Resource: Photo Contests and Grants Calendar

(Updated August 2024)

Did you know that an editor can help you home in on the right images for contests and grants?

An objective, outside opinion and fresh look at work can help you craft a contest or grant entry that connects with the judges.

I've created contest edits for numerous photographers who went on to win World Press Photo, POYi, Communication Arts, and PDN Photo Annual awards.

Photography Contests and Grants Calendar for 2024

Photography offers many opportunities to showcase your talent and receive support through contests and grants. Below is a comprehensive list of key photography contests and grants for 2024, including specific grants aimed at documentary photographers who are People of Color, Women, or Indigenous.

Top Photography Contests and General Grants for 2024

1. International Photography Awards (IPA)

   • Prizes: Up to $12,000 for professionals

   • Eligibility: Open to photographers of all levels worldwide

   • Categories: Ranging from fine art to documentary photography

   • Deadline: January 31, 2024

   • Details: IPA Website​

2. Sony World Photography Awards

   • Prizes: Multiple categories with significant media exposure

   • Eligibility: Open globally with specific categories for youth, students, and professionals

   • Deadline: Various deadlines for different categories (Professional competition: January 12, 2024; Open competition: January 5, 2024)

   • Details: Sony World Photography Awards​

3. Monovisions Photography Awards

   • Prizes: $3,000 for Black and White Series of the Year

   • Eligibility: Open to black and white photographers at all levels

   • Deadline: January 21, 2024

   • Details: Monovisions Awards

4. Fine Art Photography Awards

   • Prizes: $5,000 in total cash prizes

   • Eligibility: Open to all, with categories for both amateurs and professionals

   • Deadline: February 11, 2024 (Early Bird: October 13, 2023)

   • Details: Fine Art Photography Awards​

5. Abbey Road Studios Music Photography Awards

   • Prizes: Mentorship sessions with leading industry figures

   • Eligibility: Open to all music photographers

   • Deadline: July 18, 2024

   • Details: Abbey Road Studios

6. Getty Images Editorial Grants

   • Amount: $5,000 to $15,000

   • Eligibility: Open to emerging photographers and photojournalists

   • Focus: Supports impactful editorial projects, particularly those highlighting underrepresented communities

   • Deadline: Typically opens in spring

   • Details: Getty Images Grants

7. The Howard Chapnick Grant

   • Amount: $10,000

   • Eligibility: Focuses on education, research, and projects promoting social change in photojournalism

   • Deadline: Spring 2024

   • Details: W. Eugene Smith Fund​

8. The Magnum Foundation Fund

   • Amount: Varies per project

   • Eligibility: Prioritizes photographers of color and those working on projects related to social justice

   • Deadline: Typically opens in March

   • Details: Magnum Foundation

9. National Geographic Storytelling Grants

   • Amount: Up to $30,000

   • Eligibility: Open to photographers documenting underrepresented communities or critical global issues

   • Deadline: Rolling deadlines throughout the year

   • Details: National Geographic​

10. The Alexia Foundation Grants

    • Amount: Varies

    • Eligibility: Supports photographers focusing on social justice and human rights issues

    • Deadline: Opens in early 2024

    • Details: Alexia Foundation​

Top Grants for Documentary Photographers (People of Color, Women, Indigenous)

1. Women Photograph Project Grants

   • Amount: Up to $5,000

   • Eligibility: Open to women and non-binary documentary photographers

   • Focus: Supports photographers telling stories about their communities or issues affecting women globally

   • Deadline: Opens in spring 2024

   • Details: Women Photograph​

2. The Nat Geo Explorer Grant

   • Amount: Up to $10,000

   • Eligibility: Open to early-career photographers who identify as women, Indigenous, or as part of an underrepresented community

   • Focus: Supports impactful storytelling projects

   • Deadline: Rolling applications throughout the year

   • Details: National Geographic Explorers​

3. Indigenous Photograph Annual Grant

   • Amount: Varies

   • Eligibility: Indigenous photographers from around the world

   • Focus: Supports the work of Indigenous photographers documenting their communities and issues relevant to them

   • Deadline: Typically opens in the fall

   • Details: Indigenous Photograph​

4. The Visionary Woman Awards

   • Amount: $5,000

   • Eligibility: Open to women photographers with a focus on social justice or environmental issues

   • Focus: Supports projects that address critical issues affecting women and communities of color

   • Deadline: Summer 2024

   • Details: Visionary Woman Awards​

5. Native and Indigenous Photographer Fund

   • Amount: $10,000

   • Eligibility: Exclusively for Native American, First Nations, and Indigenous photographers

   • Focus: Supports documentary photography projects that highlight Indigenous experiences and stories

   • Deadline: Typically opens in the fall

   • Details: Native Photographers​

6. Black Women Photographers Grant

   • Amount: $5,000

   • Eligibility: Open to Black women and non-binary photographers

   • Focus: Provides funding to help elevate the work of Black women photographers and document their communities

   • Deadline: Opens in spring 2024

   • Details: Black Women Photographers​

7. Diverse Photographers Initiative by Adobe

   • Amount: $10,000

   • Eligibility: Open to photographers of color, particularly those from underrepresented communities

   • Focus: Supports creative projects that highlight diversity and social justice

   • Deadline: Opens in the spring of 2024

   • Details: Adobe Diversity Initiative

8. The Serendipity Arles Grant

   • Amount: €5,000

   • Eligibility: South Asian women photographers

   • Focus: Supports creative documentary projects that explore social issues in South Asia

   • Deadline: Typically opens in late summer

   • Details: Serendipity Arles Grant

9. Fellowship for Black Photographers by Light Work

   • Amount: $10,000

   • Eligibility: Black photographers working on documentary projects

   • Focus: Supports emerging and mid-career Black photographers with a focus on documentary work

   • Deadline: Opens in early 2024

   • Details: Light Work​

10. The Color Positive Grant

    • Amount: $7,500

    • Eligibility: Photographers of color

    • Focus: Supports documentary photography projects that highlight positive stories from communities of color

    • Deadline: Opens in the fall

    • Details: Color Positive Grant​

Conclusion

The landscape of photography contests and grants is rich and diverse, with numerous opportunities for photographers of all backgrounds to advance their careers and amplify their voices. For documentary photographers who are People of Color, Women, or Indigenous, these grants provide vital support to tell important stories that might otherwise go unheard. Stay updated with deadlines and apply to those that resonate most with your work and vision.

Explore, create, and submit—2024 could be your year to shine!

Moving Walls deadline one week away

from: http://www.soros.org/initiatives/photography/focus_areas/mw/guidelines The Open Society Institute invites photographers to submit a body of work for consideration in the Moving Walls 18 group exhibition.

Moving Walls is an exhibition series that features in-depth and nuanced explorations of human rights and social issues.  Thematically linked to OSI's mission, Moving Walls is exhibited at OSI’s offices in New York and Washington, DC and includes seven discrete bodies of work.

Moving Walls recognizes the brave and difficult work that photographers undertake globally in their documentation of complex social and political issues.  Their images provide the world with human rights evidence, put faces onto a conflict, document the struggles and defiance of marginalized people, reframe how issues are discussed publicly, and provide opportunities for reflection and discussion.  Through Moving Walls, OSI honors this work while visually highlighting the mission of our foundation to staff and visitors.

For participating photographers, a key benefit of the program is to gain exposure for both the social justice or human rights issues they photograph, and for themselves as photographers.  When the tour ends, photographers may keep their professionally-produced exhibition to use however they wish.

Ian Parry Scholarship Deadline is July 2

For those of you under 24, from http://www.ianparry.org/

The Ian Parry Scholarship 2010 deadline is Friday 2nd July. Applications are digital. FTP instructions and application forms are available from http://www.ianparry.org/

The Ian Parry Scholarship is designed to award young photojournalists with a bursary that will enable them to undertake a chosen project and raise their profile in the international photographic community. The Scholarship is aimed at traditional or contemporary photojournalism and photographers with strong story telling capabilities.

Ian Parry was a photojournalist who died whilst on assignment for the Sunday Times during the Romanian revolution in 1989. He was just 24 years old. The Scholarship was set up by Aidan Sullivan and Ian’s friends and family in order to build something positive from such a tragic death.

The competition is for photographers on full-time photographic courses or who are 24 years or under. The prize is £3,000 towards an assignment, a commission for Save The Children plus £500 for runners up. Entrants must submit: A digital portfolio of 12 images to our FTP following our guidelines An application form A brief synopsis of a project they would undertake if they won the award

We are delighted to announce the continued support of the Sunday Times Magazine, which publishes an extended feature of all the finalist’s work and World Press Photo who will automatically accept the winner onto their final list of nominees for the Joop Swart Masterclass in Amsterdam.

Once again, our extremely popular and well-attended print exhibition will take place in London at the Getty Images Gallery. The exhibition will run for one week from the 18th August 2010.

Thank you for your interest and continued support, Best wishes Rebecca

Contact: Rebecca McClelland, Deputy Director becky@ianparry.org http://www.ianparry.org/

Fabrica F Award Deadline Extended

from http://www.fff.ph/ Fabrica, the Benetton Group’s communication research center and Forma, Centro Internazionale di Fotografia (international photography center) launch the third edition of the F Award - international award for concerned photography.

The F Award aims to involve photographers from all over the world.

The F Award aims to award photography that documents and criticizes, that tells a story: dramas, struggles, abused rights, but also dignity; pain and consolation, desperation and hope; the loss of everything and the triumph of life’s new possibilities and lastly the things that people do to face all of this. In a word, life.

The F Award aims to promote photography as a means of transmitting information and creating awareness. Without photography what would we know of hunger in the world, of the likely outcome of every war, of the living conditions of “the other half” to quote the work of one of concerned photography’s pioneers?

The F Award is inspired by the following words, published in 1972 by Cornell Capa: “They are concerned photographers. They take sides. They are people who wanted to show things that had to be corrected…wanted to show things that had to be appreciated”. The Concerned Photographer, Editor Cornell Capa, Grossman 1972

What to do: photographers who would like to participate should propose a series of photographs by June 7th, 2010 that would be part of a wider project that the prize will help finance.

The jury is formed by international personalities and is chaired by Peter Galassi, Director of Photography at MOMA, New York.

The other jury members are:

Monica Allende, Director of Photography, The Sunday Times Magazine Enrico Bossan, Director of Photography, Fabrica Melissa Harris, Editor, Aperture Roberto Koch, President, Forma Paolo Pellegrin, Photographer Magnum Photos Urs Stahel, Director of the Museum of Winterthur (Zurich)

The jury will award the most interesting project with a contribution of euro 20.000 and the possibility of publishing a book.

A special section, F25, for photographers under 25 will see the winner awarded with a one year scholarship in Fabrica’s photography area.

For further information:

Fabrica Press Office Angela Quintavalle angie@fabrica.it ph: +39-0422-516209 www.fabrica.it

Forma Press Office Laura Bianconi lbianconi@formafoto.it ph: +39-02-58118067 www.formafoto.it