[Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Participants in world’s largest photo contest -- Wiki Loves Monuments 2012 -- will upload images under free license for use on Wikipedia.

[Jay Walsh]

(This release is also posted on the Wikimedia Foundation's wiki at:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/WLM_photo_contest_launches_August_2012
)

*Participants in world’s largest photo contest -- Wiki Loves Monuments 2012
-- will upload images under free license for use on Wikipedia.*

*U.S. participants join Wikipedians in more than 30 countries to document
historic sites, monuments, and cultural heritage.*

San Francisco -- August 29, 2012 -- Wikipedians around the world will
participate in the world’s largest photo contest, Wiki Loves Monuments
2012, from September 1st through 30th. Thousands of volunteers in more than
30 countries will upload photos of historic sites throughout the month,
making hundreds of thousands of photos available under a free license on
Wikipedia’s image database, Wikimedia Commons (http://commons.wikimedia.org
).

In last year’s contest, 5,000 photographers from 18 European countries
uploaded more than 168,000 photos. This year’s contest will have
significantly greater participation, including the United States and many
non-European countries for the first time. Volunteer Wikipedians organize
the contest in each country, with the winning photos from national contests
considered by an international jury in late October. The international jury
will announce the top-ten international photos and the overall best picture
winner in early December.

“There are millions of historically and culturally significant monuments
and buildings around the world, though most of them still have no
freely-available images on the Internet,” said Lodewijk Gelauff, one of the
founders of the first Wiki Loves Monuments photo contest in 2010. “Wiki
Loves Monuments is an important way for volunteers around the world to
showcase the cultural heritage in their countries and share these images
with everyone through Wikipedia.”

The photos will be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons under a free license, so
they can be used by anybody, for any purpose, as long as the photographer
is credited. Many of the photos will appear in Wikipedia, the world’s
largest encyclopedia, and all will be available to download at no cost.

“In the U.S., anybody can photograph any of the 87,000 sites on the
National Register of Historic Places for this contest,” said Peter Ekman,
national coordinator for the U.S. part of the contest. “By uploading your
photos you are sharing our national heritage with everybody in America and
in the rest of the world. The photos will be free to use, and free of cost,
forever.”

*The Wiki loves Monuments App*
In conjunction with the contest this year, the Wikimedia Foundation, the
nonprofit that operates Wikipedia, has also developed a free Wiki Loves
Monuments mobile application for Android smartphones, available in the
Google app store. With this app, Wikipedians for the first time will be
able to upload photos to Wikimedia sites through their mobile devices. The
app displays nearby historic sites automatically, allows users to upload
directly through their Wikimedia accounts, and is available in many
different languages. The final version of the app will release on September
1, 2012 and will be available at
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.wikipedia.wlm

*U.S. Jury*
For full bios, see http://wikilovesmonuments.us/judging/
    •    *Carol M. Highsmith* specializes in capturing America with her
camera. Her collection at the Library of Congress has over 20,000 photos
that she has donated to the public domain.
    •    *Heather Moran* is the photographer and archivist of the San
Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) where she photographs and
works to digitize the Muni collection.
    •    *Rick Prelinger* is an archivist, teacher, writer, lecturer and
filmmaker. He is the founder and President of Prelinger Archives,
co-founder of the Prelinger Library in San Francisco, and Board President
of the Internet Archive.
    •    *Daniel Case* has been a Wikipedia editor since 2005, and is now
an Administrator. He has focused on WikiProject:National Register of
Historic Places
    •    *Howard Cheng* is an administrator at both Wikipedia and Wikimedia
Commons who works on the “Picture of the Day,” and “On this Day…” features
on Wikipedia’s main page.
    •    *Daniel Schwen* is an administrator on Wikimedia Commons and
contributor of numerous Featured Pictures.
    •    *David Shankbone* is one of Wikipedia’s most influential
photographers, whose photos appear in over 5,000 Wikipedia articles in 200
languages.

*Grand Prize: photo tour to Hong Kong*
The top 10 photos and grand prize winner of the international Wiki Loves
Monuments contest will be announced in beginning of December. The grand
prize winner will be invited to a photo tour in Hong Kong for the annual
meeting of Wikipedia editors, photographers, and collaborators: Wikimania
2013.

*More information*
International contest: http://www.wikilovesmonuments.org
U.S. contest: http://wikilovesmonuments.us

*Media contacts for international contest:*
Lodewijk Gelauff and Barbara Fischer
Phone:+49 (0) 30 219 158 26 18
Email: press at wikilovesmonuments.org or barbara.fischer at wikimedia.de

*Media contact in the United States*
Peter Ekman
Phone: (484) 238-3489
Email: pdekman at gmail.com

*About Wikipedia*
Wikipedia and the related sites operated by the Wikimedia Foundation
receive more than 460 million unique visitors per month, making them the
5th most popular web property world-wide (July 2012). Available in more
than 280 languages, Wikipedia contains more than 23 million articles
contributed by hundreds of thousands of people all over the world.
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