Nature Conservancy's 5th Annual Photo Contest

The Nature Conservancy's 5th Annual Photo Contest is underway and if your picture is a winner, it will be printed in the 2012 Nature Conservancy calendar that reaches nearly two million households worldwide. In addition, winning photos will be featured on The Nature Conservancy's website, www.nature.org, which is visited by more than three million people annually. They are looking for "...beautiful nature photography representing the diversity of life on Earth." That's a pretty broad invitation should provide lots of subject matter possibilities for you.

Entering the contest is really simple--you can just upload your photos to their Flickr account:  the Conservancy's Flickr™ group and tag them with PhotoContest-TNC10. Not familiar with Flickr? Find out more about this easy way to enter.

If you need ideas or inspiration, or want to see who your competition is, just check out their Flickr site. I love this idea of using a Flickr site to run a contest because it gives everyone a chance to see what other photographers are entering.

Deadline for the contest is October 4, 2010. The complete rules are here:  review the full rules.

Contest Tip: When it comes to entering nature competitions, remember that you want to avoid any sign of humanity or civilization or what judges call "the hand of man." In other words, you don't want a beautiful shot of an sunset with a telephone pole in the distance. Try to be sure that everything in your photos is completely natural and related to your subject. Is it fair to clone out a stray piece of garbage or a telephone pole? Read the rules--some contests allow minor retouching to remove human blips, others don't. Above all: be honest if you did any retouching, especially cloning.