Press Photographer's Year awards open for entries

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By Press Gazette, Elsa Buchanan

The Press Photographer’s Year awards have opened and are inviting entries from professional photographers working in and for the UK media.

In its sixth year, the 2011 competition will be accepting entries until midnight on Sunday 17 April.

Professional photographers can enter up to 80 images across the 12 categories in addition to up to six links to pieces of multimedia journalism.

Overall, 15 prizes will be awarded including news folio of the year, sports folio of the year, and one in the digital film category, in which entrants will demonstrate their mastery of new digital SLR cameras that have an HD video capture facility.

One photograph will then be chosen as the photograph of the year. Last year this award went to Times photographer David Bebber for his image of Colonel Gaddafi.

The image shows the Libyan leader standing behind protective glass during a military parade in Tripoli, in September 2009, held to celebrate his forty years in power.

Last year’s competition saw 317 photographers from more than 20 countries submit 7,713 images online for 16 prizes.

A permanent record of this year's winners’ work will be captured in a book The Press Photographer's Year 10-11, published by the PPY Press, and form part of a major exhibition at the National Theatre on London's South Bank from the 16 July and until 10 September.

• Entries are now open for the 2011 Association of Photographers' awards.

This year, the competition for both professionals and amateurs offers categories such as Editorial (reportage) and Documentary. Photojournalists can enter the Awards with "a series of 4-10 images that portray a truth, a series of events that draws parallels between each other, to tell a visual story".

There are no restrictions on the number of entries per category per participant, although the images should fit technical specifications: the JPEG entries should not exceed more than 1920x1200 pixels, and no more than 3 megabytes. Each single entry fee is £25 and any series are £41.67.

All photos must have been taken after 1 October 2009 and submitted online through the [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] before 3 May 2011.

After deliberation, the winning images will be exposed in the AOP Open Book 2011, and the Photography Awards Book 2011 alongside October's exhibition in Shoreditch, London.