8 Competition Categories

NOTE: All photos must be taken on or after April 9, 2022.

It should be obvious by looking at the photo what category it is in.

Architecture – Can you tell a powerful story about architecture and the people that inhabit it in a single photo? Photos should powerfully communicate an architectural form or space, capturing the essence of the place as well as the experience of those that inhabit it. Your photo can include all or part of a building or group of buildings, inside, or outside. You can include people in your image as long as the story is about the architecture or space. Think about perspective, wide angle, close up, etc. Try to encapsulate the atmosphere and emotion of a particular place.

Dreams … we all have them, whether we remember them or not!  But, what is dreamy photography?  Dreamy is in the eye of the beholder, and dreamy photographs may have a soft, hazy or out-of-focus effect to replicate the feeling of being in a dream.  They may have an ethereal or surreal look to them.  They should suggest a dream or dreamlike state.

Food Photography is a creative medium that allows us to use whatever elements we like or have available to create compositions of food or drink that make us hungry, look beautiful, and may inspire us to create the drink, appetizer, entree or dessert for ourselves or our family and guests. Using techniques such as composition, props, lighting, color, combinations of ingredients, background, angle of photography, motion and many others, we can create images that capture our love of food and convey that emotion to others. Other elements, such as people, can be in the photo as well, but food should be the main subject.

From Below photography gives us the opportunity and challenge to view an object, plant, person, animal or landscape, from a position where we have to be below the subject with our camera. Lighting, angle, and perspective allow/force us to think about our subject in a different way.

Patterns - They surround us. We come across them every day. We have them on our clothes, we have them in our homes, we see them in nature, we walk across them, we walk past them, we probably even consume them at meal times. And yet we very rarely take that much notice of them. However, there is often a hidden beauty in the details that make up our world. Noticing these details can help us to get a better understanding of the world around us as well as provide us with unlimited inspiration. Open your eyes to the hidden geometry that surrounds us. Look beyond the mundane forms that we see every day to find the hidden beauty in the underlying patterns that normally pass us by. Think wide, narrow, close up, simple, complex, subtle or obvious.

Red - The color red is assertive. It is a highly visible color that is able to focus attention quickly.  It is powerful, exciting, and aggressive. It symbolizes action. The color red is packed with emotions ranging from passionate, intense love, to anger and violence. Something red should be the subject.

Water … we drink it, bathe in it, swim in it, and our planet has 70% of its surface covered with it.  Your photo can be of water in any state: liquid, frozen, still, or in motion.  Just ensure your photo is about water and has water as a main element.

Weather is the atmosphere.  That includes heat or cold, wetness or dryness, calm or storm, clearness or cloudiness.  It includes rainbows, flashes of lightning, and sunsets.  At its worst, weather can destroy homes and cause deaths. The weather should be the subject.