CALL FOR ENTRIES: The Canon Photography in the Parks Photo Contest

Canon U.S.A. has done more than pay lip service to Earth Day, evidenced by its new recycling programs and outreach incentives, as well as its third annual Canon Photography in the Parks competition. Established to encourage American photographers of every stripe to take an active creative interest in the nation's parks, this call for entries can be entered at the Canon Digital Learning Center. Prizes include Canon EOS series SLRs, earth-friendly Pixma Pro9500 Photo printers, and a Grand Prize trip for two to any participating national or state park.
The deadline for submissions is September 30, 2008.

To enter, one must be 13 years or older (the minimum age range has been extended), and an amateur photographer. According to Canon, Professionals include those who received more than 51 percent income from photography sales in the last three years, and are not eligible for submission. Registration and uploading can be completed at the Canon Digital Learning Center web site here. There are no entry fees.

April 27 is Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day!

MeetMeAtTheCorner.org, a New York organization that offers educational videos and online information for kids, will celebrate Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day (WPPD) on April 27, 2008. Kids are being encouraged to participate, thanks to an educational program, or "virtual field-trip," made to spread awareness to those far too young to remember a time when cameras lacked batteries, memory cards, and even lenses. Taking place on the last Sunday every April, WPPD is an all-inclusive event. Photographers around the world can participate by sending photos made by their pinhole cameras, and pictures of the custom-made cameras themselves.

From MeetMeAtThe Corner.org:

"Today, children of all ages can create their own pinhole camera with common household items. All that is needed is a light-tight container (such as an oatmeal box or can), a sewing needle to make the pinhole, a piece of film or photographic paper, scissors, tape, a piece of cardboard, and an active imagination."

For more information (and an excellent video) about how your kids can make their own pinhole camera, visit MeetMeAtThe Corner.org. To participate in WPPD, click here to go to their official website and view selections from last year.

CALL FOR ENTRIES: Focal Press Monthly Photography Contest

The March winners of the Focal Press Monthly Photography contest have just been announced, and are currently accepting entries for the April Competition, "Photojournalism: Photos that Inspire." Entry is free and available to any photographer. The April competition is sponsored by Kenneth Kobre, author of Photojournalism: The Professionals' Approach, 6th Edition. All entries are juried by website visitors, and newly uploaded photos can be voted on right away. If you enter, don't forget to forward the competition to your friends so they can vote and enter!

American Express Gift Cards are available to the top three chosen photographers, as well as a book published by Focal Press of the photographer's choice. Additionally, the monthly winners from February, March, April, May and June will have their photographs entered to win the Grand Prize, to be awarded in July: the Epson RX680 Ultra Hi-Definition Photo All-in-One Printer. The final contest of the series, opening May 2008, will focus on "Food," and will be sponsored by Authors Linda Bellingham and Jean Ann Bybee.

To enter, visit Focal Press' website and upload your entry.

Free Competition at the Palm Springs Photo Festival

The Palm Springs Photo Festival Slide Show Contest, a free contest for which the chosen photographers will be presented four at a time for every evening of the festival at The Palm Springs Art Museum, is entry fee-free. Awards include a Canon Professional Pixma Printer and a $300 Gift Certificate from Samy’s Camera, and Lowepro Camera Bags and $50 gift certificates from the chosen finalist from each evening. All of the finalist’s names will be posted on the festival website prior to the festival. Entries must be slide shows saved in Mac compatible format

The deadline is March 1, 2008. Click here for details on how to enter.

New Events from the Center for Creative Photography to honor Group f/64

A series of free events, open to the public, are coming to the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona. The Center's newly expanded and renovated print study room will be available for the public to reserve time to select photographs from the Center's renowned collection for personal viewing in a gallery-like setting.

On January 25, 2008, an Artist’s Talk with Elliott Erwitt will discuss highlights from the famous photographer's 60 year of creating black and white images of candid, ironic, and absurd situations. The lecture is co-sponsored by Etherton Gallery, which will open an exhibition of Erwitt’s photographs on Saturday, January 26.

Two exhibitions will honor the work and legacy of Group f/64, formed to address the modernist and pictorialist approaches popular at the time of the groups' formation in the 1930s. "Debating Modern Photography" is a modern assessment of these traditions, with powerful images by Ansel Adams and Edward Weston representing the former approach while photographers who have become less well-known today,like Johan Hagemeyer, William Mortensen, and Anne Brigman, represent the latter.The exhibition, to run February 2 to May 4, 2008, will examine a time when many of the techniques and trends espoused by the group had yet to enter the universalo lexicon of 20th Century Photography.

The exhibition "Innovation in Pictorialism and Modernism" with Anne Brigman, Imogen Cunningham, Alma Lavenson will begin February 15, 2008, at the Center's Auditorium. Three Californian female photographers will have their work examined by Susan Ehrens, noted author, curator, and photography historian. The focus will be assessing the womens' contributions to Pictorialist and Modernist traditions in photography, as well as their relationships to each other and other members of Group f/64.

For more information on these and other f/64-related events, visit the Center for Creative Photography's website here.

Strictly No Photography

Looks like the pesky, pervasive nature of electronic imaging and information has found its most concrete expression online. The expression of personal liberty is touted as the website Strictly No Photography's mission statement, and photos of places where photography is forbidden is the subject. The emphasis is on official photography-prohibited areas: the search for "girl's locker room" provided a shot of a Bourbon Street bordello, but nothing else on the subject. Users are invited to submit their own images taken with digital camera or cell phone.

From Strictly No Photography's website:

"What you can capture in the shot that's not allowed is unique. It can be in the surreptitious nature of its blur taken at speed or on the move with a long exposure. It can be in the crooked framing, taken on the skew shot from the hip or over an onlooker's shoulder. Shoot first then aim. Intriguing things seem to happen without the overriding intervention of the logical mind. The best shots are the ones loaded with the kind of flair and spontaneity that might never have been caught if you had thought too hard about it, if you'd had longer, if you were allowed. Oh, and remember to turn off the flash."

Certainly this site is meant to be tongue-in-cheek with its call to disobey authority, made all the more appropriate by the website's symbol of a cell phone, which has already deposed the chewing gum, spitball, and fired rubber bands as the prime tool for troublemaking. However, the interior shots of museums, such as the Tate Modern in London or the Kremlin in Moscow, lend a fresh and understandably unusual perspective to artistic showing spaces.

Click here to find out how to submit.