Dive Photo Guide invites applications for the United Nations World Oceans Day Photo Competition in the USA in 2023.
Photography is a powerful medium to convey a feeling or a message. Thus this open and free photo competition seeks to inspire the creation of imagery capturing the beauty, challenges and importance of the ocean and humankind’s relation to it. This is with the hope of contributing to actions to preserve this vital resource.
The 10th anniversary of the UN World Oceans Day Photo Competition should be a celebration of thought-provoking ocean imagery, a visual showcase of ocean challenges viewed through your lens. This year’s six categories represent pillars of the 2023 UN World Oceans Day Theme, ‘Planet Ocean: Tides Are Changing.’ They invite you to enter your interpretations of: ‘No Time to Waste,’ ‘Putting the Ocean First,’ ‘The Wonderful World of Tides,’ ‘Ocean Is Life,’ ‘Big and Small Underwater Faces,’ and ‘Underwater Seascapes.’
The photo competition has six thematic categories open for submissions:
- No Time to Waste: Both human and naturally inflicted stressors on the ocean are driving the urgent need for stakeholder action. From out-of-control algal blooms to red tides and discarded fishing gear, images of damage inflicted on the ocean or how ocean stressors are being mitigated/solved. Submissions for this category require a set of three images
- NEWPutting the Ocean First: Exploration, discoveries, and initiatives prioritizing the health of the ocean for now and for the future, including innovation and sustainable solutions
- NEWThe Wonderful World of Tides: Images that explore the wonderful worlds of tides, and how nature adapts to changing environments, evident in tides and their daily (as well as sometimes multi-daily) rise and fall. Tides are a thin line between land and ocean that provide images topside or underwater, macro or wide angle
- NEWOcean Is Life: From seagrass creating oxygen to sustainable fisheries providing food. This category captures the known, the unknown, and the overlooked. Any image depicting the connection of the ocean to sustaining all life on Earth. Oceans as a lifeline
- NEWBig and Small Underwater Faces: Portraits of marine life underwater that feature faces big and/or small to help personalize the world beneath the waves
- Underwater Seascapes: Awe-inspiring underwater seascapes of the ocean’s splendours, from life in the ocean to ecosystems and exchanges we don’t typically see, anything that inspires beauty, promise, or potential. A minimum of 50% should be taken underwater, also allowing half-above-water and half-below-water shots
Worth of Award
- Winning images will be recognized at the United Nations on June 8th during the United Nations event marking World Oceans Day 2022.
- Also, recognition and diffusion of the winning images and finalists will be widely exposed throughout the contest websites. This includes the media and informational materials related to subsequent competitions.
- It would interest you to know that winning photos of the United Nations World Oceans Day Photo Competition have been printed for exhibitions around the world.
Eligibility
As a matter of fact,
- The contest is open to entrants of all skill levels.
- Photo contest staff and judges are not allowed to enter the contest.
- Winners will be announced on Wednesday, June 8th, 2023 in New York. This will be done during a hybrid UN World Oceans Day event. Notably, this event is hosted by Oceanic Global as a strategic partner for the day, and published on www.unworldoceansday.org shortly afterwards.
- Entries may have been taken from any camera, digital or film (as scanned slides).
Furthermore, conservation rules will be strictly observed. In view of this, Flora and fauna should never be stressed or endangered for the sake of a photo. Entries suspected of involving the following behaviour will be disqualified:
- Photographers visibly damaging the environment (e.g., gear dragging or kicking up sand, divers exhibiting poor buoyancy control)
- Animals with signs of stress (e.g., puffed puffers, inking octopus)
- Animals moved to an unnatural environment or risky location
- Marine life being touched or placed (e.g., nudibranchs, coral polyps, seahorse tails)
How to Apply
By way of application,
- Entries must be saved in JPEG format and should be sized between 2,000 and 6,000 pixels in the longest dimension. Please limit your images to a maximum file size of 5,000 KB (5MB). Images will be viewed on a large monitor and should be in the AdobeRGB 1998 or sRGB colour space.
- Please do not include any watermarks or borders on your images. These elements will detract from the image’s impact. It’s not that Dive Photo Guide doesn’t want you to protect your images; it’s just hard to appreciate an image with a watermark over it. (Note that it will keep the display of winning images consistent, and when your image is displayed, it will be clearly labelled as your image.)
- In the same vein, the same image can only be entered into one category.
Deadline: In conclusion, all entries must be submitted by April 23rd, 2023 at 12 midnight Eastern Standard Time (EST).