Mobiles at the ready: The Sony World Photography Awards have a category for you

Fancy yourself a keen student of photography using that most humble of cameras, the smartphone? And we’re not talking about selfies here (or if we were, it’d have to be something exceptional). If you do, you modest person you, then the Sony World Photography Awards’ newest category might be for you.

The competition, which is hosted by the World Photography Organisation, will this year include a category for images taken using a mobile device. Any mobile device, it doesn’t really matter what it is, is eligible but we’re guessing you can’t strap a tablet onto a DSLR and compete that way.

The subject? According to the brief on the competition’s entry page for this category, “You get out of life what you put in.  Push past the obvious and see the inspiration all around you.  Discover the extraordinary by using your mobile phone to view the world through a different lens.”

Seems vague enough to make subject matter choice either simple or incredibly hard.

The top 20 images (that’s the maximum number that will be selected, it might be less) out of the entries submitted will be chosen for a shortlist by a panel of judges that includes:

• Anna Dickson, Director of Photography, Huffington Post, US
• Chris Hudson, Group Art Editor, National Geographic Traveller, UK
• Anthony Lepinay, Photographer and Creative Director, France
• Alvin Soon, Associate Editor, HWM and HardwareZone.com, Singapore
• Evgeny Tchebotarev, CPO and Co-Founder, 500px, Canada

From there, a single overall winner will be decided by public vote (shades of reality TV there) as they are showcased on the World Photography Organisation website between 10 and 17 March this year.

But you’re not going to be doing this for nothing, or pride, or anything like that. The winning image will send its photographer to the 2015 Sony World Photography Awards in London in April this year as well as net them a hamper of Sony goodies. Second and third place will have to made do with some Sony kit and the other shortlisted entries will form part of the Sony World Photography Awards Exhibition at Somerset House, London from 24 April – 10 May. We’re assuming the podium winners are included in that.

So how do you enter? Well you get three free entries and you can head on to the World Photography Organisation website in order to make your submissions. You have until 27 February to work your magic. Get going.