Canon Photo5 Competition

What do you get when you combine a camera, a box of mystery items, and the limitless creativity of Australian amateur and professional photographers?

I don’t know either, and I can’t wait to find out!

Canon Photo5 Competition

Last week, just before I departed for my long weekend away, I was contacted by Anna Walmsley on behalf of Canon via a personal email, to inform me about the Canon Photo5 Competition. I was impressed that Canon got in touch with me personally, so I was excited to see what this competition is all about.

In a nutshell, the first 10,000 Australians (This is an Aussie-only competition I’m sorry international readers) to register for the competition will be sent, free of charge, a small box containing five mystery objects. The competition is to take a compelling and creative photograph with any of the objects.

This is not unlike the Iron Chef Photographer projects that we’ve run here before. On the competition web site, there is a slideshow of the previous year’s finalists, which also reveals the mystery objects from that year. The photographs are remarkable both for their creativity, and also for the inventiveness of the use of the mystery objects.

Prizes

There are two categories, for amateurs and for professionals, and each person can submit up to five entries, one for each of the mystery objects. Prizes for the ten winners (five for each of the two categories) are $5000AUD worth of Canon EOS products and accessories of your choice. I’ve got my eye on the likely-soon-to-be-revealed Canon EOS 5D MarkII :D

I’ve already submitted my application, and you’d better hurry if you want to as well; there are only 10,000 boxes up for grabs, and you must register by the 30th of September! Oh and you don’t have to shoot with a Canon camera, and the terms are photographer friendly, you retain full copyrights to your work.

Read more about the competition, including the very informative FAQ, and see last year’s finalists at the competition site. You can follow the buzz about the project on the Photo5 blog.

I hope all of my Aussie readers participate, I can’t wait to see your submissions! I really like the idea of this competition and you can be sure I’ll be talking about my entries here on the blog. I may even see if I can come up with some kind of similar project that international (and Australian!) readers can participate in right here on this blog. No $5000 prizes on offer from me though, I’m sorry! :)

PS, if anyone from Canon is reading: If you happen to need an influential blogger to give the new 5D a test run and review at a major event photo shoot, where the camera will be put through a very difficult shoot with thousands of photos in three days… I happen to know just the person *grin*. The Melbourne Anime Festival is coming up in a couple of weeks, coincidentally around the same time news on the 5D is expected, and I think it would be a wonderful way to get word out about what a wonderful revolutionary camera it is. You can contact me at neil@creek.name :)