There are no stupid questions!

No, absolutely not. We’d love people to participate wherever they are in the World (but in the same 24 hour time window), and submission will be on-line. But if you can join us in Oxford, please do – there’s a real buzz in a city on Photomarathon days as you meet up with other contestants, share ideas and help each other out. There will be a prize for the best image taken in and featuring Oxfordshire, and we’d love to meet you at our HQ for the day (wherever that ends up being!).

Are you kidding? Phones are great! Millions of photos are taken on phones every single day, and you have editing software like Snapseed built in, so you have an advantage over most “proper” cameras. Use whatever device you’re most comfortable with – the art of photography is about the images you create, not the camera you use.

But if you’re using an iPhone, check our advice on HEIC format.

Yes – some photomarathons have rules based on straight-out-of-camera, but we think photography is about creating images, so crop, convert to black and white, add filters and vignettes etc if that makes your image tell the story you want it to tell. But please, no AI generated images, this needs to be your work, based on an image you have taken during the competition (in topic order).

Submit as Jpeg, don’t edit the EXIF data, and make sure the date-time is set right on your camera before you start!

Please don’t add watermarks.

See the PAGB guidelines on AI here. We have adopted these guidelines, which are reasonable and balanced

No, we’re not athletes! But the greater your familiarity with your camera/phone the easier you’ll find it. Run between your photo locations if you must, or walk, or catch a bus, or stay in one place and take all 12 shots in your kitchen. It’s up to you. But enjoy it!

The actual challenges are released throughout the day (in groups of 4 every 4 hours) but look on-line at other great photomarathon sites to get an idea what to expect. Topics are deliberately open to multiple interpretations. This being the Oxford Photomarathon, expect a subtle Oxford-inspired flavour to some of the topics.

No, for two reasons:

One, we need to keep some photomarathon traditions alive! So if you take the first six topics then spot something even better for topic 4, sorry, you’ll have to dump images 4-6 and reshoot them!

Two, your images will be displayed to our judges in the order taken, so if you’re out of sequence they’ll be judged against the wrong topic!

Oxford Photomarathon is using SmugMug as our image handling system. After you have purchased your ticket, we will send you a unique login to your SmugMug gallery, and you will upload your images via this link on the days of the event. You will be able to see your images on the SmugMug app if you have it, but you will upload via a browser.

We’ve been asked a few times now why we are charging for entry, when it’s an “on-line event”. We’re happy to be clear about this. Oxford Photomarathon is a not-for-profit community arts event – our community is built of our local photographers and our international participants. It’s not just an on-line event; we are planning public exhibitions at arts festivals across Oxfordshire. Everyone involved in the project is giving their time for free.

Our aim is to build a sustainable event, that can continue and grow year on year.  We are starting this year, so we have startup costs and running costs to cover. We have domain costs, email costs, text messaging costs, website hosting costs, gallery hosting costs, and ticket management costs. When we started, we had to assume we would have printing costs for the exhibition displays, costs of prizes, and the cost of an exhibition venue. We have been extremely fortunate to get sponsorship for some of these items this year, so we are now on a sound footing to run annually.  We have also had generous support this year to allow us to offer reduced ticket prices for junior photographers.