Press Release - Local Start Ups First International Photo Competition

The Motif Collective, a new internet start-up located in Fernandina Beach, Florida just completed its First Online Photography Competition.

For a very small entry fee, The Motif Collective allows photographers to take part in photographic competitions where they are independently judged by professional photographers.

The industry does have a number of Photography Competitions but other than the big once a year hosted events by the Big Camera manufacturers there are only a handful of providers supporting worthwhile competitions. The majority of online completions do not support photographers very well, they charge entry fees without giving out cash awards and those that do only give out a flat rate with no regard for how much in entry fees were collected. The demand for competitions has grown exponentially in the past few years’ right along with the digital photography market and although the exact number is not known it is estimated that over one million paid submissions are made each year.

With The Motif Collective winners of the online photography competitions receive, quality web promotions, press releases and cash awards which are financed by the entry fees. Where competitors are only paying out an average of 0-9% of their entry fees, Motif will always pay out 50% of all entry fees to the top three Awards Spots in each competition. Competitions will be hosted monthly and the more competition an event has the larger the prize will be. Initially they plan to just offer one new theme each month with the complete focus of the event on single competition.

The winners of the Inaugural “Open Themed” completion were:

First Place - Lisa Shalom of Lisa Shalom Photography (www.lisashalom.com) in Province, Nebraska for her image titled "Friday Funday".

Second Place - Martin Smith of Martin Smith Images (www.martinsmithimages.eu) in Haskovo, Bulgaria for his image titled "Oops".

Third Place - Steven Digman of "The Haiku of More Beer Photography" (digmansworld.com) in Hagerstown, Maryland for his image titled "Love in the Twenty-First Century".

Honoroable Mention - Josh Chow of JC Photography ( www.JoshChow.com) London, UK for his image "Salt of The Earth".

The wining images are displayed here, in The Motif Collective winner’s gallery and are available for purchase at each of the participant’s websites.