National Wildlife Photo Contest Details
The 43rd Annual annual National Wildlife® Photo Contest runs from April 1, 2013 through July 15, 2013. Photographs are entered in the main competition, where winning photos are selected by a panel of judges. Photographers can also choose to enter their photos in the People’s Choice competition, where the winning photo is selected by visitors to the website.
What We're Looking For
We are looking for striking color and black and white images of nature—on land, in the air and beneath the water’s surface—from anywhere in the world, even in your backyard. These images may show animal behavior, portraits of wildlife in natural habitat, plant life, natural landscapes, or people interacting with nature.
Entering The Contest
Visit www.nwf.org/PhotoContest to enter.
Your $20 entry fee gives you:
- The opportunity to enter 10 photographs in the competition
- A free one year membership to National Wildlife Federation
- A free full year subscription (6 issues) to National Wildlife magazine (where your photo will be published if you win!) and
- An exclusive 10% discount on all National Wildlife Federation merchandise.
Best of all, your tax-deductible $20 entry fee will help National Wildlife Federation protect wildlife and wild places across the country.
Entry Levels
- General — Photographers age 18 or older.
- Youth — Photographers ages 13 - 17. When registering online, Youth level entrants must read and accept Youth Agreement and have their parent or legal guardian also agree by checking the appropriate boxes on the Youth Agreement page.
Young photographers 12 and under, please enter our Ranger Rick® Photo Contest!
Categories
You'll assign your photo to one of these seven categories:
- Baby animals — portraits and behavior of young animals of any species
- Backyard Habitat — wild creatures, native plants and natural settings in your yard
- Birds — portraits and behavior
- Connecting People and Nature — people enjoying the outdoors
- Landscapes and Plant Life — scenic views and native plants in wild settings
- Mammals — portraits and behavior
- Other Wildlife — portraits and behavior (includes underwater life, reptiles, amphibians, insects, spiders and more)
The same photo cannot be entered in more than one category. Switching categories is easy! You can move your photo to a different category by logging into your account, going to your upload page, and clicking the pencil icon to Edit the image's information.
Voting — People's Choice Award
Entrants can choose to display their photos in the contest gallery, making them open for People's Choice voting and sharing on social media. To vote for photos, you'll need to login on the National Wildlife Photo Contest site. You can vote for each of your favorite photos once per day.
Weekly Voting Rounds
- Starts: 12:00 am every Tuesday
- All photos start with zero votes for each week's contest.
- At the end of each weekly round, the 4 top-voted photos from four different photographers move onto the final round.
Only one photo per entrant can be in the final round. If your photo is selected as a weekly top vote-getter, all of your other entries will be ineligible for voting in the remainder of the first round of the People's Choice contest. However, if not selected as a top vote getter, photos will be eligible again in the next week’s voting.
Final Round
The top 4 vote-getters of each weekly contest will compete in the final round, July 23 - August 5. The photo with the most votes in the final round will be named the People’s Choice and will appear in the December 2013/January 2014 issue of National Wildlife and online.