The Brtish Heart Foundation has just launched its first annual digital photography competition. “The theme is Red for Heart and the winning images will be showcased as part of our annual campaign, National Heart Month, in February,” says National Campaigns Executive Julia Scodie. “The competition is open to all ages and there are some fantastic prizes to be won, including the opportunity to shadow a Getty Photographer for the winner of the Student category.” There will also be an exhibition of the finalists as part of the National Heart Month launch outside the London Eye, and a selection of the winners also be published in the Independent on Sunday Newspaper. To find out more head to the website below.

Website: Red for Heart Photography Competition

Moblog and The Leeds Guide have announced a photography competition,and are inviting people to submit their favourite images of Leeds to their blog. The competition is running until December the 2nd and The Leeds Guide will be printing selected images over the next few weeks until then. An overall winner will be chosen in December who will win a Polaroid PoGo (pictured), a 6-month subscription to the magazine and a Moblog T-shirt. To learn more, and to enter your images in the competition, visit the website below.

Website: The Leeds Guide

Joby, the company known for its Gorillapod range of products, has announced a photography contest. You may submit up to three photographs by sending an e-mail to [email protected] and either attaching the files or linking to the images if stored on the Web. The longer dimension of each photo must be at least 1000 pixels. Some processing with Photoshop is OK, but heavily processed or completely fabricated images are not eligible. The entry deadline is 31 December 2009, 11:59pm PST. The grand prize winner will receive Joby’s entire Gorillapod line, and will have his/her photo published in Popular Photography magazine. N.B.: by submitting an image, you retain ownership of the image, but grant Joby an unrestricted licence to publish, promote and reuse the image in perpetuity.

Website: Joby Photo Contest

Eye-Fi users can now wirelessly upload videos from their camera directly to Facebook without even turning on a computer. Plus, they can now alert Facebook friends via newsfeed updates anytime they upload photos or videos to more than 25 sharing sites. In celebration of these new services and Halloween, Eye-Fi today launched “The Eye-Fi Haunted Video Contest.” Beginning today, people can upload their best Halloween moment captured on video through the Eye-Fi Facebook page for a chance to win an Eye-Fi Share Video card and Eye-Fi connected Casio camera. Contestants can invite members of their social network to vote for the best video and on Friday, November 13 the winner will be announced.

Website: The Eye-Fi Haunted Video Contest

Panasonic Marketing Europe has announced a call for entries for the eighth annual online Lumix Award digital photo competition. The contest runs until 30 April 2010. Under the theme of “Visualise Music,” digital photographers are invited to submit each month one digital image that best captures the moment when music impacts our visual senses.  Each month, a winner will be chosen and awarded a Lumix DMC-ZX1 digital compact camera (pictured).  The overall winner of the Lumix Award competition – for the single best digital photo - will win a Lumix DMC-GF1 along with tickets to see the Blue Man Group. Two runner-ups will each receive a LUMIX DMC-FZ38 digital camera.

Website: Lumix Award

The Photographers’ Gallery today named the four shortlisted artists nominated for its annual Deutsche Börse Photography Prize (DBPP). The annual award of £30,000 rewards a living photographer, of any nationality, who has made the most significant contribution, in exhibition or publication format, to the medium of photography in Europe between 1 October 2008 and 30 September 2009. The four shortlisted artists are Anna Fox, Zoe Leonard, Sophie Ristelhueber and Donovan Wylie. Anna Fox has been nominated for her exhibition, Cockroach Diaries & Other Stories at Ffotogallery, Cardiff; Zoe Leonard for her her retrospective exhibition, ZOE LEONARD: Photographs, at the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Sophie Ristelhueber for her retrospective, Sophie Ristelhueber at the Jeu de Paume, Paris; while Donovan Wylie has been shortlisted for his exhibition MAZE 2007/8 at Belfast Exposed. The winner will be announced on Wednesday 17 March 2010.

International Garden Photographer of the Year (IGPOTY) is reminding interested photographers that the submission deadline is getting closer and closer. You have until 30 November to enter your work. This year’s top prize is £5000 plus a Royal Photographic Society gold medal. Additionally - and uniquely among photography competitions - they offer every photographer who enters the chance to receive a personal email critique of their entry from the judges, once the winners are announced. There are seven categories, with awards for single images as well as portfolios. For more information and to enter, visit the website below.

Website: IGPOTY

Kodak’s finest-grained colour negative film, Kodak Professional Ektar 100, has turned one year old, and Kodak celebrates its birthday by announcing a photography contest. The competition, which seeks the best images captured on Kodak Ektar 100, will be officially announced at the annual Photo Plus trade show in New York City. Film enthusiasts are encouraged to shoot Ektar 100 film, scan their results and upload them to the website below. First Place winner will receive one year’s supply of Ektar 100 film up to 1200 rolls; an all-expense paid “Adventures by Disney” travel package in North America for two people; feature on kodak.com, and feature of their image on Kodak’s New York City Times Square Gallery. Note that the contest is open to 18+ legal residents of the USA only.

Website: Kodak Ektar Contest

The winners of the prestigious Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition 2009 have been unveiled. Americans Thomas Haney from Austin, Texas, Rob Palmer from Colorado and Kevin Schafer from Seattle are among the winners of the 46th annual competition, which attracted a record 43,135 entries from 94 countries. Thomas Haney won the One Earth Award with his moving image, ‘The Lone Fir’ (see above). Rob Palmer won the Behaviour: Birds category with his action shot, ‘Opportunist Snatch’, depicting a bald eagle catching a blackbird. Kevin Schafer was also announced a winner with his playful image, ‘Boto Water Polo’, which shone through in the Behaviour: Mammals category. The image shows a pair of wild Amazon river dolphins, or botos, playing with a floating macucu seed in a tributary of the Rio Negro in Amazonian Brazil.

The Fujifilm Student Awards 2010 is now open for entries. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the competition, and Fujifilm Professional has again tied-in with Penguin Books, so that the winner will see their image on the cover of the next edition of Flann O’Brien’s novel, At Swim-Two-Birds. The brief is to take a photograph that captures the spirit of the novel which, in the words of Anthony Burgess, ‘assaults your brain with words, style, magic, madness, and unlimited invention’. All images must be taken on Fujifilm Professional film and submitted via www.fujifilmstudentawards.co.uk – entry is free and students can enter as many photographs as they wish. The closing date for entries is 28 February 2010.

Readers of National Geographic around the world are invited to take part in the 2009 National Geographic International Photography Contest. Readers of the English-language edition in eight countries, as well as readers of 20 of the magazine’s international local-language editions, are eligible to participate. The international grand-prize winners will receive a trip to National Geographic headquarters in Washington, D.C., a digital camera kit, and their winning entries will be published in all participating editions of National Geographic magazine. The submission deadline is Oct 31, 2009. Full details can be found at the website below.

Website: NG Photo Contest

The winners of the International Viewbook PhotoStory 2009 Awards have been announced. Italian photographer Francesco Giusti won the documentary category with an inspiring portrait story of the members of the SAPE, a group of remarkably elegant gentlemen from Pointe-Noire, Republic of the Congo, Africa. The story reflects the wish of young people in particular not to be left apart by society. Swiss - Japanese David Favrod has won first prize in the conceptual category with a very personal story, ‘Gaijin’. Both artists won prizes with a value exceeding $12.000 including lifelong subscriptions to Viewbook PRO online services and GUP magazine, book publications and an exhibition in the Kahmann Gallery in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

WeSay.com, a news site that features photographs from amateur photographers around the world, pays 30 photographers every month for images chosen by their photo editors. The cash prizes paid to citizen photojournalists range from $25 to $500. There is no fee to enter, and photographers retain ownership of their photos. If you are interested in the prizes offered, or simply want to share your photojournalistic images with the world, head to the website below.

Website: WeSay.com

Seven Snaps is an ongoing international iPhone photography contest which runs until 18 December. The contest challenges you to be creative and share the fun of telling a story in a sequence of seven images. The most funny, touching and amazing seven snaps will be selected around Christmas by an international jury of diverse creative backgrounds including the writer Paulo Coelho, composer Max Richter and sculptor Jason de Caires Taylor. The winning entries will be rewarded and will be published in a book and exposed in a public environment. For more information, visit the website below.

Website: Seven Snaps

Dell has announced Where Do You Like to Learn photography competition. This is a children’s photography competition that celebrates the digitally connected world we live in. “Today, learning is no longer limited to the four walls of a classroom,” says Mark Horan, vice president and general manager of Dell’s K12 education business. “Whether it’s in your favorite bookstore or on your living room floor; in your neighborhood park or your best friend’s backyard, we can all be a little more creative with where we choose to study. Learning can take place anywhere!” To take part in the month-long contest that kicked off yesterday, email your photograph(s) to [email protected]. The grand prize is a Latitude 2100 netbook (pictured) for the student and a tablet PC and projector for his or her classroom. Parents or teachers must enter for children under 18 years of age. As always, make sure to read the rules beforehand.

Photo District News (PDN) and Kodak announced today the launch of Best Friends: The Ultimate Animal Photo Contest, which celebrates the art of pet and animal photography while also raising money to help endangered and mistreated animals throughout the world. The contest is now accepting paid online submissions from amateur photographers, with part of the proceeds going to three animal and wildlife protection groups. Participants are invited to log on to www.bestfriendsphotocontest.com and submit their photos for any of four categories: Domestic Animals, Wildlife Animals, My Pet and Me, and Animal Humor. A portion of each $12 entry fee will be donated to the contestant’s choice of one of three non-profit animal welfare groups: The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Best Friends Animal Society, and Kids Saving the Rainforest.

One of the largest and most prestigious international underwater photography and video competition series celebrates its five year anniversary this year. The unique competition series was founded by professional underwater photographers Jason Heller & Eric Cheng and hosted by popular websites DivePhotoGuide.com and Wetpixel.com. The series is held in association with two leading scuba diving expos on opposite sides of the world, simultaneously - Our World Underwater, now in its 40th year, and one of the largest consumer scuba diving expos in the US, and DEEP Indonesia, the first and only scuba diving and watersports expo in Indonesia, one of the most bio-diverse marine ecosystems in the world. Participants will compete in technical, themed and video categories, to win more than $80,000 in prizes including premium dive travel, underwater photo and video equipment, scuba diving gear and more. For more information, visit the website below.

Website: Underwater Competition

The six category winners of the Energizer Ultimate Photo Contest have been announced. The photographers are now in the running for the “ultimate” grand prize: a trip for two to the Galápagos Islands accompanied by a National Geographic expert and the chance to see their photo grace the pages of National Geographic magazine in an ad for Energizer® Ultimate Lithium batteries. In August, 12 photos were selected as Category Finalists by Jim Richardson, a National Geographic photographer and the judge for the “Energizer Ultimate Photo Contest.”  Then America was asked to go online to nationalgeographic.com/lithium to vote for a favourite in each category.  After four weeks of voting, the following were named Category Winners: Ruston Agte for “Polar Bear Swimming” (Animals/Wildlife), Tracy Hagen for “Light Shaft Shines on Sea” (Nature), Glenn Traver for “Boardwalk and Ocean” (Travel), Frederick Abels for “Sultry Porch and Cloud Reflections” (Weather), Bernardo Medina for “Boy and Boats” (People and Cultures) and “Peddling Bicycle in Wind” (Inspiration/Keep Going). To see the winning photos, head to the website below.

Website: National Geographic / Energizer Ultimate Photo Contest

The And/or Book Awards, the UK’s leading prizes for books published in the fields of photography and the moving image, are inviting publishers to submit titles for the 2010 awards. Publishers can submit up to six photography or film/television related books released this year. The awards are given by the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation, established in 1985 by Andor Kraszna-Krausz, the Hungarian founder of the influential publishing house Focal Press. 2010 marks the 25th anniversary of the Foundation and the awards, so it is an important celebratory year. The initial deadline for entries is Monday 2 November 2009, but any book published by 31 December is eligible and can be submitted up to this date.

The Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management is hoping that the Environmental Photographer of the Year Exhibition, opening today, will persuade politicians to take the urgent and decisive action needed to combat climate change. In just its third year, the Environmental Photographer of the Year is one of the fastest growing photographic competitions in the world, with nearly 2,500 pictures entered from over 60 countries including Serbia, Jamaica, Belarus, Zimbabwe, Turkey, Romania, India, South Africa, Australia, Israel, USA, China, Belgium, Vietnam and the UK. Over 40 images from amateur and professional photographers are part of this international showcase for the very best in environmental photography. The free exhibition is being launched simultaneously at 3 Bedfordbury Gallery, Covent Garden, London, from 7th until 18th October, and at the Bewdley Festival, Worcester, from 8th until 29th October. For more information on the exhibition, please refer to the website below.

Website: Environmental Photographer of the Year