Sixth edition of international photo competition Wiki Loves Earth is open for submissions

In 2013, the pilot version of Wiki Loves Earth was launched in Ukraine, with Wikipedia issuing a call out to the public to contribute their photographs of natural landscape from across the country licence free to their online database. Since then, the photo competition has expanded to over 50 countries and has collected more than 420,000 photographs from over 40,000 participants. And now, for the sixth time, Wiki Loves Earth is seeking photographs from across the world.

The purpose behind the competition is to gather photographs released under a free licence that enables their free use worldwide. The goal of Wikipedia is to make knowledge available to the world for free, and since natural heritage is part of knowledge, Wikipedia want to gather and release to the world free, usable photographs of natural heritage.

This year  27 countries have already announce participating in the international competition. And 18 of them start a contest on May 1 and will run until the May 31st.

Wiki Loves Earth is coordinated by local volunteers. The national juries then submit up to 10 pictures to the international stage of the contest. Last year with 38 participating countries, the international jury had to consider more than 120, 000 candidate pictures!

Anyone can take part in the competition; however, registration on Wikimedia Commons is required. To enter the contest, find an item or place you are familiar with from the competition list, submit a picture you have taken (from past or present), and upload it to Wikimedia Commons beginning May 1  or later, depending on the starting date in the local contest.

The full report of the last year’s international jury, explaining its work, selection process and bringing the results together with comments of the jury, is available here.

We invite everyone to make this year’s contest a great and valuable contribution to free knowledge!

If you would like to join international WLE with your local contest or have any other questions, please, write on wle-team@wikimedia.org.ua.