Please see the Official Contest Rules, Guidelines and Prizes for more information.
Simply create an account or login and select “Enter” along the top navigation bar to follow the easy submission process (you must have an account to submit a photo). This includes providing the photo information, agency, photographer information and, of course, uploading the photo to our database. As soon as the photo is received it will be reviewed to ensure it has met all the qualifications before being loaded on the website. Photos may take up to 72 hours to be moderated.
Employees of participating agencies are ineligible to enter the contest, if you selected that you were an employee when you created your account the function to enter will be disabled. If you are not an employee of one of the participating agencies, and checked this box in error, please contact sharetheexperience@recreation.gov to remove this restriction.
All photos and comments enter a moderation queue once received to ensure they meet various qualifications before being loaded on the website. Photos and comments may take up to 72 hours to be moderated. If your photo or comment still does not appear after 72 hours, you can contact sharetheexperience@recreation.gov for more details. Due to the large volume of submissions we do not contact participants individually when a photo is rejected.
The photo must be taken on federal public lands or waters managed by one of the following participating agencies:
The contest will be open for entries from June 15, 2023 to December 31, 2023, and the winners will be announced Spring/Summer 2024.
For the 2023 photo contest, photographs taken between January 1, 2021 and December 31, 2023 will be accepted during the contest Promotion Period from June 15, 2023 to December 31, 2023.
The winning photos must be of sufficient quality to use in print publications. Photos less than 2560 x 1950 resolution will not be eligible to enter the contest.
As per the contest rules photos are required to be in JPEG format. We are not able to accept photos in any other format at this time.
Entries are limited to ten (10) per month (First day of each month 12:00am ET- last day of each month 11:59pm ET) during the duration of the contest. Be sure to act as your own photo editor and send us the best of the best!
The photo must not contain watermarks, writing or symbols of any kind.
It is not uncommon for photos to fall into multiple categories; however, each photo can only be entered once – so choose your category wisely! An overwhelming amount of entries are submitted to Scenic, Seasons & Landscapes, while great categories like Outdoors for All and Historical & Cultural receive fewer entries overall. Each category has such potential, so be intentional and creative when choosing your photo category!
Participants retain ownership of all photos submitted. For more information on how your photos can be used please refer to the official contest rules.
Due to the volume of submissions, it is difficult to closely screen for manipulations when accepting photos. Acceptance of a photo submission is not a certification the photo has met the requirements of the official contest rules. All finalist photos are closely vetted. To ensure compliance with the alteration and manipulations rules, for those photos that are finalists the Contest Sponsors have the right to request the photographer provide the file that was recorded by the camera, such as RAW files. All annual winners are also required to sign an affidavit certifying their photo adheres to the official contest rules.
The Federal Recreational Lands Pass - an annual pass is your ticket to more than 2,000 federal recreation sites. Each pass covers entrance fees at participating national parks and national wildlife refuges, as well as standard amenity fees at national forests and grasslands, and at lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management and Bureau of Reclamation. A pass covers entrance and standard amenity fees for a driver and all passengers in a personal vehicle at per vehicle fee areas (or up to 4 adults at sites that charge per person). Children age 15 and under are admitted free. More than 800,000 Interagency Annual Passes are sold each year.
Get your pass now at the USGS store!
Three monthly winners will be picked each month of the contest. The photo will be picked by a judging panel and will be selected based on the same judging criteria as the overall winner: originality, artistic composition, technical quality, photographic technique and showcasing the best of America's recreational opportunities. The monthly winners will not only receive an automatic entry into the judging phase but will also receive a Federal Recreational Lands Annual Pass.
The images will be displayed on www.sharetheexperience.org. From there depending on how your photo does in the contest, you could find your photo displayed on the front of the Federal Recreation Lands Annual Pass!
We value your personal information as well as your privacy and adhere to strict laws and practices when it comes to that information. Please see our Privacy Policy for more specific info.
Please email: sharetheexperience@recreation.gov