Arctic Council seeks Arctic photos

These sled dogs wait on the sea outside Iqaluit on March 24. The Arctic Council is looking for photos from the Arctic that it can display at the ministerial meeting slated for May 15 in Kiruna, Sweden, and use on its website. (FILE PHOTO)

The Arctic Council is looking for photos about life in the Arctic to decorate the hall in Kiruna, Sweden where top ministers from the council’s eight-member nations will meet May 15.

If you’re an “enthusiastic hobby photographer living, working or visiting the Arctic,” you can enter the photo contest.

The Arctic Council is accepting photo submissions in four different categories:

• landscapes: photos of natural Arctic landscapes such as fiords, mountains, beaches, tundra, glaciers, and more, with information about where the photo was taken and when;

• Plants and Animals: photos of wild plants and animals that are native to the Arctic. You must also identify the animals and plants in the photos, to the species if possible, and include where the photo was taken and when.

• Arctic peoples: photos of people living in the Arctic, both indigenous peoples and other residents (But be certain that you have permission from the people in the photo before submitting it to the contest. You must also include some background information on the people in the photo, such as their name(s), where they are living, and where the photo was taken and when).

• people in action: photos of people pursuing various activities in the Arctic, such as work, research, sports, hunting, fishing, workshops, meetings, and more. Again, please be certain that you have permission from the people, in the photo, and details before submitting it to the contest.

You may submit only two photos in each category.

To enter, send your high resolution photos by April 17 to acs@arctic-council.org and say “Photo Contest Entry” in the title of the message.

All photos must be in .jpg format and minimum 2,272 x 1,704 pixels in size with 300 dpi resolution.

The Arctic Council also encourages you to write 100 words about yourself and why you wanted to enter the contest.

One winner in each category will receive the book Polar Obsession by Paul Nicklen, an photography book on the animals living in the polar regions.

First, second, and third place winners in each category will have their photos printed and displayed at the meeting venue during the Kiruna May 15 meeting. The winning photos will also be posted on the Arctic Council homepage.

Other photos will are likely to be used on the Arctic Council’s website.

The contest will be judged by the Arctic Council Secretariat, the Swedish Chairmanship of the Arctic Council, and local photography experts in Tromsø, Norway. Any decision that the jury makes is final. They have the right to reject photos due to low quality, late submission, offensive content, or breaking the contest rules.

Photographers retain full copyrights to their submitted photographs.

But, by submitting photos to the contest, entrants allow the Arctic Council and the Arctic Council Secretariat a “world-wide, royalty-free, irrevocable and non-exclusive right and license to use, copy, adapt, transmit, communicate, publicly display, and create compilations and derivative works from any submitted photographs.”

In addition, entrants grant the Arctic Council and the Arctic Council Secretariat the right to deposit the photographs in their archives for safekeeping and to use the photographs for their own educational and non-commercial use. Photographers will always be credited by name when their photo is used in any context.