As summer comes to a close, let’s pause to celebrate the species we’ve seen on our wildlife cameras!
This year, staff at Sky Island Alliance have watched bear cubs follow their mothers across greening landscapes, packs of coyote and javelina drink from nearby water bowls, gray foxes return victorious from a hunt—and, above all, enjoyed the wonderful magic of monsoon that has made all this possible.
What incredible things have you seen on your FotoFauna cameras this summer? We want to share these moments with the FotoFauna community, so we’re launching a photo contest to make that possible — and we’d love to have you join in.
Three winning shots from our last Sky Island FotoFauna photo contest!
Here’s how it works:
Eligibility: All photos taken by a participating FotoFauna camera between June 1 and August 31 are eligible for the summer photo contest. This includes individuals and partners.
Submission: Starting September 1, anyone who wants to enter the contest can submit up to three (3) of their favorite summer photos to [email protected]. Entries will be accepted until September 15, giving FotoFauna participants time to go through their August checklists.
Note: When sending us your submissions, please include the original images (no cropping) and name your image files the following way: firstname_lastname_month_species
Judging: On September 16 and 17, Sky Island Alliance staff will go through all the contest entries and select the top entry from each submission set. (So, if you submitted three photos, we would vote internally on the best one.) The top photo for each participant will then go on to the final public voting round, and any fun semi-finalist photos will be shared in a late-September blog post.
Public voting: From September 20 to 25, voting will go live. There will be three ways to vote: on the Sky Island Alliance website, on Facebook, and on Instagram. Participants are encouraged to share links to the voting channels widely (more eyes = more votes!) and use the hashtag #SkyIslandFotoFauna if they do.
Winning: At the end of the voting period, the three photos with the most combined votes/likes across all three channels will win a fun FotoFauna prize package (an item of your choice from our Bonfire store, wildlife stickers, and a field notebook).
[Need inspiration? Community’s Choice: The Best 18 FotoFauna Photos of Winter 2021.]Timeline:
The contest runs from September 1 to September 24.
September 1: FotoFauna participants can submit up to three of their favorite summer photos to Sky Island Alliance by emailing them to [email protected].
September 15: This is the last day for participants to submit photos to the summer contest.
September 16 – 17: Sky Island Alliance staff will go through the submissions and choose their favorite photo from each batch of submissions.
September 20 – 25: Public voting begins. Finalists will be uploaded to an album on Facebook, to a webpage on the Sky Island Alliance website, and individually to Instagram. During this week, people can vote on their favorite; only one vote per person will be counted. Votes will be accepted until the window closes at 11:59 p.m. PDT on September 25.
September 27 or 28: The winners will be announced and prizes sent out. A blog with the winners and semi-finalists will be posted to the Sky Island Alliance website and shared with the FotoFauna community.