Calgary Wildlife 2025 Wildlife Photo Contest 

Minimum donation amount per photo entry: $15 (you will be redirected to payment link upon entry)

Contest Begins: March 3rd, 2025 (World Wildlife Day)

Photo Entry Deadline: April 15th, 2025

Prizes will be given to 1st, 2nd, 3rd places as well as a public choice award. 

Rules and Procedures 

Sponsor: Thank you to the 2025 “Eye for the Wild” photo contest official sponsor: The Camera Store.

We also thank and acknowledge the generosity of all of our photo contest prize sponsors including:  My Fave Straps and Vistek Calgary

Eligibility: This contest is open to amateur photographers only. For the purposes of this contest, an amateur photographer is anyone who does not make more than 25% of his or her yearly income from taking or selling photographs. Calgary Wildlife Board Members and staff are not eligible to enter the contest. 

Calgary Wildlife will not be responsible for entries that cannot be processed due to network, hardware or other technical failures. Calgary Wildlife reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to cancel or close the contest if it becomes technically corrupted or because of unauthorized human interference. In the event of cancellation, Calgary Wildlife reserves the right to judge the eligible entries received prior to the date of cancellation. 

Submission Requirements: Each entry must be accompanied with an individual digital entry form and all applicable fees by 11:59 pm on April 15th, 2025 (the “Deadline”). Any contest entries submitted after the Deadline will not be eligible for the contest. 

Each photographer may enter up to three (3) images. If more than three entries are submitted, Calgary Wildlife reserves the right to choose which (three) 3 photographs will be used as submissions. Additionally, entry fees will not be refunded. 

During photo upload, EVERY entrant will be asked to provide the following information for EACH image (up to three) submitted: 

• Photo title
• Location of photo
• Equipment used
• Photographer name
• Email address
• Telephone Number

The subject in the photograph must be Alberta wildlife in their native habitat (including mammals, birds, insects, amphibians, reptiles, fish, etc.). Native habitat can include city landscapes. Calgary Wildlife requests that there is no human contact. Photographs of domestic animals (cats, dogs, pets etc.) and zoo animals are not eligible. 

Photographers should follow ethical photography best practices, while there is no concrete set of rules, National Geographic photographers encourage you to follow these guidelines:

1. Do no harm

• Do not destroy or alter habitat for a better view or scene.
• Let animals go about their business. Do not seek their attention or interaction.
• Take special care at breeding season.
• Know the signs of stress of your subject species.

2. Keep it wild

• Do not feed wildlife.
• Avoid habituating wild animals to humans’ presence.

3. Follow the laws

• Laws vary by location and species.
• Laws vary depending on the purpose and method of photography.

4. Caption with honesty

• Be transparent about how a photograph was made.

5. Reputation is everything

• Word travels fast in the wildlife photography community, and fakery or harmful field practices can be readily exposed. These days, it’s not just editors and other photographers that are on the lookout; increasingly, viewers on social media are too, speaking up when things appear suspect.

Entries may be in colour, black and white, horizontal or vertical format. Digital photos must be between 2 and 5 mb with a quality of no less than 300 ppi. Photos must be in jpeg or png format. Digital files can be submitted online via Woobox.

You must be the sole author and owner of the copyright in all photos entered. 

Images must not have been digitally altered in any way other than basic cropping, exposure, brightness, and colour adjustments.

Watermarks, signatures or copyright notices detract from the natural appearance of photographs and are not permitted on entries for this contest. Please remove any such marking prior to submission. Failure to do so will result in the photos being disqualified. Entry donations will not be refunded.

All submissions must be submitted with the following file name format:  lastname_firstname_imagetitle 

While you will retain the copyright of your photograph, by entering the contest and submitting the contest entry form below, you agree that Calgary Wildlife will have the right to use any photos submitted as part of its 2026 calendar and merchandise or for other educational or promotional purposes. 

By entering the contest, you agree that you will not make any complaint against Calgary Wildlife for any events, acts or omissions that are in any way connected with, or which arise directly or indirectly, out of the submission of the photographs. 

Judging: 

Three rounds of judging will select winning entries. 

The first round will be to select photos that are technically, compositionally, and artistically superior (Clearly focused, few man made objects, etc) this will be done by contest organizers at Calgary Wildlife as the entries come in. 

The second round will be to select 20% from the total number of entries that are artistically superior and feature a diverse range of wildlife. This stage will also be done by Calgary Wildlife contest organizers. 

The third or final round will result in the selection of the TOP PRIZE winners. The 20% selected image entries will be judged on technical skill, content, overall aesthetic and ability to capture the essence of the animal by our judging panel. 

HOW: Each judge will review all 20% selected entries and select their personal top 5. All top 5 selected images from each judge will then be pooled together and sent out as a digital package to all the judges to be scored according to their merit in technical skill, content, overall aesthetic and capture of the essence of the animal on a scale of 1-5. Scores will then be tallied and images ranked by their scores, with prizes awarded to the top three images as well as the public's choice. In the case of a tie, we will reach out to the judges to discuss and come to a tie breaker.

Judges will be appointed by Calgary Wildlife and the judges will be responsible for choosing the winners. The judges’ decision on all matters relating to the competition is final. 

Entries that do not adhere to the rules will be disqualified. 

The public choice prizes will be voted on digitally by the general public using the Woobox gallery voting system. In this voting, all of the images entered into the contest that meet contest rules will be available digitally to be voted on using the contest entry app/plugin. People will look through the images and add their vote using the method the system provides. The system limits the number of votes each IP address can make (tries to prevent gaming the system). Once the voting closes, we will be able to see the winning choice. 

Judges:

Darryl MacDonald - Calgary based aerial and underwater photographer with projects around the globe.

Allison Seto - Calgary based photographer specializing in portraiture, event, and concert photography.

Brian McDonald - Graphic Communication and Print Technology Instructor at SAIT & amateur photographer. 

 

Prize Details

Awarding of Prizes: The notification of prize winners will be made no later than May 30, 2025. All winners will be notified by phone and email. If a prize winner does not respond by email to claim the prize within 15 days of notification the prize will be forfeited. All prizes will need to be picked up from the Calgary Wildlife business office. 

Winners List: The top prize winning images and the names of the top prize winning photographers will be posted on the Calgary Wildlife website and newsletter and social media following May 15, 2025. 

Privacy: Calgary Wildlife does not sell, trade, or barter names, e-mail addresses, or other personal data that we collect on our website.