Worldwide Photography Gala Awards

Green traffic light Closing date 26 July 2009, extended deadline 27 Sepember 2009

The annual Worldwide Photography Gala Awards (WPGA) provides a juried competition for professionals and amateur photographers from around the world to compete for the Photographer of the Year Award and the Humanitarian Documentary Grant, provided by WonderPick Gallery. Besides conducting the annual contests, WPGA hosts quarterly contests that offer artists similar opportunities for awards and recognition.

WPGA hosts annual and quarterly contests to honor talented photographers and as a means of establishing and maintaining a continuing effort help them further their careers. WPGA recognizes artists’ talent through competitions juried by industry leaders, exposing their work in the media, publishing their work, hosting a collective exhibition in Madrid, and by exhibiting their work to an extensive international audience through WonderPick Gallery, an art portal where selected artworks can be viewed online and purchased.

WPGA believes in the social responsibility of all business endeavors. Accordingly, WPGA efforts also benefits worthy humanitarian causes. The first annual WPGA contest supports the international organization, Save the Children. Save the Children will receive 10 percent of the revenue from the Worldwide Photography Gala and 40 percent of the revenue from the sale of prints exhibited in Madrid.

For further information and entry details visit the competition website.

This competition meets all the standards set out in the Bill of Rights. Competitions which pass the Bill of Rights do not -

claim copyright
seek waiving of moral rights
fail to give a credit for all free usage.
add, alter, or remove metadata from digital images
seek usage rights other than for solely and exclusively promoting the contest. Note that a book, posters, cards, or a calendar are seen as legitimate ways of promoting the contest and defraying costs.
seek free usage rights in excess of 5 years
use the images commercially without the photographers agreement, and such commercial usage is to be rights managed and limited to 5 years.
make it a condition of winning that an entrant must sign a commercial usage agreement.
fail to publish all documents on the competition website that an entrant may have to sign
fail to name the judges for this or last year's competition
fail to explicitly state all the organisations who will acquire rights to the images
set a closing date more than 18 months after the contest launch date
fail to make clear statements of rights claimed and how images are used.

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The above text may be reproduced providing the Pro-Imaging copyright notice is displayed with a link to the Pro-Imaging website.

Any text reproduced above in italics has been extracted from the competition website for the purposes of review in this report.

NB. If the competition rules are changed after updated date shown above it is the competition organisers responsibility to notify Pro-Imaging of changes made. If Pro-Imaging is notified of rule changes by the organiser the competition rules will be reviewed again for compliance with the Bill of Rights.

Organisers should notify Pro-Imaging of updated rules by using this contact form.