NOTE: All photos must be taken between April 1, 2025 and March 31, 2026.

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

Black & White Landscape

Landscape photography is the art of capturing images of vast or intimate areas in nature and the outdoors in a compelling composition. The composition can be made even more compelling in black and white as you emphasize elements such as leading lines, shadow, dark and light tones, shapes and textures. Ansel Adams’ iconic images are a good example of compelling B&W landscapes. Your image must be shades of black, gray and white only. Monochrome images with any other color (e.g., sepia or cyan) are not acceptable.

Double Take

Show us something that makes you go, “Huh?”, “Wha???” or maybe even “WTF?” The image might look ordinary at first, until you realize that there’s something about it that’s a little off and makes you stop and reconsider what exactly you’re looking at, often with a smile, a wrinkled squint or a sense of surprise spreading across your face. Odd angles and optical illusions might come into play in creating the image or you might create the effect by compositing something in post-processing that is incomprehensible or impossible in real life.

Intentional Camera Movement (ICM) and/or Multiple Exposure

ICM can include any movement that produces intentional blur.It can be a vertical, horizontal, diagonal, circular or any combination of movements. Multiple exposure (ME) can be done in camera, mobile phone camera apps or in post even if your camera has a multiple exposure feature. Both techniques offer opportunities for photographers who face challenges creating tack-sharp images. With both techniques, the emphasis in this category is on creativity, originality and artistic expression.

Machinery

How do you make photos of machines and industrial subjects interesting? Video can show them in action, but still photography often leaves them looking static. Can you find interesting lighting, a different angle to shoot from, maybe use a macro or telephoto focal length or find some out of the ordinary setting like an abandoned or historical machine or mill? Including the machine operator or other people in an industrial setting might help, too.Machines can be simple, like a pulley or lever, or complex, like engines or other manufactured devices. They can be current, obsolete or historical, large or small, bright and shiny or past their prime.

Minimalism / Simplicity

Minimalist photography is a style that prioritizes simplicity, focusing on capturing impactful images with minimal elements and a clean, uncluttered aesthetic. It emphasizes a sense of calmness, peacefulness, and order, achieved by reducing the image to its essential components.

On the Road

Whether or not they show a road or are taken from one, photographs in this category should capture the sense of adventure, mystery, and discovery that ground-based travel can bring. This could include landscapes along a highway, elements of the overall experience of travel, interesting people encountered or sights like gas stations, roadside diners, quirky signs, abandoned structures, wildflowers in unplowed fields, sunsets and sunrises over the crest of a road, etc. Whether taken in rural, small town, suburban or urban settings, it’s the mood of discovery while traveling along a street, road, highway or byway that’s most important to capture.

Softness

Create an image with an effect or feeling is “soft.” This can be based on animate or inanimate subjects or a by employing a technique that emphasizes softness, either in-camera or in post-processing. Typical examples include kittens, feathers and soft-focus scenes, such as with a Lensbaby or with techniques like applying a Gaussian blur or manipulating the contrast, clarity, sharpness and noise reduction sliders.

Textures in Nature

Texture may not be the first thing we associate with nature photography, but it’s there. Texture can be captured in close-up, macro and even microscopic shots of leaves, fungi, moss, tree bark, frost, skin and feathers, among other small subjects, or in mid-range and grand vistas of water, rippling sand, forest canopies, flocks of animals and birds and rock formations. Your challenge is to find it and draw the viewer’s eye to it in a way that makes it easy for them to imagine they can feel it for themselves. Other elements can be present, but it needs to be evident that the texture you’ve captured is what makes your image compelling.

Photo by Victor Rosansky