Insight Guides Announce 2011 Travel Photography Competition

INSIGHT GUIDES PHOTOGRAPHIC COMMISSION UP FOR GRABS - PAVING THE WAY FOR A NEW CAREER

Anyone whose travel photographs are a snap above the rest is invited to enter Insight Guides’ 2011 travel photography competition, run in association with The Independent on Sunday, to win a photographic commission worth £3,000.  Also up for grabs is some great Olympus photographic equipment, as well as a night at the Corinthia, one of London’s newest top hotels. The commission from Insight Guides to photograph a travel destination for a future guide book could pave the way for a new and exciting career in travel photography.

Whether professional or amateur, any UK-based adult who has a love of travel photography can enter by submitting three images that have been taken this year and capture the essence of a destination. There’s a separate category for under-18s, too, with the young photographer winning an Olympus camera of his or her own.  Photographers have until Friday 16 September 2011 to submit their entries for judging by an expert panel made up of the picture editors of the Independent on Sunday and Insight Guides, a former Trustee of the Royal Photographic Society and high profile photographer Kevin Cummins. The winner will be announced in the travel pages of The Independent on Sunday shortly afterwards, which will also feature a selection from the winning portfolio.

As well as scooping the travel photography commission, the first prize winner receives an Olympus PEN E-PL2 (RRP £530), a favourite with those who want SLR quality results without the bulk of a traditional camera.  The second prize is an Olympus XZ-1 (RRP £400) a high-quality, fully adjustable yet portable camera.  The winner in third place and the Under-18 prize-winner will both be presented with an Olympus SZ-30MR (RRP £300) with a 24x zoom in an ultra compact body, plus full HD movies and stills.

The prizes will be presented to the winning adults in London at Stanfords – the UK’s leading specialist retailer of maps, travel books and other travel accessories – on the evening of Tuesday October 25, and treated to a special night at London’s newly opened Corinthia Hotel (http://www.corinthia.com/london ), where the winners will enjoy a celebration dinner in the Northall, the hotel’s modern British restaurant. In Whitehall, overlooking the Thames, the Corinthia was formerly London’s landmark Metropole, and is located just minutes from Trafalgar Square. 

It is simple to enter the competition: just submit, in either digital format or print, three colour travel photographs that have been taken this year that capture the essence of one or more destinations. Digital entries, which must be high-resolution Jpegs sized to a minimum of 3MB at 300dpi and a maximum of 15MB at 300dpi, should be emailed individually or as a group of three tophotocontest@insightguides.co.uk .  Alternatively send prints, no bigger than 10 x 8 inches (25.4cm x 20.3cm), to Photography Prize, Insight Guides, APA Publications, 58 Borough High Street, London SE1 1XF.  Images should be clearly labelled with the entrant’s name, address, and email address, and a location should be given for each image taken.  Under 18-s must mark each image “under-18”. For further information, entrants should visit http://www.insightguides.com as terms and conditions apply.

The winner of last year’s competition was Steve McDonald, whose picture of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge is shown above.  He will be travelling to Tuscany for his Insight Guides commission. Published earlier this month was the Insight Guide to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (£15.99) which features more than 350 full-colour photographs, largely shot by the 2009 competition winner, Micah Sarut.

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