline.

Among Pictage’s major features are: online proofing, end-to-end order fulfillment, full album solution, photographer directory, professional lab, slideshows and album design. Unfortunately, you can preview neither website samples, nor admin interface of online proofing and slideshow solutions. To get an access to the product demo you have to register and email to the Pictage assistants.

If you want to become a Pictage member, there are two plan options available – Pictage Lite and Pictage Pro. The first plan includes 10 basic features, including unlimited event and image upload, online proofing, complete order processing, Pictage in-house pro lab and others. This package costs $199 yearly and right now they have a discount period which allows you to pay $99 for the first year. Pictage Pro package contains some more advantages, such as two free directory listings, fully automated payment solution, multi shooter sub accounts, slideshows and album design service. A more advanced plan will cost you $99 per month. (now you can pay only $19/mo for the first 6 months). You can view the complete feature comparison and pricing on the official company’s website.

You can see that Pictage is a rather expensive service, but the number of specific photographer oriented features makes it worth to be taken into consideration. The company was founded in 2000 and by this time it has developed into a powerful and comprehensive solution for professional event photographers. It has its own community and judging by numerous testimonials we’ve found on their website, Pictage does justice to itself. If you are a wedding or reportage photographer, you can consider Pictage as a tool for organization your business workflow.