Scottish pet photographer Paul Walker scooped up the coveted Photographer of the Year 2012 title at The Societies’ Convention Awards Dinner in London on Saturday 12th January. In addition to receiving his trophy Paul also walked away with a VIP trip to The Societies’ 2014 Convention, set to take place in the Hilton London Metropole hotel in January next year. Paul commented, “Shocked, delighted, speechless, in that order.  I’m going to buy the dog a juicy bone for at least paying attention for that split second - most have selective hearing!”

Talenthouse has announced a new Creative Challenge for photographers. City Academy, a London-based performing and creative arts academy, is inviting aspiring photographers to submit their best images portraying the creative arts. One winner will be selected by the team at City Academy and will receive £500 along with a year’s worth of courses. They will also gain exposure on the academy’s website, blog and Facebook page. The deadline for entries is 5 February 2013.

Website: Talenthouse

Heineken has just launched a photo contest aimed at 60+ year olds. Heineken is asking creative people from around the globe to share their observations and insights on the lives and preferences of this golden generation. Prizes are a share of $10.000 and to have their entries included in a 60+ documentary movie. To enter the challenge, please visit www.ideasbrewery.com. The winners will be announced at the end of March 2013.

This month we’re giving away a fantastic Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM lens worth £629!

The lucky winner is Sheryl Mitchell. Congratulations!

With its effective focal length range of approximately 16-35mm in 35mm format, the EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM is a remarkable lens with outstanding image quality that will take your photography into new dimensions and areas of dramatic expression.

The EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM is an ultra wide-angle zoom lens with dynamic expressive capability for all EF-S mount EOS cameras; exceptionally small and lightweight for maximum mobility.

This month we’re giving away a fantastic Steadicam Smoothee worth £169!

The lucky winner is Martin Conaghan. Congratulations!

Based on the same technology as the big $60,000 rigs used in Hollywood, the Smoothee allows you to capture incredible video without the shakes normally associated with hand-held video shot on the go, right out of the box, the very first time.

The Smoothee let’s you “fly” wherever the scene takes you—up and down steps, indoors and outside, through crowds—almost anywhere, with precise, elegant control and ease.

Manfrotto is giving away FIVE of its fantastic new ML120 Pocket LED Lights each worth £40.00!

The 5 lucky winners are Candy Johnson, George Smietana, Rona Gough, Mike Swift and Edmund Jones. Congratulations!

The ML120 Pocket LED Light is the smallest and lightest in the Manfrotto range of compact continuous LED light units, ideally suited for use with compact cameras and smartphones when additional light is needed for shooting video or stills. It can be hand held, mounted on a flash hotshoe or fitted to any number of Manfrotto supports via its standard ¼” thread.

For more information or to buy Manfrotto products online visit: www.manfrotto.co.uk

The Pink Lady Food Photographer of the Year 2013 competition closes for entries on 31 January 2013. This year’s competition has several new categories for entrants, including the Errazuriz Wine Photographer of the Year, for images of wine producers and all things related to wine. Also the Food Snapping category, for images of food taken on mobile ‘phones, in support of Action Against Hunger and Food off the Press, sponsored by StockFood for previously published work in books and magazines. First prize for the overall winner is £5000. As always we suggest that you read the Terms and Conditions before entering your work.

An iPhone 4 image of a bee hovering over a foxglove (above) has won a National Trust photographic competition that celebrates the role green places play in people’s lives. Taken by Laura Elliot in her parents’ garden in Northern Ireland, ‘Don’t bee choosy’ was shot using the Instagram app - winning both the smartphone category and the overall competition. Laura said: “I was shocked to find out I’d won. I’m studying dentistry at university and photography is just my hobby.” The winner of the 10-and-under category is James Ashton, aged 9, from Doncaster with his intimate image of ducks feeding at Clumber Park, Nottinghamshire. Tilly Rose Bellinger, aged 16,from Somerset won the 11-to-16 set with Jurassic mist, an atmospheric black and white image of the Jurassic Coastline in Dorset. The winner of the over 16 award is Eleanor Bennett from Cheshire, having composed a clever photograph of silhouettes of walkers amongst bare trees in Lyme Park, Cheshire All of the winners are featured in the spring edition of the National Trust Magazine and on the National Trust website.

The 2013 Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition will open for entries on 7 January 2013. Photographers can submit images for 18 categories, with three categories specifically for those aged 17 and under. The submission deadline is 25 February 2013. To enter the 2013 Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition, head to the website below.

The Photographic Museum of Humanity has announced its 2013 Grant, an international photographic contest that aims to discover new talents. Photographers are invited to submit a series of maximum 15 photos before 18 February 2013. The 1st, 2nd and 3rd prize guarantees respectively $2,000, $1,000 and $500 in cash. There will also be a New Generation Prize of $500 dedicated to photographers under 25 and a Public Favourite Prize (also $500). In addition, the winners will be granted an exhibition in the photographic museum of Humanity. The contest has no entry fee.

CyberLink recently unveiled a new video contest entitled “Create Video Challenge” that will encourage PowerDirector users to hone and improve their video editing skills. Consisting of a series of engaging and interactive video editing contests that will run for a period of nine months until 5 September 2013. CyberLink will provide a sample video with an accompanying demo that describes how it was made while encouraging participants to use the same techniques when creating their own videos.This month’s challenge involves the creation of a “tilt-shift” video. For detailed information about CyberLink’s “Create Video Challenge,” visit the event page at the website below.

An Australian video of freshwater rotifers has won the first prize in the 2012 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition. Now in its ninth year, the Olympus BioScapes Competition is a premier platform for honoring images and movies of human, plant and animal subjects as captured through light microscopes. Images of any life science subject are eligible. Entries are judged based on the science they depict, their aesthetics (beauty or impact of the image), and their technical expertise. The 2012 winning images and movies reflect the latest advances in neuroscience and cell biology as documented by researchers, along with amazing glimpses of life on a microscopic scale captured by hobbyists, students and other photographers.

The Hasselblad Masters Awards 2014 competition is now open to photographers shooting with cameras of sixteen megapixels and above, regardless of the camera’s brand or format. The internal Hasselblad jury has already begun the process of shortlisting 120 finalists - ten photographers in each category (including the new categories of Project/21 and Underwater). The finalists will be announced in January 2013 and the public has the chance to vote for their favourite image. Winners of the 2014 awards will have use of Hasselblad equipment for a period of approximately four months to create a new set of images for the fourth special Masters Commemorative Book and will receive a trophy at photokina 2014.

Samsung and Time Out have announced the ‘Share your Now’ contest, which encourages Londoners and New Yorkers to take pictures of their respective hometowns and challenge locals to prove they love their city the most. Created to celebrate the recent launch of Samsung’s Galaxy Camera (pictured), the competition enables entrants to upload images they have captured of New York or London to a dedicated portal on the Time Out website. Each week five participants from each city will win their own Galaxy Camera. Once the competition closes, three winners from each city, drawn from the total pool of winners from the nine week competition will be commissioned to work with Time Out magazine to share their take on their own city with their Samsung Galaxy Camera. These final images will be featured on the front cover of Time Out in their respective cities. To participate in the ‘Share your Now’ competition visit the website below.

British photographer Craig Easton has been announced as the overall winner of the Travel Photographer of the Year (TPOTY) 2012 competition. Craig beat entrants from over 90 countries to win the world’s leading travel photography competition with four evocative, moody images of the ‘dreich’ - an old Scottish word to describe wet, miserable, dank weather - and an elegant series of four striking silhouettes of people in Paris. The New Talent award went to Alessandra Meniconzi (Switzerland), while 15-year-old Samuel Fisch (USA) has been named Young Travel Photographer of the Year.

Jessops has announced the 12.12.12 Share the Moment competition. All you have to do to enter is simply take a photograph of exactly what you are doing at 12pm on the 12th December 2012 and upload it to the Jessops Facebook page. Your image, along with many others will be displayed in the Jessops Facebook Share the Moment gallery. Sean Emmett, Marketing and E-commerce Director commented “This competition isn’t about capturing your best shot, but the most telling image about you and your life at a selected moment in time; we look forward to seeing as many images as we can captured at 12pm on 12.12.12 and we are sure the results are going to be spectacular!” The competition entries will be judged by the team at Jessops.

Note that the competition is open to residents of the UK, Channel Islands, Isle of Man and Republic of Ireland aged 18 years or over only.

Leica has announced that the Leica Oskar Barnack Award 2013 contest will open for entries on 15 January 2013. Photographers wishing to take part may submit their photographic projects online until 1 March. The winner of the 2013 Leica Oskar Barnack Award will receive a Leica M camera with lens worth approximately €10,000 in addition to a cash prize of €5,000. A second honour in the course of the competition will be awarded in the category ‘Leica Oskar Barnack Newcomer Award’, for (prospective) professional photographers aged 25 and under. The winner of the first prize in this section will also be awarded a Leica rangefinder camera complete with lens. The awards will be presented in the course of the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie photography festival to be held in Arles, France from 1 to 7 July 2013.

The winners of the EyeTime 2012 competition have been announced. EyeTime 2012 was assembled as a means to publicly promote the research, exploration and investigation currently happening amongst today’s emerging talent. In the Future Voices category, the jury has selected the works of Gerald Haselwanter, Laurent Evrard and Simon Chang; while winners in the Emerging Talent category include MArk Harless, Nicholai Go and Zulinadi Abdul Azli.

The winners and runners-up of the EEF Photography Awards 2012 have been unveiled at an exclusive ceremony at the House of Commons in London. The theme for this year’s competition was Made in Britain and entrants were challenged to submit photos that championed the spirit of manufacturing in Britain. The winner of the professional category was Mike Smith’s ‘Precision’ (above). ‘Manufacturing a Filter’ by Robert Watkins, from Warrington, was the winner of the amateur category: a black-and-white image of a welder applying the finishing touches to a filter at Crofts Engineering Services.

Wedding & Portrait Photographers International (WPPI) has announced that submissions are now being accepted for its annual Awards of Excellence 16x20 Print and Album Competitions. Photographers are encouraged to submit their 16x20-inch Print entries for consideration into the following categories: Wedding, Portrait, Commercial, Composite and Photojournalism. In addition, they can submit a series of digital images presented as a story for consideration in the WPPI Award of Excellence Album Competition. The categories are as follows: Event/Informal, Engagement, Wedding and Videography. For more information, visit the websites below.