Royal Over-Seas League is delighted to announce its biennial photography competition is now open for submissions! This year’s theme is Viewpoint, each entrant can submit up to five digital images of their choice taken in the past 18 months from any image making camera source, tackling the subject however they wish. The previous competition received over 500 entries from 40 countries, collecting huge praise along the way from our selected industry judges for their quality and depth.

ROSL PHOTO 23 is FREE TO ENTER and offers £3,500 of prize money, an exhibition of shortlisted entries in London, winning images published in Overseas Magazine and open to any photographer 18+ who is a citizen of a Commonwealth or former Commonwealth Country, the USA, EU and EEA countries or Switzerland. ROSL will also except images that have a link to current countries of the Commonwealth from entrants outside of the geographical areas listed above.

Judges

Jocelyn Bain Hogg, documentary photographer and educator, author of four photographic books including The Firm (Trolley, 2001), Course Leader at London College of Communication for BA Photojournalism and Documentary Photography

Charlotte Jansen, journalist and author of Photography Now: Fifty Pioneers Defining Photography for the Twenty-First Century (Tate, 2021) and Girl on Girl: Art and Photography in the Age of the Female Gaze (Laurence King Publishing, 2017)

Seamus Murphy, documentary photographer and filmmaker, recipient of seven World Press Photo awards for his photographic work in Afghanistan, Gaza, Lebanon, Sierra Leone, Peru and Ireland

Hannah Starkey, artist, awarded the Vogue Condé Nast Award (1997); the 3rd International Tokyo Photo Biennale’s Award for Excellence (1999), the St. James Group Ltd Photography Prize (2002), and the Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society (2019)

Nilupa Yasmin, artist and educator, included in many permanent and private collections including Government Art Collection, The New Art Gallery Walsall and Birmingham Museums Collection. She is a Lecturer in Photography and recently completed her MA in Photography Arts at University of Westminster

1st Prize: £2,000, a 5-day trip to London for the exhibition opening on Thursday 8 December 2023 (including accommodation at Royal Over-Seas League), winning image published in Overseas Magazine and professional development support from ROSL ARTS

Runner-Up: £1,000 and winning image published in Overseas Magazine

The Madiha Aijaz Prize: £500 and winning image published in Overseas Magazine, awarded to a Young Photographer of Promise under 23 years of age

The shortlisted top 20 entries will be exhibited at Over-Seas House, 9 December 2023 – 4 February 2024

TIMELINE

Deadline for all entries is Friday 1 September 2023, 5PM GMT, entrants must be over 18 years of age, full terms and conditions listed below

The 20 images selected for exhibition and overall prize-winners will be announced on Friday 6 October 2023

ROSL PHOTO 23 will open at Over-Seas House on Thursday 8 December 2023, 6 – 8PM (on view 9 December 2023 – 4 February 2024)

Terms & Conditions
The Royal-Over Seas League and ROSL are one and the same as in the below text.

By entering ROSL PHOTO 23, you agree and acknowledge that ROSL is permitted to receive your registration data. As an entrant to the Photography Competition, you are asked to provide us with your name, address, email address, date of birth and online links. At a later date you may also be asked to provide proof of Commonwealth, former Commonwealth, US, European, EEA or Swiss links as appropriate (such as a copy of a birth certificate). Your submission data (except the international proof of ID document) will be password protected and stored on the internal ROSL network to be accessed by ROSL PHOTO 23 organisers and judges. We will not sell, distribute or lease your personal information to third parties unless we have your permission or are required by law to do so. The names of prizewinners will be published on the ROSL website and in our Overseas magazine, and we offer you the option of being added to our contact database, so as to include you in future mailings. All personal information will be used by the ROSL in compliance with its Privacy Policy.

Entries - 1 to 5 photographic images submitted to the competition by a single person (or representative of an art collective), accompanied by a completed submission form must arrive before the deadline to be considered.

The competition requires a minimum of 1 image per person and can only accept a maximum of 5 images per person

Entrants must be 18 years old or older.

Image Entry criteria:

Images can be manipulated; however, the manipulation must be clearly outlined within the image description.

Images must have been taken since January 2022 to the competition deadline.

Images must not have been published prior to submission, social media sharing and website posts are permitted, but any use for marketing or print will disallow the image.

Images must conform to the size regulations stated.

All images must be saved in the CMYK colour model and EXIF data must be left in the image file.

All entries across both categories should be a ratio of 4:3 or 3:2

All entrants must be able to supply a high resolution image suitable for printing in media and an exhibition should the image be required, 300 dpi

Landscape and portrait images are welcome.

All submitted images must be clear of any copyright information so that the photographer's identity is not revealed by the image for the sake of the judging process.

Any entry that cannot be authenticated or is not of acceptable quality will be disqualified.

All Entrants, if they are selected amongst the finalists, must be able to supply a high-resolution image suitable for printing in exhibitions should the image be required.

ROSL reserves the right to disqualify and remove any entry (photographic image) that does not comply with the following requirements, even after the entry is submitted. in respect of each entry submitted by You (Entry) you agree as follows:

You are the sole owner and author of each Entry, You own the copyright and all other rights in each Entry - You have the right to make Your Entry available to the Competition and agree that each entry can be used as ROSL deem appropriate.

Each Entry does not contain personally identifiable information about you or any other person(s)

Each Entry does not contain any infringing, threatening, false, misleading, abusive, harassing, libellous, defamatory, obscene, inflammatory, pornographic or profane content.

You confirm that each person depicted in the Entry has granted permission to be portrayed as shown. Any costumes, props or other materials used must be rented or borrowed with the permission of the owner, and all other relevant permissions must have been obtained.

Each Entry does not contain any material that could constitute or encourage conduct, which would be considered a criminal offence, give rise to civil liability, or otherwise violate any law.

Each Entry does not infringe upon the copyrights, moral rights, trademarks, contract rights, or any other intellectual property rights of any third person or entity, or violate any person’s rights of privacy or publicity, including:

trademarks owned by third parties

copyright materials owned by third parties

names, likenesses, voices or other characteristics identifying celebrities or other public figures, living or dead

Entries which contain any commercial content that promotes any product or service
Entries containing screen credits.

You agree to fully indemnify ROSL in respect of all royalties, fees and any other monies owing to any person by reason of Your breaching any of the foregoing.

ROSL recognises You, the author of the image, retain full ownership of the copyright in each Entry.

ROSL will print selected images to be exhibited at Over-Seas House. ROSL may tour the exhibition. The printed artwork will belong to ROSL and may be displayed in their building following the exhibition with labelling pertaining to the author of the image in all instances.

All Entrants understand that any image submitted to the Competition may be used by ROSL for marketing and promotional purposes of You the author and the Royal Over-Seas League only. You hereby grant ROSL a non-exclusive, irrevocable licence in each Entry throughout the world, in all media for any use connected to the promotion of You the author and the Royal Over-Seas League, including, but not limited to:

ROSL PHOTO 23

displaying the winning and shortlisted competition entries at public exhibitions

promoting ROSL and organised by ROSL and allowing the exhibited images to remain on display at Over-Seas House at the discretion of ROSL

inclusion within the Website, a ROSL book, magazine or similar

inclusion within any materials promoting of the ROSL ARTS programme

allowing viewers of the Website to view images on a computer screen, PDA or mobile telephone and store such pages in electronic form on disk or on a PDA or mobile telephone (but not on any server or other storage device connected to a network) for their personal, non-commercial use only.

ROSL will never distribute any high resolution files to any third party with the exception of printing companies who will be printing the images for the exhibition and to appear in our magazine.

Any photograph used by ROSL shall carry a credit line. Any failure to provide such credit line shall not be deemed to be a breach, as long as ROSL takes reasonable action to rectify such failure within a reasonable period from the date of notice.

ROSL assumes no responsibility for any incorrect, inaccurate or incomplete information, and ROSL assumes no responsibility for technical, hardware or software failure of any kind or technical malfunctions with regard to the Competition.

ROSL assumes no responsibility for any damage to Your or any other person’s computer related to or resulting from participation or downloading any materials in the Competition. If for any reason a contestant’s entry cannot be viewed or is not capable of running as planned, ROSL assumes no responsibility.

You agree to participate in related publicity and to the use of Your name and likeness for the purposes of advertising, promotion and publicity without additional compensation.

The winner of each category and those selected to exhibit will be notified by email before midnight GMT, Friday 6 October 2023.

ROSL are unable to offer feedback from the judges.

Prizemoney will be awarded after the competition exhibition has opened.

Any travel prizes must be executed in an allocated time period and are dependant on visa acceptance and transport availability. Any travel prizes are allocated at the discretion of the Royal Over-Seas League, they have the right to not award this prize if they deem it not possible to do so.

The decision of the judges is final and no negotiation will be entered into with respect to any such decision.