International Travel Photographer of the Year 2009

Darwin Wiggett, 2008 TPOTY Winner

Press Release:

Entries for the 2009 international Travel Photographer of the Year competition (TPOTY) close on September 22nd. So if you've not already submitted your images, you have a week left to do so!

Winning images at Adventure Travel Live and in Journey Three
The winning and other highly-placed images from TPOTY 2009 will be exhibited at the UK's biggest adventure travel event, Adventure Travel Live in the Royal Horticultural Halls, London (January 29th-31st). They will also be published in the next Travel Photographer of the Year book, Journey Three.

Rough Guides join sponsor line-up
A last-minute addition to the TPOTY sponsor line-up is Rough Guides, who have helped make this year's prize package even more impressive by providing copies of their beautiful new book Earthbound: a Rough Guide to the World in Pictures for the second and third-placed entrants in the Young TPOTY, One Shot  (Festival), People of the World, Natural Wonders and Homeland categories.

Why enter TPOTY?
Apart from the fantastic prizes , it can also offer some incredible opportunities, as the 2009 overall winner, Darwin Wiggett, testifies: “After winning TPOTY it was like my work suddenly had legitimacy and a large audience. I was flooded with calls and email. My work featured in major photo magazines and newspapers around the globe and people began buying my prints. My book orders tripled, stock photo requests doubled and I was suddenly being asked to give seminars across Canada. Visits to my website increased ten-fold, I was asked to do several assignments, and my workshops filled faster than ever before.”

A reminder of this year's prizes..
TPOTY 2009 winners will travel to China, Costa Rica and Morocco with Intrepid Travel and to Slovakia’s Tatra Mountains with Mountain Paradise.  They will also receive some great equipment for their camera bags and studios. Equipment prizes include a 26in NEC Spectra View monitor, an Apple MacBook Pro with Aperture, Wacom Cintiq 12WX interactive pen display and the latest Intuos4 pen tablets, Adobe Photoshop CS4 and Lightroom software, a total of £1,000 to spend with Jacobs Digital Photo & Video, Plastic Sandwich leather portfolio books, Harman and Ilfordpaper, prints and darkroom products, LEE filters, Lexar Professional CF cards and card readers, Photo Iconic photo courses, copies of Rough Guides' Earthbound, and £300 to spend with Linhof Studio.

Entry is via print submission or online image upload through the Travel Photographer of the Year website, and entries close on September 22nd, 2009. Entry fees start at £10, and entry to Young TPOTY is free. Winning images from previous years can be seen in the Winners’ Galleries on the competition website.