Press Releases/2017/Wiki Loves Monuments India 2017



Bangalore, December 16, 2017 - Yohann Thomas.

Wiki Loves Monuments, held in September each year, is the world's largest photographic competition. Its aim is to create a collection of photographs of all historical monuments. India which participated in 2017 for the fourth time since its inception.

In September 2017, the world's largest photography competition took place around the globe with 54 participating countries & over 254,000 photos were submitted by just over 10,000 photographers from Agra to Zagreb.

Organized by national chapters and various groups of Wikimedia, which supports projects such as Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons, the competition aims to create a freely licensed media database of historic monuments and heritage sites. India alone has about 7000+ historic sites spread across its 28 states and seven territories. The contest in India is supported by the India chapter of Wikimedia, a non-profit organisation known as Wikimedia India. The Chapters role is to support, promote and educate the general Indian public about the availability and use of free and open educational content, which includes the ability to access, develop and contribute to encyclopedias, dictionaries, books, images, etc.

Founded in 2010 in the Netherlands, the competition has attained lasting popularity. In 2011, 18 European countries joined the Dutch and created a collection of nearly 170,000 photographs, winning the Guinness record for the world's largest photography competition. 35 countries participated in 2012, the contest which received more than 3,50,000 photos then overtook its own record to become the "largest photo contest" as per the Guinness. During the Wiki Loves Monuments contest, participants will import their photos on the online library at Wikimedia Commons under a free license. This collection will then be made freely available to the public.

In this years edition, Wiki Loves Monuments India received more than 7,000 images of Indian monuments.After careful short listing of the images, the Indian organisers shortlisted Top 15 Images which it sent for the international competition. Amongst 489 were selected for consideration by the international jury, Prashant Khatore for his photo of Khandoba Temple captured during the locally celebrated Bhandara festival in Pune, India was announced the winner of Wiki Loves Monuments 2017


 * Indian website: http://wikilovesmonuments.in/
 * International website: http://wikilovesmonuments.org

chapter@wikimedia.in or press@wikimedia.in
 * Contact details

Coverage

 * Indian shutterbug wins global wikimedia monument photo contest
 * jejuri-temple-is-wikipedia-monument-of-the-year