Jury

Each national contest will be able promote ten images into the international level of contest. The international jury, made up of five members with different skills and backgrounds, will determine the winners of this final round out of the nominated images and award the prizes.

Criteria

The jury will determine the winners of the international contest taking into the consideration the following criteria (in no particular order):

• Technical quality (sharpness, use of light, perspective etc.);
• Originality;
• Usefulness of the image for Wikipedia.

Jury members

The international jury consists of:

• Stephen Alvarez is a professional photographer with National Geographic since 1995 and has won multiple awards with his photos, including in Pictures of the Year International and Communication Arts.
• Muhammad Mahdi Karim is a Tanzanian student currently studying computer sciences in India. He has over 5 years experience is digital photography, specializing in nature shots, particularly macros. His work can be found on Wikipedia with some of the latest ones being shared via Facebook and 61 of his images have received the status Featured Picture at Wikimedia Commons.
• Guillaume Paumier came to photography through Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. He likes to heavily document the places he visits with photos, as well as illustrating Wikipedia articles with hard-to-get pictures, taken at events like the 2011 G8 Summit or pop culture conventions. He has shared thousands of pictures on Wikimedia Commons, a ridiculous amount compared to those still to be uploaded.
• Sneska Quaedvlieg-Mihailovic is Secretary-General at Europa Nostra, a pan-organization with over 400 member organizations that are defending cultural heritage through the European continent.
• Barbara Köstner studied archaeology and has a strong affinity for social media. She is in charge for the Tag des offenen Denkmals (Heritage Day) at Deutsche Stiftung Denkmalschutz (German Foundation for Monument Protection), Germany’s largest private initiative for monument protection. The foundation’s aims are to preserve cultural monuments and to increase public awareness of the needs of monument protection. The foundation is also active in the area of heritage education, having several programmes for youths, among them a photo competition called “Fokus Denkmal” organised by Ms. Köstner.