Global Urban Wildlife Photography Awards 2022 – submissions now open!

Global Urban Wildlife Photography Awards launched by Picfair photography platform
Lost in town (Image credit: Niney Azman / Picfair)

Picfair is hosting a new free-to-enter global photography competition on the theme of Urban Wildlife. Entries are open now for you to submit your best shots until the closing deadline on 31 May 2022. 

Winners will be awarded across three categories, with prizes from Picfair, MPB, Camtraptions and Peak Design all up for grabs. 

These are the best camera for wildlife photography

Images of urban wildlife sparked an increase during the pandemic, and fascination with capturing snapshots of nature show no signs of subsiding. The number of Urban Wildlife images on Picfair has more than quadrupled since 2019 and the City Nature Challenge, one of the biggest global databases of urban wildlife, made a record breaking 1.2 million observations last year.

With this in mind, Picfair's new Urban Wildlife Photography Awards aims to celebrate this genre's surge in popularity and has brought together an esteemed judging panel. It includes award-winning wildlife photographer and columnist Melissa Groo, Urban Wildlife photography guru Andrew Budziak, author and co-founder of birdsong recognition app Florence Wilkinson, and international wildlife photographer and Camtraptions founder Will Burrard-Lucas.

Skulk of foxes (Image credit: Chris Hill / Picfair)

Categories for the competition include: Daylight, wildlife that has been photographed in an urban setting during the day; Nightlife, wildlife photographed in an urban setting at night or dusk; and Fancy Seeing You Here, the unexpected guests’ category, for surprising or funny shots of wildlife in an urban setting.  

Photographers can enter as many images as they like across all three categories, for free. The chosen overall winner of the competition will receive a Nikon Z6 II with a Nikkor Z 24-70mm lens kit, a lifetime Picfair Plus subscription, as well as their winning image as a framed 30x20cm (12x7in) print. 

You look just like me (Image credit: Simon Newman / Picfair)

Category winners will also receive lifetime Picfair Plus subscriptions and a framed print, in addition to the winner of the Daylight category receiving an Everyday backpack 20L, Slide Strap and Carbon Fibre Tripod from Peak Design (worth over $1,125 / £850 / AU$1,500). The Nightlife category winner is to receive A Garden Camera Trap bundle from Camtraptions (worth $468 / £354 / AU$626), and the Fancy Seeing You Here category winner will receive £500 ($661 / AU$884) in MPB vouchers

Fifty percent of the profits received from competition prints sales will be donated to the wildlife conservation non-profit, Re:wild, supporting its mission to protect and restore the wild to build a thriving Earth where all life can flourish. This organization was founded in 2021 with an aim to restore biodiversity, regarded as the primary solution to the triple threat of climate change, extinction and global pandemics.

Urban raccoon on roof in Toronto, Canada. (Image credit: Beth Baisch / Picfair)

For more information on how to enter the competition, the judges, plus the all important guidelines and terms and conditions, check out the competition website and get your entries submitted before 31 May 2022. A big thanks to Picfair and its community of photographers for supplying us with these delightful images, also. 

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Beth Nicholls
Staff Writer

A staff writer for Digital Camera World, Beth has an extensive background in various elements of technology with five years of experience working as a tester and sales assistant for CeX. After completing a degree in Music Journalism, followed by obtaining a Master's degree in Photography awarded by the University of Brighton, she spends her time outside of DCW as a freelance photographer specialising in live music events and band press shots under the alias 'bethshootsbands'.