Stunning photos among entries to 2016 Wiki Loves Monuments competition

Stunning photos of Ireland’s national monuments have been entered into this year’s Wiki Loves Monuments competition, the world’s biggest photography competition.

The 2016 Wiki Loves Monuments photography competition is taking place from Saturday 27^th August – Friday 30^thSeptember. Initiated by Wikimedia, the movement behind free encyclopaedia Wikipedia, and run in Ireland by the Wikimedia Ireland Community, the competition aims to raise awareness of Ireland’s national monuments and create a crowd-sourced bank of quality photos that will be free to use for education.

Amateur and professional photographers are invited to photograph the national monuments in their locality and upload their photos to www.wikilovesmonuments.ie. The site includes a listing of each county’s eligible national monuments. Entries will be judged by an expert panel and the winners will be announced on Sunday 1^stNovember. The top ten Irish images will then be entered into the international competition. There will also be prizes for the top three 1916 images.Pearse’s Cottage, Gortmore, Rosmuc. One of the entries into this year’s Wiki Loves Monuments 2016 competition.

Last year the Wiki Loves Monuments competition in Ireland attracted 293 photographers who submitted a total of 1,659 images.  The photographers uploaded photographs from a total of 508 different monuments. 2015 winners of the Irish competition can be seen here. 2015 winners of the international competition can be seen here.

This year a new Wiki Loves Monuments writing competition is being launched. Running from Thurs 1^st September until Monday 31^st October, the competition is designed to engage more participants of Ireland’s Wiki Loves Monuments contest in actually creating and editing articles on Wikipedia. Entries to the competition must fall under one of three categories: Irish Monuments, People and Places of 1916, and Vicipéid (Gaeilge for Wikipedia).

Wiki Loves Monuments 2016 was officially launched at Archaeofest in Merrion Square, Dublin on Saturday 29^thAugust 2015. Run by the Institute of Archaeologists of Ireland, Archaeofest is a free, public engagement archaeology event. Members of the Wikimedia Community Ireland were in attendance showing off entries from last year’s Wiki Loves Media competition.

Certified by Guinness World Records as the world’s largest photography contest, the annual contest started in the Netherlands in 2010 which resulted in over 12,500 images uploaded. Since then it has grown significantly and in 2014 over 321,000 photographs were submitted by more than 9,000 participants from around the world. All images are uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, Wikimedia’s online repository that makes public domain and freely-licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips) available to everyone.

Rebecca O’Neill, Wikimedia Ireland commented, “We’ve been really impressed by the standard and variety of shots being submitted this year. The quality of images being taken and entered has improved every year since the competition started in Ireland in 2014. Last year’s competition saw almost 1,700 new images entered. These are greatly adding to the existing database of freely accessible images of national monuments.”

“Wiki Loves Monuments is expanding this year. As well as a photography competition, we’re also asking people to enter our writing competition. People can work alone or in a team and can enter as many articles as they like. All they have to do is register on the contest page on wikilovesmonuments.ie, where they’ll find all the information about scoring and prizes.”

“Don’t forget, anyone can take part. So visit your national monuments, take your best shots and upload them. There are no limits to the entries photographers can make – the photographer who won 7th place shot every monument near her, uploading 201 images, whereas the photographer who won first place only uploaded two images.”

How to take part in Wiki Loves Monuments:

1. Find your nearest eligible national monuments from the list provided on the Wiki Loves Monuments website.
2. Have a read of the rules and tips.
3. Go out and take your best shots or join a photowalk group.
4. Return to the Wiki Loves Monuments website and upload your best images using the handy image uploader. You’ll find a link called ‘Upload Image’ underneath the name of each monument. You’ll be asked to register an account with Wikimedia Commons, if you haven’t already.

For full details of the competition see www.wikilovesmonuments.ie and for updates see @wikimediaIE #WLMIE and Wikimedia Ireland’s Facebook page.