Earth Photo 2022 open for entries

^{The Sea Moves Us, The Sea Moves by Antonio Pérez}

The Society is excited to announce the 2022 Earth Photo competition is open for entries.

Now more than ever, photography has the power to celebrate the natural world, create conversations about our environment, and bring us together. Developed in partnership with Forestry England, Earth Photo aims to foster a better understanding of the world around us through the complementary disciplines of the environment and geography. 

Amateur and professional photographers and filmmakers of all ages are invited to submit up to 10 photographs or films that focus on the key themes of People, Place, Nature, Changing Forests and A Climate of Change. Image subjects could include human connections to the natural world, natural and social values of the environment, resilience and innovative solutions, extreme events and environmental destruction, or adapting to the effects of a changing climate.

Director of the Society, Professor Joe Smith, said: “Earth Photo plays a unique role in the landscape of photo competitions. Just like the subject of geography, Earth Photo invites photographers and filmmakers, and their audiences, to take an integrated, whole-system view of the relationships between humans and their world.”

Previous winners of the Earth Photo competition have covered a wide range of topics in their images. Last year’s overall winner, Rosie Hallam, produced a stunning triptych A Right to an Education depicting one family’s story: daughter Selamaw, the first person in her family to stay on at school past primary age, her mother Meselech, and finally her father Marco, who are all subsistence farmers participating in an education programme in Ethiopia. 2020’s overall winner, Jonk, depicted abandoned spaces reclaimed by nature, whilst in 2019, Elizabetta Zavoli’s winning image showed the only midwife for 18,000 villagers living inside and around Jakarta’s Bantar Gebang landfill site.

The competition is open to UK and international photographers, and shortlisted works will be displayed in our Pavilion from June to August. Three further exhibitions will take place at Forestry England venues later in the year.

Submitted photographs and films will be judged by a panel of experts chaired by award-winning photojournalist Marissa Roth. The panel will select an overall winner as well as a winner within each category, each of whom will be awarded £250.

The deadline for entries is Tuesday 3 May.

Find out more and submit your entries on the Earth Photo website