Mykindofphone.com has launched an online competition offering the winner an opportunity to participate in a six-night Kenyan photo safari tour. To enter, you need to submit a photo telling a personal story which they have taken with their mobile phone to a photo sharing site; provide a short, snappy explanation of the emotional journey behind the image; and tweet about it alongside the competition’s hashtag ’#snap @mykindofphone’. The competition, which is open to UK residents only, begins today and runs until Thursday, 3 June 2010. The winner and a frined will be taken on a £6,000 Kenyan photo safari tour from 26th June to 4th July 2010. For full entry details, visit the website below.

Website: My Kind of Phone Photo Contest

AKVIS turns 6 this year, and they are organising a raffle in celebration of the company’s birthday. Taking place on Monday, 31 May, the raffle gives participants a chance to win AKVIS gift certificates, which give the recipients the right to get an AKVIS photo editing program of their choice. You can register online at the website below.

Website: AKVIS Raffle 2010

Tamron has just announced a full-day seminar series led by award-winning nature and landscape photographer Sandra Nykerk. The events will take place in Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York on the 13th & 15th of July and the 10th & 12th of August respectively. Seminar topics include “Learning to See the Light”, “Using Lenses to Enhance your Creative Composition”, “Understanding the Histogram”, and many more. All events are scheduled for 9:00-4:30, and the cost for a full-day seminar is $59 per person. This includes a special welcome package, refreshments, raffle chances for prizes that include a lens, and a $25 bonus rebate with the purchase of select Tamron lens within two weeks of the event date at specified Tamron dealers. Advance registration required.

Website: Tamron Events

Flip Video is launching a limited-edition St. Georges Flag Mino pocket camcorder to celebrate England’s place in the World Cup. This standard-definition, VGA-resolution camcorder comes with 2GB of on-board memory, and features a touch-sensitive interface and a 1.5” LCD screen. Like the original Flip Mino, the St. George’s Flag edition uses an internal, rechargeable lithium-ion battery that conveniently recharges whenever the camcorder’s USB arm is connected to a computer. There is no optical zoom, but 2x digital zoom is available. The built-in software lets you easily edit video files and upload them to video sharing sites. Available in the UK at a recommended retail price of £109.99.

The prestigious Sony World Photography Awards are now open for entries. The festival will expand to four major cities across the globe throughout 2010 and 2011, visiting San Francisco, Mexico City, Shanghai and London. Professional and ‘serious enthusiast’ photographers are invited to join the Professional competition and will be judged on a body of work. The 14 professional categories are arranged into three genres - Commercial, Fine Art and Photojournalism & Documentary - and new categories include Lifestyle, Still Life, and People. The Open competition, which replaces the amateur competition, has been created for the growing number of people with a love of photography. It has nine categories, and is judged on a single image. The 2011 competition closes for entries on 5 January 2011. Winners of the Professional and Open categories will each receive their trophies at the Sony World Photography Awards ceremony in London on 27 April 2011.

Website: Sony World Photography Awards

Allworth Press has published the third edition of The Law (in Plain English) For Photographers by Leonard D. DuBoff and Christy O. King. Providing essential and legal advice for aspiring and professional photographers that can mean the difference between a photographer’s success and ruin, the book is written “in plain English” for better understandability. The third edition has been expanded to include analysis of key digital issues, new cases on fair use and copyright infringement, post-9/11 rules for shooting in “sensitive” locations, and updates to right of publicity laws protecting images of famous people even after death. The Law (in Plain English) For Photographers is available for pre-order and sells for $24.95.

Website: Allworth Press

Olapic.com has announced its online service of collecting and sharing high-quality wedding photos. Guests can upload the digital photos taken at any of the bridal and wedding events, and members are able to organise, store and print each photo for keeps in an album or placed on other social networking sites. In addition, Olapic.com offers commitment-free partnership plans to enhance the wedding planner’s and photographer’s portfolio. Users can register for a free trial version, as well as upgrade their account to plans starting at $55.

Award-winning photographer Marci Sandler is to lead “Creating Photographic Art,” a two-day photography workshop sponsored by Homeland Photographic Gallery, St. Croix, US Virgin Islands. The workshop will teach participants to create high-quality, fantasy and exotic images. Workshop courses will be held on 19 and 20 July from 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. at Select Temp Staffing, and will include lunch. An optional half-day trip and location shoot is available to participants on 21 July. Photographers will have an opportunity to venture on a four-wheel drive trip to Tide Pools with Sandler where they will shoot with a model in an exotic tropical location and create images to further enhance their portfolios. The registration fee for the two-day workshop is $195. The optional trip to Tide Pools is an additional $125. or general information about the workshop and to register, visi the website below.

Website: Homeland Collections

A collection of 19th century photographic portraits of Russian Royalty goes under the hammer at Bonhams Books, Maps, Manuscripts and Photographs sale on 8 June in London. Among the most notable items are two finely hand-coloured cabinet cards of Alexander II and his wife Maria Alexandrovna; a hand-coloured card of the future Alexander III as Tsarevitch; pictures of Alexander III and his wife Tsarina Maria Fedorovna who fled to Great Britain after the revolution and then settled in her native Denmark where she died in 1928; and a photograph of Alexander II lying in state. The sale begins at 2pm in Bonhams’ flagship saleroom on NEw Bond Street.

Insight Guides and The Independent on Sunday have announced a travel photography competition in which the winner will receive a photographic commission worth £3,000. Any UK-based adult who thinks his or her photography is a cut above the average holiday album can enter by submitting three images that, having been taken since 1 January this year, capture the essence of a destination, using ‘earth’ as the theme. Photographers have until Friday 10 September 2010 to submit their entries, and the winner will be announced in the travel pages of The Independent on Sunday along with the winning portfolio. For further information, entrants should visit www.insightguides.com as terms and conditions apply.

International Garden Photographer of the Year (IGPOTY) is reminding interested photographers that the submission deadline for its spring seasonal competition is 31 May. Part of IGPOTY’s brand new format, ‘4 Seasons’, the theme of the spring competition is ‘Spring into Life’. If this sounds interesting, visit the IGPOTY website via the link below to enter your work. All entries will also automatically go through to the main IGPOTY competition at the end of the year.

Website: IGPOTY

The Imaging Science Group of the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) is organising another Good Picture Symposium, open to all, on selected technical aspects of digital imaging. As 2010 is the 100th anniversary of infrared photography, the organisers have taken the opportunity to celebrate this by including some IR topics including “Infrared in the Surveillance Society”, “Digital Infrared Thermography in Medicine”, “How Infrared Sensing Might Help Us Manage the Resources of Planet Earth”, “Infrared Imaging – The Fever Screening Dilemma” and “Practical Options For Infrared Photography”. Other topics include the use of colour appearance models in imaging and a look at Canon raw conversion options. The Good Picture Symposium is taking place on 4 December at the University of Westminster, Regent Street, London. Admission costs £64.

Garage Studios are showing Kevin Mason’s Your Life Is My Vanity Project, from 29 to 31 May between 10:30 am and 8:00 pm. The project, which spanned thirty weeks of photoshoots over eight months, plots the important physical and emotional transformations as Kevin’s subject Georgie Hobday turns seventeen. Your Life Is My Vanity Project is presented by sponsors Garage Studios, Brighton’s biggest Photography Studio and Training Centre as a series of prints and original polaroids and features over 120 images curated by both Georgie Hobday and M.Halls, a limited edition book of the work will also be available at the exhibition and online at the website below.

Website: Your Life Is My Vanity Project

Hama has announced the retail availability of the new “Varadero” camera bags from Samsonite. The collection comprises seven models, which feature clearly labelled compartments for empty and full batteries and memory cards. Padded handles, removable shoulder straps and a pleasantly soft fleece interior lining are the hallmarks of the new bags, which are priced from €39.99 to €59.99 depending on model.

Website: Hama

AKVIS has released version 11 of AKVIS Sketch for Windows and Macintosh. The software converts photos to colour and black-and-white pencil drawings and watercolor paintings. Version 11 offers the ability to save guidings lines made by the stroke direction tool to a file. Two new interface modes (Express and Advanced) have also been added, and the plugin version is now compatible with Photoshop CS4-CS5 64-bit on both Windows and Macintosh. Express mode provides just the features and parameters you need to quickly obtain a satisfactory result, while Advanced mode reveals the features and parameters hidden in Express mode, giving the user access to the full functionality of Sketch. Users who own versions 9 and 10 of Sketch can upgrade for free; while users of older versions need to pay an upgrade fee. New users can purchase a licence for $72 / €55.

The opening of the Still in Motion London Photography Festival will take place in Paris, at La Cartonnerie, on the 29th and 30th of May 2010 and one week later, at the Horse Hospital in London. The festival programme includes an exhibition of pinhole photographs, a pinhole photo contest on the theme of the changing city, free pinhole portraits in a Victorian lay-out, an exhibition of young photographers, and more. Throughout the weekend, a discovery workshop will be delivered for the public that will play upon the pinhole camera’s origins and the experience of taking a picture in a 19th century studio. “One of the targets of this event is to recreate the social link within the city through photography, and to bring urban people to rediscover their city,” the organisers say. An exhibition of young artists is also part of the programme - the photo above (taken by and reproduced with courtesy of Frank Loriou) is one of the works that are going to be displayed at this exhibition.

Nikon UK has just announced a new cashback promotion that entitles UK and Irish customers to claim £30 / €35 on the Nikon Coolpix S8000 compact digital camera, starting today. Billed as the world’s slimmest wide-angle 10x zoom camera at its launch, the S8000 also boasts a “DSLR class” autofocus system and a 14.2-megapixel sensor. Kevin Egan, Consumer Product Manager at Nikon UK, comments: “As we approach the holiday season and more people consider purchasing a digital camera, I’m delighted that the cashback offer now makes the premium Coolpix S8000 camera an even more attractive option.”

Website: Nikon Coolpix S8000 Cashback Offer

Renowned art college, Central Saint Martins, will be presenting its annual 2010 photography exhibition at its Charing Cross premises beginning 18th June.  Showcasing a diverse selection of images, the exhibition will present the work of 25 emerging photographers. To view the works online, visit the website below.

Website: Central Saint Martins Photography Exhibition

Industry analysists BERTL Inc. have awarded a five-star “Exceptional” rating to Canon’s large-format imagePROGRAF iPF8300, iPF 6350 and iPF6300 printers. “The five-star rating from BERTL, Inc., recognises the significant investment Canon has made in developing technologies that make the new imagePROGRAF models an ideal solution for the photography, graphic arts and photography markets,” said Jim Rosetta, vice president and general manger, Imaging Systems Group, Canon U.S.A. BERTL’s testing criteria addresses 11 categories: Build Quality, Network Administration, Security, Workflow, Finish, Ease of Use, Media Handling, Printing, Image Quality, Features, and Price.