The Ordover Gallery at the San Diego Natural History Museum has issued a call for entries for the Best of Nature Photography Show. The entry fee is $25 for the first three photos submitted. Each entry after that is $10, with a limit of 10 entries total. The submission deadline is 27th October. The Best of Nature show will include approximately 70 works, selected by two rounds of judging. For entry instructions, visit the website below.

X-Rite has announced the October theme for its Colour Perfectionists Unite Photo Contest. The theme is “Fall Colour”, and the deadline for entries is 15th October. The winner will be featured on the X-Rite Photo blog and will receive one of X-Rite’s new display solutions – either a ColourMunki Display or an i1Display Pro – and a ColourChecker Passport (pictured). The top 20 finalists each month will be featured in a monthly gallery at X-Rite Photo on Facebook and Color Perfectionists Group on Flickr. Click through / read on to learn how to participate in the competition.

The winners of the September 2011 Photography Blog Competition have been announced. The theme for September was “Little and Large” - you can view all of the entries in this gallery. Here are the 5 winners:

1st Place
An Illusion of Scale by archipirata

Prize: X-Rite ColourChecker Passport
Kindly donated by X-Rite
http://www.xritephoto.com/

Ian Whiting is the lucky winner of a B3 personal server worth £295!

Whether you are a serious photographer or just a shutterbug, you’d want to keep your photos safe and share them with the world without too much fuss. This is where the B3 personal server can come in rather handy. You can use this nifty little machine to store your photos in one central location and access them from any computer on the local network or even on the Web. The built-in photo album software lets you easily generate slick web-based galleries from JPG and PNG images in a matter of minutes, and you can limit access to the galleries to specific users or open them to the entire world. B3 features a built-in and user-friendly backup tool which you can use to easily back up your photos and other data to an external disk or a remote storage solution.

If the built-in photo album software is too basic for your needs, you can easily deploy a third-party solution like Piwigo (http://www.piwigo.org) or Gallery (http://gallery.menalto.com/), as B3 comes with Web and database servers. B3’s minute size means that you can hide the server in any corner you like. Thanks to its fanless design, B3 is virtually silent, and the robust aluminium case ensures that the server survives harsh treatment.

There is, of course, much more to B3 than the described features, and we encourage you to take a look at Excito’s website (http://www.excito.com) and see for yourself what this little guy is capable of.

The Outdoors Show in London has announced that it will be launching a brand new element within the 2012 show – a dedicated Photography Village. Geraldine Reeve, Show Manager of The Outdoors Show said: “Whether photographing landscapes, wildlife or outdoors pursuits, the coming of digital cameras and camera phones has meant that photography in the great outdoors has never been more accessible or popular. Photography has always been an important part of The Outdoors Show, and this year with the Photography Village there will be more than ever for photography enthusiasts.” In the run up to the 2012 show, The Outdoors Show is also searching for the UK’s best outdoors photographers. The competition will be launched on The Outdoors Show website later this month.

Tamron USA has launched the “My Macro Exhibit” photo contest for Tamron lens users living in the US. Entrants will create a 3D virtual exhibit on MyPhotoExhibits featuring 8 to 14 of their best macro images shot with Tamron lenses. The winning entry will be featured on Tamron’s website in February 2012. The winner will also receive his/her choice of one of four Tamron lenses: the 18-270mm Di II VC PZD 15x superzoom; the SP 17-50mm f/2.8 VC professional standard zoom, the SP 70-300mm VC USD telephoto zoom lens or the SP 60mm F/2.0 1:1 Macro. The deadline for submissions is 31st December. For more information including terms and conditions, visit the website below.

Travel photographer Michael Freeman has teamed up with his publisher, Focal Press, to create the Picture Your City challenge to help inspire fledgling photographers and highlight interesting scenes in and around New York City. “We’re asking photography students to submit an image that exemplifies how they picture their cities and, from the submissions, I’ll choose one photographer to spend time shooting with me and I’ll share some tidbits of inspiration along the way,” said Freeman. “When I was a new photographer, I really enjoyed learning from seasoned professionals. I look forward to giving back to new photographers – and seeing New York City through their eyes!”. To be selected to spend time with Freeman, student photographers should go to the website below to fill out a brief form and upload a photograph of their city. Entries will be accepted through 30th September.

Three Getty Images photographers, contributors and freelancers have picked up prestigious awards at the 2011 Picture Editors’ Guild Awards, held last night in London Dan Kitwood scooped the Fotolia Photo Essay category, with Dave Benett and Matthew Lloyd winning the Celebrity Photographer of the Year and Newscast Young Photographer of the Year categories, respectively. The overall winner of the SABMiller Photographer of the Year 2011 award is Matt Dunham from The Associated Press. To view these award-winning portfolios and a full list of winners, visit the website below.

The Italian coffee brand Lavazza has recently started a worldwide initiative aimed at discovering up-and-coming photographic talent. Themes such as Travel and Seduction have been proposed by Lavazza with the creative direction of Italian designer Fabio Novembre in order to inspire participants to unleash their creativity. Photographers may upload a maximum of 20 photos in JPEG format through the website below, or using the “Lavazza 20Calendars” app, available as a free download from the iTunes App Store. The deadline for entries is Sunday, 25 September 2011. The resolution of the photos submitted must be 1200x1200 pixels. As always, we suggest that you read the Terms and Conditions before entering your work.

The Federation of European Professional Photographers (FEP) has announced that the FEP European Fine Art Photograph of the Year Award is now open for entries. The competition is completely Web based, and each entrant may submit up to 3 pictures. The entry fee is €20 per photo (€10 for FEP members). The submission deadline is 8 January 2012. As always, we suggest that you read the rules before entering your work.

Jean-baptiste Faudeux is the lucky winner of a new Sony DSC W570 digital camera, courtesy of Photography Blog and Idealo.

With its 5x optical zoom, Carl Zeiss lens, 2.7 inch screen and 16.1 mega-pixel camera, the Sony camera offers a simple to use interface and hassle-free portability, all encased in stylish brushed aluminium. For those who want to read our full review, it can be found here. If you aren’t lucky enough to win the camera, a quick price check shows it can be had in the UK for around £125; in the US as if often the case, the price is a little lower.

Idealo offers a wide selection of products to compare on everything related to photography, be it digital cameras, SLRs, tripods or bags. The price comparison search engine collates the latest prices from the largest e-commerce sites in the United Kingdom, allowing an easy overview of where the best photography deals can be found. Furthermore, as the results automatically include any available voucher codes to further reduce the overall cost, it saves the extra hassle of having to search for a discount after getting to the payment page of a chosen shop.

This October, prestigious East London gallery theprintspace is celebrating the winning entries from the Black+White Photographer of the Year 2011 competition. This year’s contest attracted thousands of images from around the world. The title “Black+White Photographer of the Year 2011” has been awarded to Binh Trinh for his set of three nudes. The winning images will be exhibited from 7th to 26th October at theprintspace gallery, 74 Kingsland Road, London. Admission is free.

Wanderlust Magazine is reminding interested photographers that the submission deadline for its sixteenth annual Travel Photo of the Year competition is 21st October 2011. The winning images, plus a selection of shortlisted shots, will be featured on the Wanderlust website, printed in Wanderlust Magazine and The Independent, and showcased in an exhibition at Destinations 2012, the UK’s top holiday and travel show. The four winners of the Photo of the Year Amateur category will be whisked away (along with a companion) to photogenic Colombia, while runners-up will receive a Nikon D3100 camera. The top prize in the Portfolio category, open to both amateur and professional photographers, is £3,000. For more details – including full terms and conditions –, check out the website below.

The winners of the Eyewitness Photography Competition, launched by Metroprint in partnership with the Royal Academy of Arts, have been announced. The competition, hosted by Metroprint, Metro Imaging’s new online print service, coincided with the Royal Academy’s exhibition: Eyewitness: Hungarian Photography in the 20th Century - Brassaï, Capa, Kertész, Moholy-Nagy, Munkácsi. The overall winner is “Boy in the Water” by David Gould (above), which depicts a young boy wading across the Yumana River, as seen from a railway bridge.

I Am an Entrepreneur is an ongoing photography competition announced by the SEVEN Fund. Each quarter, ‘I am an Entrepreneur’ features a new theme to inspire photographers and document a different aspect of the entrepreneurial experience. One finalist will be selected every three months, with a winning photograph for the quarter’s theme, and will receive a prize of $250. The grand prize winner will receive $1,000 at the end of the competition. The theme for July-September 2011 is Networks of Productivity and Change. For more information, and to read the rules, visit the website below.

Website: SEVEN

Blottr is searching for the best creative photographers from around the United Kingdom in the ‘Your View’ competition. There are three categories including best home view, best office view and best workplace view. To submit a photo, entrants must register and log into the Your View page on the blottr.com website. Another way to easily upload images to the site is by using the Blottr iPhone app, PaparAPPzi. The submission period starts on 12 September 2011 and runs to 11 November 2011. Blottr will provide a £250 prize to three winners – one from each category –, whilst the overall winner will receive an extra £750. Note that according to the Terms and Conditions, entrants give Blottr.com unreserved permission to use any images, photos and details submitted as part of the competition as they see fit.

Travel Photographer of the Year (TPOTY) is reminding interested photographers that the deadline for entries for the 2011 competition is getting closer and closer. TPOTY 2011 has four portfolio categories – Cultures & Traditions, Exotic, Natural Elements and Spirit of Adventure – two single image categories, Wild Moments and Work, Rest, Play, plus a New Talent award, Diary of a Destination, for students or those looking to kick-start a career in photography. For younger photographers there’s Young TPOTY, with awards for 14 and under and 15-18 age groups. The submission deadline is 9th October.

Lensbaby’s Senior Style Portrait Photo Contest, which challenges US photographers to enter their best high-school senior portraits shot with one of the seven creative optics in the Lensbaby Optic Swap System, is now open for entries. Lensbaby staff will choose 50 finalists and post those images to a special folder on their Facebook page in October.  Then, a panel of judges will choose three winners. Each winning photographer will score significant prizes that will allow them to outfit or upgrade their senior portrait tools and studio. The submission deadline is 30 September 2011, 2pm EDT.

Manfrotto today announced the winners of its ‘Imagine More’ photography competition. The seven winning photographers are Yongping Chen from, China, Emma Cross from the UK, Jana Erb from Germany, Jana Benjamin Navratilova from the USA, Ilaria La Preziosa from Italy, Marion Ruszniewski from France and Yim Kam Wai from Hong Kong.

To celebrate the launch of their PinPoint focus assist accessory, DeluxGear has announced a photography competition entitled, “Almost Picture Perfect”. PinPoint helps eliminate focus issues by emitting a narrow, green light beam to assist the camera’s focus system. Running until 25 September 2011, the contest encourages photographers to enter their missed shots that best represents the “perfect picture that got away” due to focus issues. Once a photo is submitted to the competition’s Facebook page, entrants will be eligible to win DeluxGear’s PinPoint, Lens Guard, and Lens Cradle products.