After a continuous run of almost a decade, contest participation has gotten extremely low. See Contest is definitely dead. Now what? for more, and for possible next steps to revitalize it.
Also, you may instead want to check out the new Photo Competition on the main site! See also the Meta post, New Photo Contest.
This is the place to submit and vote on photos to be featured on the the main site. This contest should showcase your best quality work, demonstrating at least moderate skill with a camera and a general understanding of the artistic aspects of photography. Remember, the selected photo will be displayed on our main site header for a week. Submit something that you and the members of our site will want to look at and admire for seven days! This contest is for the community to choose what they LIKE (not what they dislike), so downvotes aren't allowed — see below for more.
Contest Format
Starting in December 2012, this contest follows a new perpetual format with continuously-rolling voting. Submit and vote on photos whenever you like. Every Monday (give or take; it's done by hand when site moderators have a spare moment), the top-voted image will be selected as the winner, and:
moved to the Winners' Hall of Fame
featured on the main site header for the next week
Then, the contest will continue with the remaining photos in the thread.
(Note that the themed photo contest will work on a different scheme.)
Voting Rules
Vote up as many images as you like.
Make sure to look at the "active" tab for this question to see new submissions.
Up votes only! Do NOT vote down your competitors! If you don't like an image, don't vote. (If you notice a downvote on an entry, make a note in a comment, and that will be taken into account when the weekly winner is selected.)
When you vote, consider the small size primarily, even if a larger image is linked. This contest's primary function is to select a header image, and we need the winners to be successful at that size.
Submitter Rules
Showcase your best work in any genre of photography by providing your image inline in an answer.
You may enter one photo per week. This is on the honor system, but abuse will eventually earn a strong talking-to.
Don't re-enter the same photo. Since the contest is continual, there's no need. You may withdraw an image from the contest at any time by deleting the answer.
You may edit your entry to fix problems or to add missing information, but don't switch the photo itself for a different one, or make gratuitous edits simply to "bump" the entry.
Images must be 210 px high and up to 375 px wide. This is the requirement for the header. Please feel free to provide a link to a larger version, but as explained above, the primary focus is on the header image.
For the same reason, images must be in landscape orientation.
Images must not contain any artificially added borders, watermarks, or decorations of any kind.
Do not use this as a forum for photo critique. Use chat instead, or ask a specific question about your image on the main site.
The submitted image must conform to this site's content license, cc-wiki with attribution required. If you're not comfortable with that, this isn't the contest for you.
Submitter notes
Be patient! This contest is relatively obscure, and it takes a while for images to accumulate votes. It's normal for really excellent images to have only one or two upvotes even after a time. The format of the contest should let them rise to the top eventually.
Feel free to include a concise description that explains the image, the emotions behind it, and so on, and perhaps some explanation of gear and exposure settings. This site is a collaboration for teaching and learning, so it's great to know those things — but it's not required for the contest.
When we get up and running with featuring these photos on the blog, this will provide the opportunity to go into more depth and to engage in conversation about your work.
