International Women's Day 2013

In honour of International Women's Day, I've pulled together five stories told by five female photojournalists that I think elucidate why we need a day to celebrate our mothers, sisters, and wives. There's a great deal that I could say about women's rights, but the photos say it better. Please take a look.

Agnes Dherbeys: The Street With No Name Cambodia
Because women shouldn't feel that there's no alternative than to sell sex to make ends meet.

Anastasia Taylor-Lind: The National Womb
Because women are more than baby-making machines.

Andrea Bruce: The Widows of Varanasi
Because women are more than just wives to their husbands.

Lynsey Addario: The Criminalization Mothers
Because women are people, too.

Stephanie Sinclair: Self-Immolation: A Cry for Help
Because no woman should live in fear.

These are not the only stories told about women, by women. There are millions of women and billions of stories. These images are barely a drop in an ocean.

Our fabulous February photo competition

After a hiatus for the month of January, the monthly photo competition is back! Huzzah!

We're feeling refeshed, and we hope that you are, too. In honour of that, this month's theme is relax. Any photograph that conveys a sense of de-stressing, putting up your feet, and unwinding is fair game; from the dog stretched out in front of the fire, to your children curled up with a book, to your very old and tatty but extremely comfortable slippers, we want to see them.

The photographer of the winning image will be eligible to claim a 12 inch Fracture.

We've made a slight change to the submission rules. Nothing major, but from now on, you need to link your image to the relevant thread in the Flickr pool, not just submit it to the pool. February's thread is here. And it's still one submission per person.

February's contest runs from today (Friday 1 February) to Friday 22 February 2013.

As ever, here are The Rules for your reference. Best of luck!

The Rules

• If you decide to enter, you agree to The Rules.
• You can’t be related to either me, Haje, or Gareth to enter.
• One entry per person – so choose your best!
• Entries need to be submitted to the right place, which is the relevant monthly thread within the Small Aperture Flickr group.
• There’s a closing date for entries, so make sure you’ve submitted before then.
• You have to own the copyright to your entry and be at liberty to submit it to a competition. Using other people’s photos is most uncool.
• It probably goes without saying, but entries do need to be photographs. It’d be a bit of strange photo competition otherwise.
• Don’t do anything icky – you know, be obscene or defame someone or sell your granny to get the photo.
• We (that being me, Haje, and Gareth) get to choose the winner and we’ll do our best to do so within a week of the competition closing.
• You get to keep all the rights to your images. We just want to be able to show off the winners (and maybe some honourable mentions) here on Pixiq.
• Entry is at your own risk. I can’t see us eating you or anything, but we can’t be responsible for anything that happens to you because you submit a photo to our competition.
• We are allowed to change The Rules, or even suspend or end the competition, if we want or need to. Obviously we’ll try not to, but just so that you know.

If you've any questions, please just ask!

July photo competition winner!

Ooh we have sunshine in London! And it’s not just sunshine, it’s actually verging on the warm. So help yourself to a sherbet, or a glass of Pimm’s if you’re that way inclined, as we have a competition winner to announce. July’s theme was red in honour of my new dress (although it could quite equally be the thermometer right now) and the lovely guys at Fracture have supplied the prize. There were some cracking entries and we had a bit of a ding-dong when settling on the winner. But we got there.

Bubble, by Ivo Vuk

Many congratulations to Ivo for his picture ‘Bubble’. Get in touch, and we’ll sort out your prize for you.

And, seeing as it’s our competition and everything, and thought that we’d give an honourable mention, too. That goes to Vereesh for Gimme-Red.

Gimme-Red by Vereesh

Thank you for your gorgeous entries. We really do enjoy seeing what you come up with every month. August’s competition will be announced soon!

Street Photography Festival comes to London

Currently there is no London-wide photography festival and no organisation in the UK dedicated to preserving street photography as an accessible art form, important tool for communication and method to document and reflect on society and human behaviour. Enter the London Street Photography Festival 2011, to change all that.

Aiming to give street photography a home in the UK and provide Londoners with a celebration of their city through the essential tradition of Street Photography, the festival will questions, supports and provides a platform for dialogue around street photography, raising the profile of photographers and their work.

Flying the flag of street photography

The London Street Photography Festival is an exciting new event in London’s cultural calendar which will champion the best contemporary street photographers, honour past masters and provide a space for discussion, debate and appreciation of the current relevance of this time-honored genre.

The festival takes place over 10 days (7-17 July) with a diverse programme of exhibitions, events, talks, walks and workshops.

There’s also a couple of competitions running, including a Student Award and an International Award. Unfortunately, it appears that the awards are run by Shoot Experience – who did the photographic treasure hunt which the editor and deputy editor of Small Aperture participated in back in 2008. ‘Unfortunately’, because the judging at the event we were at seemed haphazard at best, as described in a post from back then. Let’s hope they’ve improved their judging since then: if they haven’t, the cynical among us could conceivably start thinking that the £30 entry fee is simply a way of making a ton of cash…

ClusterShot closes its doors

The guys over at ClusterShot – the website that made it easy for people to sell their images, be they of their hamster of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, to anyone that wanted them – have decided to call it a day. In their own words, ClusterShot was an experiment for their company and its business model, and the experiment hasn’t been quite successful enough.

The idea that it should be simple for people to sell their photos at a price they set, and for people to be able to find and buy the images that they want and need is a damn good one. So it’s a shame that it didn’t work out for these guys and the people that used the site.

As of the end of last week, account creation and photo-uploading have been suspended and refunds are being offered on pro-accounts. (Accounts over two months old will receive a pro-rated refund; accounts under two months old will be fully reimbursed.) You can still buy images right up until they turn off the lights and close the door behind them on 21 February, though.

Unless, that is, someone steps forward to buy ClusterShot. silverorange, the brains behind the website, have received quite a bit of interest in the site. So they’re planning on selling it by private auction. The highest bidder gets the whole kit and kaboodle, from the code to the content, to the FaceBook page to the reputation. But they also have to honour ClusterShot’s current terms and conditions and user privacy agreement.

Fancy becoming the proud new owner of a photo-dealing website? All the details of how the auction will work and what exactly is up for grabs are here.