Frommer’s is awarding the winner of its first Cover Photo Contest $5,000 and the honour of the winning photo being featured on the cover of a forthcoming travel guide. Four second-place winners will receive a prize pack containing three Frommer’s Day by Day travel guides and a selection of Frommer’s Lug travel accessories worth more than $300. Contestants have until 31 March 2010 to submit their best travel photos. The Cover Photo Contest celebrates Frommer’s new full-colour editions that premiered in September. Début titles available now include London, Paris, New York City, Italy, Costa Rica, Alaska, and Hawaii. Nine more full-colour guides will be available in 2010. The contest is open only to legal residents of the fifty United States,Canada (excluding Quebec)and the United Kingdom who are at least 18 years old at the time of entry. We do recommend that you read the official rules at the website below before entering your work.

Website: Frommer’s Photo Contest

Hearst Corporation has announced the 2011 international biennial competition to recognise and showcase the professional work of talented young photographers. Hearst 8 X 10 Photography Biennial began in 2009. The premiere biennial garnered more than 1,000 entries from 47 countries. The 2011 contest is open to all U.S. and international freelance, amateur and professional photographers and students, aged 18 to 35 years of age. All entries must be submitted no later than May 31, 2010. Winners will be announced in September 2010. Additional information and submission guidelines can be found at the website below.

Website: Harst 8x10 Photography Biennial

The Royal Photographic Society’s International Print Competition, the longest standing photographic competition of its kind in the world, is open for entries. This year, the competition is sponsored by Allen & Overy, as in the past two years.The overall winner will receive the Society’s gold medal and a prize of £2,000. Two entrants will win silver medals and £1,000 each. Three bronze medal winners are entitled to prizes of £500 each, while the winners of the themes, “Cities of the World’ and ‘Industry and Commerce’ will receive £750 each. The winner of the Under 25 category will be awatded with the Society’s gold medal and a prize of an Olympus PEN camera. The submission deadline is 29 March 2010. Shown above is one of last year’s bronze medal winners, ‘Who Eats Who’ by David Maitland.

Website: RPS 153rd International Print Competition

Competico has a special holiday contest with a cash prize of $50,000. You have until 12 January 2010 to submit your best holiday snaps to the competition. Note that the entry fee is $100 per photo, but if you enter the contest before 9:00pm EST today, you can enter an additional holiday photo for this contest for free.. Winners will be based on the combination of votes from other Competico players and votes from the Judging Panel. The winners will be announced on 15 January 2010.

Website: Competico Winter Holiday Photo Contest

The 2009 international Travel Photographer of the Year (TPOTY) awards have, for the first time, been won by a Bangladeshi photographer. G.M.B. Akash’s vibrant yet poignant images of rail travel in his home country and his portfolio depicting the ship-breaking industry in Pakistan all showed how imagery can tell a story, and won unanimous praise from the judges. As well as being awarded the title of Travel Photographer of the Year 2009, Akash wins Adobe CS4 Web Premium software, an Apple MacBook Pro 13” with Aperture 2 software, a Mountain Paradise trip to the Tatra Mountains, an ILFORD Lightjet 40” x 30” silver gelatin print of one of his images, a 16GB Lexar CompactFlash & Lexar Professional card reader, a Plastic Sandwich leather portfolio book and a Wacom Intuos4 S pen tablet. The winning images from TPOTY 2009 can be viewed online in the Winners’ Gallery at www.tpoty.com and will be published in the new Travel Photographer of the Year book Journey Three. Click through / read on for a complete list of category winners.

The National Park Foundation has issued a reminder that there are just a few weeks left to enter the 2009 Olympus Share the Experience photo contest, which is seeking this year’s best photo of the 392 national parks or other federal recreation lands in the US. The 2009 Share the Experience Photo Contest closes at 11:59 pm ET on 31 December 2009, and showcases the more than 500 million acres of Federal Lands, drawing entries from all across the United States.  The grand prize winning photo will be featured on next year’s Federal Recreation Lands Pass and the photographer will receive an Olympus E-3 Digital Camera. The 2008 winning photo (above) was taken by Mark Cromwell in Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Refuge.

Website: Share the Experience

ADP has announced the launch of its second photography competition, Architecture Naturally. The competition focuses on an important relationship - that which exists between architecture, and the natural world and is open to UK students over the age of 16 studying photography, a photography-related course, architecture or an architecture-related course. The winner will be awarded a one thousand pound commission to photograph one of ADP’s completed buildings, plus 750 pounds worth camera equipment vouchers and a year subscription to Digital Photographer magazine.

Website: ADP Architects

Carl Zeiss has today launched an annual worldwide photo contest with the theme “digital culture”. Anyone can participate, provided the pictures are shot with a Carl Zeiss lens. Pictures can be taken with any type of camera, from an SLR reflex camera to the camera of a mobile phone. First prize is a ZEISS SLR-lens, which the winner can select. The second prize is a set of Cinemizer plus video glasses, including an iPod touch 8GB. Third prize is a Nokia N86 mobile telephone. The jury will select 10 winners after January 15th 2010.

Win tickets to a play at The Old Vic theatre in London and a limited edition book by David Bailey or Helmut Newton with Olympus. Simply find out what Kevin Spacey thinks about his Olympus E-P1 camera by finding the hidden content in one of Olympus’ new TV adverts for the Pen EP-1 camera. The closing date is December 24th 2009.

Symantec has just launched the newest version of its consumer online backup service, Norton Online Backup, along with a launch campaign contest. To enter, simply submit stories, photos or videos of how you have lost valuable computer files in the past (i.e. dropped laptop off the balcony, spilled coffee on your computer, hard drive caught on fire, etc.) at http://www.nortonsavedmybacon.com. All entrants will receive a free trial subscription for 5GB of online storage through Norton Online Backup and a random drawing will award a year’s supply of gourmet bacon (and a few other bacon-themed goodies) to 12 lucky winners.

A dramatic photograph capturing a hovering barn owl has been unveiled as the overall winner of this year’s RSPCA Young Photographer Awards. 18-year-old Ryan Edwards scooped the YPA09 overall winner’s prize, as well as the 12-18 category, with his photograph Golden Flight (above). Ryan, from Woodbridge, in Suffolk, received his prizes from BBC One Countryfile presenter Matt Baker, who was also on the judging panel for this year’s awards. Ryan’s prizes include £1,000 worth of Olympus vouchers, an Olympus E-620 D-SLR camera with two zoom lenses and the opportunity to go on an exclusive photo shoot at a unique RSPCA location. (RSPCA stands for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.)

The Falkland Islands Tourist Board invites visitors to the Falklands to send in their best snaps to a new online photography competition - Falklands Exposed. The Falkland Islands are an overseas territory of the UK, located in the South Atlantic Ocean. The Falklands Exposed contest is open to anyone with a keen eye and traveller’s spirit, with three entry groups; amateur, youth and professional. Photographers can submit images across six categories including the aptly named ‘Face from the Place’ where judges are looking for an outstanding shot of an islander and the ‘Wildlife’ category where entrants to the competition can showcase their shots of penguins and other island wildlife. With a rich heritage, interesting events and rugged terrain perfect for outdoor activities, there is plenty to photograph all year round, says the tourist board. For more information on the contest, head to the website below.

Website: Falklands Exposed

The Red Bull Illume Image Quest, billed as the world’s biggest photography contest for action and adventure sports, is open for entries. The Red Bull Illume Image Quest 2010 calls upon all action photographers to submit a maximum of five images to one or more of the 10 categories listed on the contest website. Submissions are accepted through 31 January 2010.

Website: Red Bull Illume

Harman Technology has announced the winning entries to its Harman Photo Crystaljet RC Student Competition. Open to photography students across the UK, the competition asked entrants to deliver their creation – from two key themes, ‘Interaction’ or ‘Today’ – with submissions made on the new Harman Crystaljet RC inkjet paper. The overall winner is Jonathan Lewis from Southport College for his entry, ‘Donalda in bath’ (see above). All of the winning entries will be exhibited on the Harman photo stand at Focus on Imaging 2010 and can be found on the Harman website.

Website: Harman Photo Crystaljet RC Student Competition

PhotoBin has announced David Lenhert of Escondido, California, as the winner of its 2009 Summer Photo Contest. As the first-place winner, Lenhert received $250, with the second and third-place winners receiving $100 and $50, respectively. To see all photo contest winners, visit the website below.

Website: PhotoBin 2009 Photo Contest Winners

Photoinduced.com has launched “Let’s Do Lunch”, a photo contest that asks you to take pictures of your midday meal and help feed the hungry. Participants are invited to log on to letdolunchcontest.com and submit their photos for any of four categories: Friends and Family- meals on a more personal level; Down to Business - lunch with a purpose; Street - delicacies only available on the boulevard; and Solo - meals on your own. The contest is now accepting paid online submissions from photographers. A grand prize winner and winners in each of the four categories will be selected by a panel of photography and food professionals. One Grand Prize winner and first place winners in each of the categories will receive a selection of prizes from HP, ThinkTank Photo, Adobe, NAPP, Nikon, Blurb.com. and more. Additionally, there will be a special Student Prize and a Peoples Choice winner.

Website: Let’s Do Lunch

The organisers of the Can-Do film festival and competition are seeking short videos shot on a Canon EOS 1D Mark IV (pictured), 5D Mark II or 7D. The films can be in one of ten genres including music video, spec commercial, TV show teaser, movie trailer, narrative, documentary, nature, sports event, wedding event and military services. The submission period opens on 1 January and closes on 20 March 2010. You can submit more than one movie, but each film should be four minutes or shorter. All submissions must be in the H.264 Apple QuickTime file format, and every submission must be accompanied by a Release Form. To read the full rules and regulations, head to the website below.

Website: Can-Do Film Festival and Competition Rules and Regulations

South Coast Media Group and SouthCoastToday.com are now accepting photo submissions for their holiday photo contest. Interested participants are encouraged to submit their photos now through 16 December via the contest website.Following the open submission period, voting will take place between 16 and 23 December. Contest winners will be chosen by popular vote and judges votes with different prizes for each. Final contest winners will be announced on 24 December.

Website: South Coast Today Holiday Photo Contest

Leading figures from the international photographic community have been announced as the jury members of three separate award programmes of the Sony World Photography Awards 2010. The Honorary Jury for the main annual competition comprises 12 specially selected World Photography Organisation Academy members. They include Mark Sealy, Nadav Kander, Scott Thode, Chloe Limpkin, Aidan
Sullivan, Pablo Bartholomew, Roberto Koch, Monica Allende, Bill Hunt, Trisha Ziff, Michelle Dunn and Bohnchang Koo. The judges for the Student Focus, a competition which involves over 120 photographic institutions around the world, are: Adrian Evans; Adrian Boot, Jonathon Torgovnik, Idris Khan and Sue Steward.

Website: Sony World Photography Awards

Fodor’s Travel and Palm Beach County Convention and Visitor’s Bureau have announced thetravel photography contest, “Show Us Your Palm Beach County.” Until December 31st, North American visitors to Fodors.com can upload and share their favorite photos and experiences of Palm Beach County with other travelers. The grand-prize winning photographer will receive a suite of Fodor’s guidebooks and runners-up will receive two Fodor’s guides of their choice. Winners will be featured in a slideshow on Fodors.com and may appear in upcoming editions of Fodor’s Florida guidebooks. To submit a photo and read a full list of rules, visit the website below.

Website: “Show Us Your Palm Beach”