2026 winners are now on display in Walpole Park!
Our photography exhibition is a joint partnership project with Ealing Council, aiming to inspire our local community to engage with our green spaces, nature and wildlife.
Mission:
An exhibition of photography to highlight the wonderful nature and wild spaces on our doorstep, celebrating the important relationships between people and local wildlife in Ealing.
Judging criteria:
We want to explore what nature and wildlife means to you. Everyone sees their surroundings through a different lens, so we want to celebrate diverse personal journeys and individual relationships with nature.
This is not purely a technical photography exhibition; equally if not more important is the portrayal of images that will engage the public with the natural world at a local level in Ealing.
We will judge each photograph impartially, without bias and keeping the mission of the exhibition in mind.
The judging panel consists of a panel of wildlife and/or photography enthusiasts, including members of Ealing Wildlife Group, Ealing Council Park Rangers as well as amateur and professional photographers.
Categories:
- Beautiful Ealing: Ealing has some extraordinary landscapes, and we brought this category back to showcase them!
- Abstract Nature: Capture the artistry and magic of nature, which could be the play of light and shadows creating fascinating patterns and shapes, or an abstract image exploring an object’s natural shape and form. This category is wide open so let your creativity go wild!
- Urban Nature: It’s incredible what creatures and life shows up in an urban environment, so show us where the man-made environment meets the wild.
- Relationships with Nature: Capture the meaning of nature and wildlife to you and tell us why it makes your heart sing.
- Up Close and Personal: This can be taken literally if you’ve captured incredible detail, it can cover macro photography, or you can interpret it as imaginatively as you wish.
- Young Wildlife Explorers: This is the under 16s category and seeks to celebrate our young wildlife enthusiasts and engage other young people with nature.
Submission guidelines:
- All submissions must be your own work and by entering you declare you have the legal rights to that image.
- Each entrant can submit up to three photographic images to be judged for competition
- Submission of entries does not guarantee inclusion in the exhibition.
- Entries will be eligible for a first, second and third award in 6 categories or placing in the overall winner category.
- You should specify which category you are entering; judges will appraise each entry using the categories as judging criteria but may award your photo in another category if deemed fit.
- High-res original jpeg files are to be submitted using the form by midnight on Friday, 31st July 2026. Do not submit screenshots, low res or very small images, they will not print on the boards properly. Your image should ideally be 300PPI, 5400px x 7200px for an 18in x 24in image (7200px x 5400px for 24in x 18in) as an example is a good size for our boards but something in this range is perfectly fine. Most good cameras and modern phones produce photos with great resolution, just make sure you set your camera/phone to the highest resolution and you should be fine. You can always contact us and we can check the resolution of your photos you submit.
- Entries submitted after the deadline will not be eligible. Late entries cause extra admin and will NOT be accepted.
- Excessive manipulation of images is not allowed and will be grounds for disqualifying a photograph.
- Types of editing that are not allowed:
- Excessive vignettes.
- Artificial borders.
- Extreme changes to colour, saturation, light, or contrast.
- Adding, moving, or removing objects, animals or parts of animals, plants, people etc.
- The removal of dirt, highlights, backscatter, bubbles, debris and similar.
- Composites.
- Painting the foreground/painting out the background
- Anything that could be viewed as rendering the image a dishonest representation will be disqualified.
- Types of editing that are allowed:
- Digital adjustments including tone and contrast, burning, dodging, cropping, sharpening, noise reduction, minor cleaning work (e.g. removal of sensor dust or scratches on transparencies/scans, removal of chromatic aberration),
- HDR, stitched panoramas and focus stacking are permitted providing that they do not deceive the viewer or misrepresent the reality of nature, or what was originally captured by the camera.
- Types of editing that are not allowed:
- No photos of staged wildlife shots, no captive animals, and no dead creatures posed as if alive are allowed.
- Photographs must have been taken within the Borough of Ealing within the last 5 years; the exact location is to be included in the submission details. (see map below for the borough boundary)
- Please include your camera or phone details (e.g. ‘iPhone 10’ is fine, we have winners every year using phone cameras). List the settings if you can so others who are interested in technical details can learn.
- Your description of the photo is just as important as the photo itself and is part of the judging criteria so please fill it in with more than just a name of species or subject and location. We want to hear the story of the photo and perhaps what it means to you. Failure to provide a good description that will be displayed with your entry may lose you significant points in judging. (However please be as concise as you can, it needs to fit on the board should your photo be selected!)
- By submitting your photo to the competition, you agree for EWG to share the image in promotional materials in future, with credit to you, the photographer.
- Winners will be announced at the opening of the exhibition in Walpole Park this Autumn and a list of winners will be posted online afterwards on Facebook and our website. We cannot guarantee all winners will be informed individually afterwards, and certainly not before the opening of the exhibition.
- Political agendas are not factored into any part of the judging criteria. Photos win on their own merits.

Top Tips for a Winning Entry in the Photo Expo

Focus Stacking Macro Photography

Using Telephoto Lenses

Zen and photography – mind over pixels.

Photographing Birds In Your Garden

Getting Closer – Macro Photography

Photograph Wildlife in its Environment

Photographing Birds in Flight
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