In mid-September, the online encyclopedia Wikipedia launched its annual month-long international photo competition, Wiki Loves Monuments, dedicated to collecting quality images of world heritage sites that will be available for free on the Internet.
The Society for Preservation of Israel Heritage Sites joined with the volunteers of Wikimedia Israel to design 25 free guided tours across the country to coincide with the campaign in Israel, which is sponsored by the Israeli Internet Association, Google Israel, the Galitz School of Photography, the Israeli Art Information Center at the Israel Museum and Project PikiWiki.
Through October 15, amateur photographers can upload pictures of Israeli heritage sites, works of art located in the public domain, pictures taken especially for the competition, or those taken in the past to the competition website in order to win local prizes.
NIS 5,000 will go to the first-place winner, NIS 3,000 to the second-place winner and NIS 2,000 to the third-place winner. The top 10 images will be entered in the international competition with a chance to win additional prizes such as a flight to the 2013 Wikimania conference in Hong Kong. Last year’s conference took place in Haifa.
In addition to the global competition, PikiWiki — the free photo website of Israel — will host an additional selection for the reader favorite, with a prize of NIS 2,000.
Among the guided tours offered on Fridays through mid-October are the Old City of Safed and the German Colony in Haifa, aimed at inspiring budding photographers on these 90-minute free outings.
Winning photographs will be displayed on the bottom level of the Dizengoff Center shopping mall in Tel Aviv from November 14 to December 4.