Press Releases/2013/Wiki Loves Monuments India 2013

Bangalore, September 5, 2013 - Naveen Francis and Karthik Nadar.

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 2012 for the first time, it is participating this year again.

This September, the world's largest photography competition will take place around the globe with 50 participating countries, including the oceanic Antarctica. 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 2012, Wiki Loves Monuments received more than 15,000 images of Indian monuments. Not a surprise, most of them was of our Indian heritage Taj Mahal. 2,000+ people participated solely from India, which made our country rank #1 in terms of the number of participants. Among the winning photos from India which participated in the international contest, Pranav Singh from Delhi won the first prize in the International contest, while Narender Kumar again from Delhi won sixth prize internationally.(old press release) The Indian team hopes to repeat the history again, with the help of Wikipedia volunteers across the country and around the world.


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

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

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2013/Media
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