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#BackClimateAction image competition

This is your opportunity to use photography to tell your climate change story.

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Back Climate Action

What does climate change mean to you?

This new image competition is about your climate change story and what the issue means to you. Rather than melting ice caps and polar bears, which are often the images that first spring to mind, we want to see images that illustrate how you think climate change might impact the things you care most about in your day-to-day life.

We would like to see your image address one or more of the following questions:

  • What do you most want to protect from the impacts of climate change?
    • For example: your health, the food you eat or your business.
  • What feeling does climate change provoke?
    • For example: loss, challenge, change, action or opportunity.
  • What can tackling climate change lead to?
    • For example: new ways of living, innovative new products, changes to the way you travel or new sources of energy.

The winning entry will be the image that challenges us to re-imagine climate change in the most original and engaging way. First prize is a masterclass with Getty Images in London and a boat trip to photograph a wind farm off the Teesside coast. Five runners-up will win a pair of tickets to the Natural History Museum’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition in London and a Getty ‘Year in Focus’ book.

During the final week of the competition, we will also be showcasing some of the entries in the Natural History Museum’s Attenborough Studio, open to the general public.

The closing date for entries is 17:00 on Friday, 6 March 2015. The winner and runners-up will be announced during the week commencing 16 March 2015.

How to enter:

The competition will be run on Instagram, but entries can also be submitted via Twitter if you don’t have an Instagram account.

  1. Take a picture that illustrates what climate change means to you;
  2. Write a caption of no more than 80 words that describes what the image is, where it is, and why it illustrates climate change to you;
  3. Include the #BackClimateAction hashtag so we can track your entry, without this we can’t include your entry in the competition;
  4. Post it on Instagram (and/or Twitter).

Get some inspiration by searching #BackClimateAction on Instagram, take a look at @everydayclimatechange or visit ‘climate change explained’ page on GOV.UK

Throughout the competition we will be pinning your entries to Pinterest.

Judging and criteria

Judging your entries will be…

  • TV presenter & Professor of Public Engagement in Science, Professor Alice Roberts
  • Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Edward Davey
  • Director of the Natural History Museum, Sir Michael Dixon
  • Creative Director at Getty Images, Anthony Holland Parkin
  • Photographer and contributor to @everydayclimatechange on Instagram, Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert

Each entry will be judged against the following three criteria:

  • An alternative vision of climate change (addressing one or more of the questions above)
  • Aesthetic photographic representation
  • Description of how your image represents climate change

Whilst high quality, professional photography is welcome, this competition is just as much about you picking up your phone and taking a quick photo of something that you relate to climate change; we want to see climate change through your eyes, so not being an expert photographer shouldn’t put you off participating.

Please read the terms and conditions before submitting an entry, this includes information on the judging process and eligibility for the prize.

Background

This competition is the latest in DECC’s climate change social media activity following the highly successful #BackClimateAction Tweetathon held in November 2014..

Terms and conditions

Competition terms and conditions

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Published 17 February 2015
Last updated 18 February 2015 + show all updates
  1. Launch of #BackClimateAction image competition

  2. First published.