Wildlife Photographer of the Year calls on photographers worldwide to put nature in the frame.
Find out everything you need to know about entering photos into the Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition and submit your photos.
The Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year 58 competition will be open for entries from 18 October until 9 December 2021 (11.30am GMT).
Read on for information and tips to help you with your entry into the Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. Be sure to also read the rules before submitting your photos.
If you are new to the competition or don't already have a competition account, you will first need to set up an account on the entrant's portal.
The entrants portal will become available on 18 October 2021.
There is no fee to enter the Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition.
Entries will not be accepted after the closing date of 9 December 2021 (11.30am GMT).
For Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year, you can submit up to 10 photos into one of the three age group categories.
Images can cover any aspect of wildlife and the natural world, whether wild plants or animals or their natural environments, or illustrate our interaction with nature, good or bad.
The winner of each age category will be considered for the Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year title.
Find out what other prizes you could win if you enter your images into the Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition.
Before submitting photos to a competition category, be sure to read the rules.
Competition rules translated into 12 languages are available below.
You must not do anything to injure or distress an animal or damage its habitat in an attempt to secure an image. This includes flying (or flying a drone) too low or noisily over an animal – an animal’s welfare must come first.
Your images must report on the natural world in a way that is both creative and honest and ethical:
(i) entries must not deceive the viewer or attempt to disguise and/or misrepresent
the reality of nature;
(ii) caption information supplied must be complete, true and accurate; and
(iii) images must not portray captive, restrained, manipulated animals, animal models, taxidermy animals, and/or any other animal being exploited for profit. The only exception is when reporting on a specific issue regarding the treatment of animals by a third party, in which case you must make clear that the animal was captive, restrained, a model or a taxidermy animal.
You are responsible for ensuring full compliance with any applicable national or international legislation (including in relation to drones) and for securing any relevant permits (which, in the case of human portraits, will include the subject’s permission) and which must be made available to us if we request it.
Live baiting is not permitted, neither is any means of baiting that may put an animal in danger or adversely affect its behaviour, either directly or through irresponsible habituation. Any other means of attraction, including bird seed or scent, must be declared in the caption for the Jury and us to review.
File requirements
Entries must be submitted as JPEGs, saved at a high-quality setting of at least 8 in Photoshop, Adobe RGB (1998), and at 1920 pixels along the longest dimension. Please do not include borders, watermarks or signatures.
Once your files have been uploaded and saved through the entrant's portal, they are automatically included in the competition. You will be able to log in to add or delete images up until the competition closes.
If your image is selected for the Final Round of judging you will need to provide a RAW file, original untouched JPEG (with a range of ‘before’ and ‘after’ original untouched JPEG files available on request), original transparency or negative so the judges can check any adjustments comply with the rules. If you cannot supply these, your entry will be withdrawn from the competition.
If you provide an original transparency or negative, we may keep it until October 2022. If you're not successful, your transparency or negative will be returned to you by May 2022.
Unless DNG is the native RAW format of your camera, DNG files will not be accepted as we will be unable to check if any digital adjustments made fall within the competition rules. However, if you have embedded the original RAW in the DNG during the conversion process, you'll be able to extract it and submit it as proof of authenticity.
You will also need to supply a high-resolution file suited to printing in all media. A TIFF file is preferred.
This should be 8-bit, Adobe RGB (1998) at full resolution. Please do not upscale.
Acceptable digital adjustments
A limited number of digital adjustments to photos are permitted providing they comply with the competition's principles of authenticity and so do not misrepresent the reality of nature. These include:
Prohibited digital adjustments
The following digital adjustments are not allowed - please note this is not a complete list:
You can submit up to 10 images into your age category.
There is no time limit on when a photo had to be taken to enter it, and photos can have been previously published.
Colour and black and white images can be entered into all of the categories.
Preparing an image for submission
Follow these step-by-step instructions to ensure your files meet the entry requirements.
1. Make a duplicate of your image. Keep the original file as it will be needed later for authentication.
In the duplicate, clear tags such as ratings and labels.
2. In your editing software, insert image information into the caption metadata field. You must include:
Do not include:
3. Set the Colour Space to Adobe RGB (1998). Preferably use a calibrated monitor - allowances will not be made for poor colour managed or corrected images.
4. Make any digital adjustments required and permitted within the competition rules.
5. Save as a TIFF. This should be 8-bit, Adobe RGB (1998) at full resolution and a sufficient file size to be reproduced in all media and exhibitions if successful.
6. Open the TIFF above and make a copy. Resize the copy to 1920 pixels on the longest dimension.
7. Save the file as a JPEG at a high-quality setting of at least 8 in Photoshop. This is the image that will be judged - there is no set requirement for how to name your file.
You may find helpful tips for following these steps in your software's help pages. Some popular software past entrants have used include:
We appoint a panel of judges and a chair to evaluate all entries. Each submission is reviewed anonymously. Judging comprises two rounds. During the second round, images will undergo an authenticity check to ensure the entry complies with our rules and ethics.
The panel will be looking for photographic excellence, artistic merit, relevance to themes of biodiversity and sustainability, freshness of composition, technical proficiency, innovation, narrative form and ethical practice - so these should be reflected in all submissions.
The jury will favour images that have not already been awarded (winner, runner-up, commended, honourable mention etc) in other international competitions.
Find out more about the panel.
