Alamy and the Centre for Ageing Better have partnered to run a competition for photographers to capture people aged 50 and over in a realistic and positive manner. We’re asking for photographers to send in their images that show the diversity of the 50+ age group as they get involved in their communities.
About the competition
The Centre for Ageing Better is a charitable foundation pioneering ways to make ageing a better reality for everyone, challenging ageism and building an age-friendly movement, creating age-friendly employment and age-friendly homes.
As the world’s most diverse stock photography collection, we’re excited to be working together in launching this competition and sharing our knowledge to encourage photographers to create content around positive images of those aged 50 and over. The competition will enable photographers to showcase their photographic style, working to a brief that explores how they can focus on inclusivity and avoid stereotypes in their imagery, with a chance of winning one of several prizes.
Guidelines for entering
We’re looking for images that show the 50+ age group in an inclusive, realistic and positive light, which avoids traditional stereotypes. Images can be individual portraits or include others of all ages in a group setting, but mainly show over 50s taking part in different activities that they would genuinely and naturally be part of in their day-to-day lives.
You can enter your photos under one or all of the following three categories, all depicting people aged 50 and over:
- Under-represented communities – including LGBT+ people, people with disabilities and people from minority ethnic backgrounds
- Leisure activities – including sport and hobbies
- Multigenerational – a focus on over 50s interacting with other age groups in work, community and family settings
As part of its work to challenge ageism, the Centre for Ageing Better hosts an age-positive image library – a collection of more than 2,000 photos. The library contains examples of non-stereotypical and empowering photos of people aged 50 and over, which can serve as inspiration for entries to the competition. You can download a free guide with tips on capturing age-positive photos. In addition we’ve created a lightbox of images to provide inspiration.
You can also watch this webinar to get more hints and tips from experts in the industry on how you can capture inclusive images showing older people in realistic and authentic ways.
Requirements for entry
- Entries will be through the Alamy website – if you’re not already a contributor you can sign up here.
- Photos must have been taken since 1st June 2020 and not before
- Maximum five photo entries per category
- All images need to be model released for which you can use a template form here.
- Using keywords when you upload, use the unique search term ‘ageingbetter2023’ with no spaces for each individual photo entry
- The competition will run from 7th December 2022 to 31st March 2023. UPDATE – we’ve extended the deadline to run until the 30th April 2023 so there’s more time to get your entries in
Judging and Prizes
The entries will be judged by James Allsworth, Head of Content at Alamy; Emma Twyning, Director of Communications at Centre for Ageing Better; and Alex Rotas, photographer and writer.
There will be three separate winners – one for each category (‘Under-represented communities’, ‘Leisure activities’ and ‘Multigenerational’), with three runner-up prizes for each category,
- The three winners and nine runners up will have their images featured on Alamy’s Blog under a ‘winning images gallery’ which will be promoted to our customers and on social media
- The three winners will each have a personal portfolio review by James Allsworth, Head of Content at Alamy
- The nine runners-up will be invited to attend a photography critique group session hosted by the Alamy Content Team
How to enter
Once you’ve captured your best work according to the brief, just follow these simple steps to get them online and entered into the competition:
- Become an Alamy contributor. If you’re not already a contributor you can sign up here
- Upload your image entries to your account in Alamy, noting the Alamy image reference for each image
- Once the images are captioned, keyworded and on sale, use your Alamy image reference to fill out this form; enter the competition here. Remember you can enter your images into all three categories or just one.
Full terms and conditions can be found here, and the closing date for entries is the 30th April 2023. We’ll contact the winning entrants within four weeks after the closing date.
We’re really looking forward to see your photography and how you choose to represent the 50+ age group according to the brief, so get out there and start capturing your images for a chance to win one of the prizes.
