The photography competition Wiki Loves Monuments comes back to Greece in October 2020, and is calling all photography lovers – amateurs and professionals – and adventurous travellers, to submit their photos from Greece and compete for numerous prizes and awards.
Wiki Loves Monuments is an international cultural heritage photography competition organized by Wikipedia affiliates and user groups, that takes place every year in many countries across the globe.
The aim of the competition is to have Wikipedia readers and users, photographers, and overall the general public, take photos of cultural heritage sites, archaeological monuments, and iconic landscapes from their countries or places they have visited around the world.
The participants upload their photos to Wikimedia Commons for public use on Wikipedia’s encyclopedia pages, while a committee of expert photographers and art critics chooses the top images that are submitted from each country.
The best 3 photos from every nation win a monetary prize and the top 10 participants receive a large poster of their photograph, and simultaneously enter the Wikipedia international event to compete with people from all over the world.
The winners from the international competition also win various awards and distinctions.
A large variety of photos are accepted to enter the competition, from ancient temples like the Acropolis in Athens and the pyramids of Giza in Egypt, to the châteaux in France, the fortresses in South Korea or the Sydney Opera House in Australia.
The competition committee judges the submissions based on numerous criteria, such as the theme of the photo, the clarity, the lighting and the profile of the monument in the image.
The competition was organized for the first time in 2010 in the Netherlands, and soon became an annual pan-European phenomenon, before becoming a global competition. Over 50 countries participate every year in the event, including Canada, Spain, Italy, India, Panama, Ghana, Thailand, Russia, the United States, and Greece, which has been a part of the competition since 2016.
Over 13,000 people upload their photos for the Wikipedia competition every year, and more than 150,000 photos are submitted yearly.
Photos that have won in the Greek Wiki competition in the previous years include the Castle in Medieval City of Rhodes, a Partial Lunar Eclipse over Acropolis in Athens, the Walls of Myrina Castle in Lemnos, the Temple of Olympian Zeus in Athens, Monasteries at Mount Athos, and many more.
The competition organizers stated on the Wiki Loves Monuments Greece page that “it is important for us to remember that our work towards free knowledge for all is beyond geographical borders and competitions. Competition is a means to an end.
"The goal is to mobilize more people to share all of human knowledge, which we have helped bring to stunning photos on Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikivoyage, Wikidata, and our other works, and to help them discover their cultural heritage.”
Wiki Loves Monuments in Greece is operated under the Wikimedia Community User Group Greece and funded by the Wikimedia Foundation.
To find out more about the competition, its prizes and how to enter, visit: https://wlm.wikimedia.gr/
Read also on Greek City Times:
Open call for the photographic action "The Acropolis: Focusing on the restoration"