The fifth edition of the CEWE Photo Award is themed around ‘Our world is beautiful’ – more poignant than ever, surely, given current global events – and there are 10 categories.
These are: Landscapes, People, Nature, Architecture and Technology, Sports, Cooking and Food, Hobby and Leisure, Animals, Travel and Culture and Aerial Photography.
Entrants to the competition can submit up to 100 photos while the entry window is open, which is until May 2023.
To find out more, and to enter, go to the CEWE Photo Award website.
After a record number of entries in the last competition – more than 600,000 – CEWE is expecting another bumper crop of entrants.
The 1,000 first-place winners can look forward to drawing on a prize pot totaling more than €250,000 ($267,000/£213,000).
And three monthly winners will be chosen, each receiving a voucher for CEWE photo products worth €100 ($85/£105).
Children's relief organization SOS Children's Villages Worldwide has been selected as the awards’ charity partner, with 10 Euro cents being donated to an educational project for every photo submitted.
Established for over 50 years, CEWE is the largest photo printing service in Europe, delivering millions of photo products each year including wedding photo books, greetings cards and holiday snaps.
To celebrate the launch of the 2023 competition, CEWE hosted a media event at London’s Old Street Gallery, attended by the 2021 competition’s UK and Ireland winners, who offered some insights into their winning images and shared their experiences of having won in a prestigious competition.
Launching the event, Petra Felgen, managing director of CEWE UK, said: “We started small with this competition five years ago. We believe that ‘Our world is beautiful’ has never meant so much as it does now.
“It is also a pleasure to partner with the SOS Children's Villages Worldwide again, and for this year again, 10 Euro cents will be donated per entry. We are very proud to have this partnership.
“And there will be 1,000 other winners. We hope that even more people will have the passion and enter our awards. A combination of keen amateurs and professionals, it’s beautiful to see this mix sharing this passion, in 10 different categories. We couldn’t do it without our great jury.”
A member of that jury, leading music photographer Christie Goodwin, then took the floor to reveal what she loves about being involved in this competition.
“I have been a judge in this competition twice and now I am doing it again,” she said. “There are three things I really like about the CEWE Photo Award.
“When approached to judge photo competitions I always used to decline, as I always viewed photo competitions as a commercial arrangement. When CEWE approached me I said ’no thanks’. Then they said it was free to enter and I said ‘I’m in’. Secondly, I like the lack of distinction between amateur and professional in this competition – a professional photographer is just someone who invoices a client, after all. The third reason is the competition motto, ‘Our world is beautiful.’ It’s a wide-open invitation to be creative and it doesn’t matter what you shoot.
“When we get to the jury stage, it’s such a tough job: there are second and third votes and nothing is ready until all the judges agree. I have no knowledge of aerial photography, for example, but now I know what to look for. I just try to see what has gone into every image – the effort, the story. For me, that is very attractive.”
Cewe Photo Award 2023 prizes
The first prize includes the CEWE Photo Award trophy as well as a one-of-a-kind trip of the winner’s choice valued at €15,000 ($16,100/£12,800), photo equipment worth €7,500 ($8,000/£6,400) and CEWE photo products worth €2,500 ($2,680/£2,100). The other nine category winners will each receive photo equipment worth €5,000 as well as CEWE photo products worth €2,500.
Prizes for places 11 to 30 comprise photo equipment for each winner worth €2,500 and CEWE photo products worth €1,000. Winners 31 to 1,000 will each receive a voucher for CEWE photo products worth €100.
In addition, three winners will be chosen each month, independent of category or country. These monthly winners will each receive a voucher for CEWE photo products worth €100.
To find out more, and to enter, go to the CEWE Photo Award website.
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