Our World is Kind 2024
Envision Kindness uses images to inspire kindness, compassion, joy, and love. People are exposed to negative images, stories, and experiences daily. These include greed, violence, anger, disaster, etc. This exposure is stressful to the viewer—it causes anger, anxiety, depression, and can affect behavior, disconnecting people from one another.
To help counterbalance the negative, we need to be able to provide them with diverse positive images regularly. These images have great power to bring out joy, gratitude, optimism, love, and compassion.
To accomplish this, a large portfolio of moving and inspiring images that include depictions of kindness, compassion, love and connection are needed. Photographers from around the world play a critical part in this crowd sourced effort to remind people that we are all human and connected to each other in many different ways. Society desperately needs all of our help.
Many of the images that are submitted to this contest will be used to further the mission to help people see kindness and do more kindnesses (includes prize winners and images that did not win a prize). All image usage will be exclusively for Envision Kindness projects, outreach, and mission building in a non-commercial way.
The contest is open to all photographers 18 years of age and older.
There is no geographic restriction on the origin of the contestant.
Participants must submit their own original work.
Participants may submit up to 5 entries total.
All content submitted must be entirely original with all rights owned by the submitter. Material violating copyright laws will be disqualified. If there is more than one creator for a submission, the other co-creators need to be acknowledged and have given permission to the named creator who submits the entry.
Submitter must be able to grant Envision Kindness a limited non-exclusive license to use the image through Envision Kindness’ own platforms or those of its partners to promote its mission.
Images must be appropriate for all audiences. The content should be universally positive although “negative” content that has clear kindness relevance and results in an uplifting message may also be accepted.
There is no entry fee for entering the contest.
In order for a photography club or organization to receive a prize, photographers must enter the name of the club and include the dedicated website of the club at the time of submission. Clubs must have been active for at least 6 months and have at least 10 members.
CONTEST SCHEDULE
Submissions Open: September 2024
Final Submission Deadline: November 3, 2024, at 11:59 pm EDT
Online voting: November 2024
Winners announced: December 2024
All entries that have been properly submitted are reviewed to be sure they meet all standards and requirements of the contest.
Once approved, submissions are posted to the contest website. The first step of finalist selection is public voting, in which the public selects 10 of the approximately 70 finalists. All photographers will be notified when voting will open. All submitted and approved photos are eligible for public voting. The finalists chosen through public voting will be included in the pool of finalists considered for the first prize and honorable mentions.
The other finalists are selected by Envision Kindness staff.
Once all of the finalists have been determined, the final winning photos for each prize will be selected by our panel of judges.
PRIZES
There will be eight prizes awarded to individual photographers: First place, Nonprofit Honoree, AI Inner Visions, and five Honorable Mentions.
The Nonprofit Honoree prize will be awarded to the photo that most powerfully tells the story of a registered nonprofit (charity) or NGO and their community impact. 50% of the prize will be awarded to the photographer, 50% of the prize will be awarded to the featured nonprofit.
The AI “Inner Visions” prize will be awarded to an AI-created image of kindness. AI images will not be considered for prizes in any other category, and should be submitted within this category only.
First Place: $1000
Non-Profit Honoree Award: $500
AI Inner Visions Award: $250
Honorable Mention (5 chosen): $200 each
Each photo can only win one prize, whichever is greater.
The following prizes are to be awarded to photography clubs or organizations. Club or organization membership must be indicated at the time of submission of the photograph.
Further information: www.envisionkindness.org