Wiki Loves Monuments photo competition opens
The 2018 Wiki Loves Monuments photography competition takes place from Saturday 25th August – Saturday 30th September. Initiated by the Wikimedia Community, the movement behind Wikipedia, and organised locally by the Wikimedia Community Ireland. The competition aims to raise awareness of Ireland’s national monuments and protected structures while creating a crowd-sourced repository of quality photos that will be free to strengthen public engagement and education.
All photographers are invited to photograph the built heritage in their locality and upload their photos to Wikimedia Commons. Entries will be judged by an Irish panel of judges and the winners will be announced in late October 2018. The top ten Irish images will be entered into the international competition.
Since 2014 the Wiki Loves Monuments competition in Ireland has seen 718 photographers submitting a total of 5235 images. For full details of the competition see www.wikilovesmonuments.ie and for updates see @wikimediaIE #WLMIE and Wikimedia Ireland’s Facebook page.
Certified by Guinness World Records as the world’s largest photography contest, the annual competition started in the Netherlands in 2010. 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 Community Ireland commented: "In 2014 we had a list of around 600 structures, since then our volunteers have worked with the National Monument Service and the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage to expand that list so now there are over 6000 sites that are waiting to get some Wiki Love. The list includes bridges, churches, banks, monuments, and canal locks to name a few."
"This is our fifth year of the competition in Ireland, and it is fantastic that people can still be the first to take a photograph of a lesser known bridge, market building or country house. Don’t forget, anyone can take part. So visit your national monuments and protected buildings, take your best shots and upload them. There are no limits to the entries photographers can submit."