PHOTO COMPETITION:CALLING ALL amateur photographers. The search is on to find the tourist photograph that best captures the beauty of Ireland.
GoIreland.com, Gulliver Ireland's tourist accommodation website, is next week formally launching the annual Photography Awards 2008, in association with John Hinde Ireland.
Now in its fourth year, the competition attracts thousands of entries from Irish holidaymakers, and also from tourists who come here from overseas.
The judging panel's focus this year will be to identify the best photograph to reflect natural and man-made "wonders of Ireland". Entrants are encouraged to use John Hinde's series of famous postcards and iconic images of Ireland as inspiration.
A photograph of Johnstown Castle in Wexford, taken by German tourist Dieter Böhm from Hannover, won last year's competition, which was themed "Ireland's beautiful landscape". Tourists from Canada and France secured the runner-up accolades.
This year's winning photograph and a selection of runner-up images will be reproduced as a special John Hinde calendar, which will be distributed nationwide. The winning amateur photographer will win a luxury holiday in Ireland. Second and third places will win a selection of short holiday breaks.
This year's judging panel includes Tourism Ireland's chief executive Paul O'Toole and Jerry Kennelly, the founder and former chief executive of photographic image library Stockbyte.
The closing date for entries is Friday, October 10th.
GoIreland.com is Gulliver Ireland's recently relaunched flagship website, and is the largest tourist accommodation website on the island of Ireland.
The website gets up to 120,000 visitors every week at the height of the tourist season, and was ranked in the top 15 travel and airlines websites in the Net Behaviour Reporton Irish internet usage.
More at www.goireland.com/photos.htm