Have you seen the UK winners of the 2014 Wiki Loves Monuments competition?
Wiki Loves Monuments is the global photography contest and the objective is to collect high quality photographs of some of the world’s most important historic sites. In the UK, this means listed buildings and scheduled monuments so there are possible subjects all over the country.
More than 500 people took part in the UK competition, contributing over 7,000 photos to Wikimedia Commons, one of the world’s largest repositories of freely licensed media files. From there the images can be used across various Wikimedia sites, and volunteers have started the process of using these images to illustrate and improve Wikipedia.
Organised by Wikimedia UK volunteers and supported by English Heritage and the Royal Photographic Society who were represented on the judging panel, this year marked the second time the UK took part in the competition.
As well as the top ten we have two special prizes for the best images of a building on an ‘At Risk’ register. These are structures considered in need of repair and maintenance, and the photographs are one step in preserving these structures for future generations. The two special awards are UK-specific, and the top ten go forward to the international judges.
Thumbnails of the winning entries are below but you can see them in all of their glory here on Wikimedia Commons.
If you have photographs taken by yourself of historic sites in the United Kingdom, please consider uploading them to Wikimedia Commons. The competition is closed, but your efforts can help improve a value resource filled with images which can be freely reused.