Pro-Imaging

Competition Diary

Listed below are the titles of the competitions added to the competition campaign lists since the previous diary update along with news of any other events that have occured in the campaign since the last diary was published.

Rights Off List

9 July 2008

Shutterfly; Hit The Road added

10 July 2008

Greenbee Travel Photography Competition added

Oregon Bluebook Photo Contest added

11 January 2008

The UK Lottery Fund; Postcards From The Park added

14 July 2008

Oregon State Parks' Go Click! Photo Contest added

15 July 2008

Kenora Tourism Photo Contest 2008 added

Rights On List

No changes 

Bill of Rights

No changes

Other Diary Entries

Other competition diary entries can be read here.

Other events

Urgent Appeal, Image Library Needed by Kenora City Hall, Canada

We had two independent notifications of a photo contest in Canada jointly organised by the City of Kenora and the Kenora Hospitality Alliance (KHA), the latter being an organisation representing the interests of its members, these being local businesses involved in tourism. The contest's purpose is to create a photo library for the City and KHA to be freely used to promote the area for the benefit of the businesss concerned. The photographers would not benefit from this library, they are simply to donate images for free. 

In case you are astonished that a local government authority and their businesses partners should expect to receive valuable goods for nothing, as if they were charities making an appeal, we have to tell you that we are not making this up. A press release issued jointly by the city and KHA said -

"New and up-to-date images are critical to our marketing efforts,” said Mark Duggan, KHA director. “It is our local scenery, people and activities that distinguish Kenora and Lake of the Woods from other areas.”

Mark Duggan is also the manager of Best Western Lakeside Inn, one of the businesses that would benefit from free imagery aimed at tourists.  The press release continues -

A photo library has been isolated in our tourism strategy as an important piece to the marketing puzzle,” said Randy Nickle, Tourism Committee Chair. “As we embark on the implementation of the plan, the photo contest is assisting us in accomplishing one of our goals."

It does not seem to have occurred to anyone that perhaps they could build their library by paying photographers, this is what photographers are in business for, or so we are led to believe, and amateurs should be paid too. It is normal practice to pay for goods and services in our experience, and the law makes no distinction between amateurs and professionals when it comes to copyright law.

There are very few organisations that would brazenly proclaim in press releases that they are aiming to build an image library, for free, and free of all license restrictions, from a photo contest. The City of Kenora and KHA are unique in our experience in going public with this admission. We wrote to His Worship Mayor Len Compton of Kenora, and although our email and report was acknowledged, silence greeted our attempt to have the rules of this contest changed.

Full details of this contest can be read here .

We trust local photographers will ignore Kenora Tourism Photo Contest 2008 until such time as the rules are changed to comply with the Bill of Rights. Don't hold your breath waiting on that to happen...

Hand over Images and Money to Contest Organisers 

As if the above Kenora 'charity appeal' were not strange enough we have now been notified of a contest in Asia where not only are they wanting imagery to be donated via a photo contest, you are also required to hand over money with each entry, there are no prizes on offer to the winners, and all the images are retained by the organisers forever.  Yes, you read that right, there are no prizes, and you need to pay to hand over your images!

It is very sad that people can be so naive that organisers can always find someone to enter such 'competitions'. We are unable to give more details of this contest at present, it is currently being processed by Pro-Imaging and details may appear in our next diary.  In the meantime we would strongly advise everyone not to enter contests which have no prizes. Winning nothing is no big deal, or perhaps it is?

Support the Bill of Rights for Photography Competitions

Would you like to help in this campaign? If you would like to help here is a very easy way to do it through your website, blog, or forums that you belong to. Please provide links to the following three pages on the Pro-Imaging website -

These links are very important, the more of you that can do this the higher our campaign pages will appear in search engine rankings when people are looking for competitions to enter.

RSS Feed

We take the opportunity at this point each week to mention that if you want to keep up to date with the competition campaign, click on the orange RSS Feed icon in your browser address bar. You will recieve competition diary updates direct to your RSS feed. Regular visitors know this already, but new visitors arrive all the time!

Contacting Us

We welcome notices telling us about contests that are either good or bad. You can use our Competitions Campaign Contact Form to tell us what you've found. We are especially keen to hear about good contests that you think pass our Bill of Rights, at the moment they are more difficult to find but as the campaign continues for the long term, we expect that to get easier.

We try and reply to all the notices we receive, but this may not always be possible. We thank you here in advance for any help you offer. We never reveal the names of those who notify us of competitions.

Other Diary Entries