Exposed DC

for the love of DC photography

Enter the 15th Annual Exposed DC Photography Contest

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Our 2021 photography contest is officially open, and we announced our special judges who will be selecting the Best in Show awards!

As we enter into Exposed DC’s 15th year of celebrating local photography, we find ourselves reflecting on a very eventful year. While we always enjoy seeing our nation’s capital through the lens of the talented photographers who live, love, and work here, 2020 seems determined to be distinctive and memorable in its own way. We have no doubt that your photos will capture these tumultuous and notable times in poignant and profound ways as well as provide us with reminders of the beauty all around us.

If you’ve submitted to the contest before, you may notice a few changes this year. First, we are trying a different pricing model to allow more flexibility. This decision was made based upon feedback from photographers who have entered the contest in the past and streamlining the submission process. The entry cost will be $10 per image, and you may submit as many images as you’d like. Second, the contest timeline is shifted a little later than usual and will be open through January 27, 2021, to allow additional time to capture events leading up to and including the U.S. Presidential Inauguration.

The exhibition will be held in Spring or Summer 2021 with details yet to be announced. Special consideration is being given in the planning process to ensure the safety of the community as we continue to battle COVID-19, but we look forward to tackling these unique challenges during a global pandemic in order to celebrate local photography with you all in a safe and innovative way. Images may be part of a virtual exhibition and/or a safe, in-person event based on an assessment of the situation as it continues to develop.

Rules and guidelines for entering the contest and participating in our exhibit are covered in the submission page. If you’re looking for some inspiration, you can check out the winning images from previous years. Have questions or comments? Check out these FAQs, comment on this post, or reach out to us on social media. Be sure to subscribe to our newsletter, if you don’t already, to get all our contest and exhibit updates. If you’d like to join our team as a volunteer, please drop us a line.

Please note that Picter strongly recommends using a recent version of either Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox to submit to the contest. If you’d like to change or edit your submission, you can contact Picter support to request a refund and then resubmit, up until the contest deadline. We recommend you save all your submissions as drafts until you’ve reviewed them all and are ready to submit. Refunds will not be granted after the contest deadline.

Black Lives Matter, and Doing No Harm in Documenting Protests

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Photo by El Dubbey

As a community of photographers based in our nation’s capital, we are no strangers to protests. Washington, D.C. is the center of U.S. politics and a natural place for people from all walks of life and all sorts of backgrounds to gather together around a cause. During this pivotal and painful time for so many Americans, we want to express our support for the Black community and our solidarity in the fight for justice and to be free from police violence, not just in D.C. but around the entire country and beyond.

As a nonprofit for photographers of all levels, we also want to remind those in our community who are participating in or documenting the protests to consider how you do so with the greater good in mind. To this end, we’d like to share some valuable documents provided by the Authority Collective. For photographers documenting the protests, we encourage you to review the Do No Harm: Photographing Police Brutality Protests guidance. We also encourage everyone to check out these resources for photographers and beyond on anti-racism.

#BlackLivesMatter

COVID-19 Information for Photographers

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Photo by Joe Flood

As we continue to navigate through the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on our lives, we wanted to gather information and resources that could be of interest and assistance to local photographers. We will do our best to keep this page up-to-date, but please keep in mind that the situation is continually changing and there may be a delay in some updates. Also feel free to comment below or drop us a line if you’d like to suggest an addition to the page. Thank you and stay safe and healthy, everyone!

FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE

LOCAL RESOURCES & INFORMATION

VIRTUAL CONNECTION & LEARNING

GENERAL TIPS & INFORMATION

Winning Photos of the 14th Annual Exposed DC Contest

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We’re excited to announce the winners of the 14th Annual Exposed DC Photography Contest! These images, as seen together, tell the story of Washington, D.C., as documented by the people who live, work, and love here. You can view the full list of winners below.

Mark your calendars for February 19, when we’ll open our 14th annual exhibit! The exhibit will be hosted by Touchstone Gallery again, with support from the Touchstone Foundation for the Arts.

We are also happy to announce that the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities has awarded Exposed DC (Ten Miles Square) a grant to support the 2020 Exposed DC Photography Exhibit!

Join us tonight at 801 Restaurant and Bar from 6-8 p.m. for our monthly happy hour! All are welcome. Our team will be there, so please stop by to say hello. We look forward to meeting our newly minted winners and seeing many familiar faces, too.

Thank you to everyone who submitted to this year’s contest for sharing your work with us. If you recently discovered Exposed DC, welcome! We hope you’ll stick around and become part of our community. Here’s how to get involved, including contributing images for features, coming out to happy hours, and being part of our other activities throughout the year. If you’re interested in getting even more involved, we’d love to chat with you about volunteering with us too!

Now, without further ado, we present to you the winning images of the 14th annual Exposed DC Photography Contest…


Ather Ahsan – Blast Off
Alain L Gutiérrez Almeida – The Dome
Jon Bateman – Crossroad
Jeffrey Beggs – Solitude
Evelina Brooks – In Every Cell
John Buckley – To Oohs and Ahs
Miles Harrison Carter – Untitled
Eric Chang – Rooftop Buglers
Becky Davis – DC Pride Celebrations
Brett Davis – Dinosaurs
Matailong Du – The George Washington
Gina Falcone – DC Is A Water Town
Karon Flage – Kitty Reacts to Being Blessed
Thom Goertel – Santo
Brian Gray – Confetti
Merone Hailemeskel – Behind the Scenes: The Handmaid’s Tale in the District
Debra Hall – Through the Mountain
Michael Harrison – Eliana & Tomas
Miki Jourdan – Fierce
Miki Jourdan – Plank Like RBG
Mike Landsman – Wrestlin’
Geoff Livingston – Scoot Down the Highway
Jenny Markley – Recycling
Brian Mosley – A Red Day
Craig Nedrow – Fourth of July “Salute to America”
Diana Nguyen – Late Night Shift
Erika Nizborski – Fire Drill Friday
Victoria Pickering – Don’t Shoot
Danielle Press – Gold with Kayak
Mukul Ranjan – Untitled
Mukul Ranjan – Untitled
Diriki Rice – Ghost Truck
Daniel Scott Ruben – A Tribute to George H.W. Bush
Iñaki Sánchez – Beauty in the Ordinary
Jason Schlosberg – Midnight Chinatown Snow
Sofía Sebastián – Union Station
Max Siegler – You Can’t Beat the Bull
Anthony Smallwood – Hatchell at Shannon’s
Carol Stalun – Red Sky New Year
Carol Stalun – Snow Day
Jeff Wagoner – The River Pavilion
Jeff Wagoner – Fall at the Willard
Michael Zhang – Suburbia

Announcing the Best in Show Judges for the 2020 Exposed DC Photography Show

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Have you entered our annual photography contest yet? We love to see this city of ours through your eyes, and we look forward to celebrating local photography at our 14th annual show with you all!  

Winners will have their photos printed and framed by Exposed DC for inclusion in our 2020 Annual Photography Show at Touchstone Gallery. In addition, we invited five distinguished D.C. photographers to serve as special judges. They will study all of the winning images, and each judge will choose one image to receive a Best in Show award, which comes with a $100 cash prize. 

This year’s special judges selecting the Best in Show awards are Angela Bain, Darrow Montgomery, Shedrick Pelt, Beverly Price, and Gerry Suchy. Will one of them select your photo? Only one way to find out. Submit your best images of the D.C. metro area by December 12, 2019!

Now, meet our special judges…

Angela Bain is a life-long local of the D.C. metro area who has been photographing people since 1995. A famous photo by Man Ray hanging in her high school photography class was the gateway drug into a love affair with this art form. She studied fine art photography at Towson University, and has worked in the areas of portrait, studio, fine art, commercial, editorial and wedding photography.

Darrow Montgomery began photographing for Washington City Paper in 1986 while still attending the Corcoran School of Art. He has worked for numerous publications as a freelancer covering such subjects as HIV/AIDS in Thailand and the rise, fall, and rise again of Marion Barry. The vast majority of his work has focused on the lives and people that call Washington, D.C. home.

Shedrick Pelt is an editorial, live-event, and commercial photographer with a style driven by an urge to be the fly on the wall, capturing an experience without disrupting the nature of the moment. Based in D.C., Shedrick works worldwide while keeping strong ties to his hometown of Huntsville, Alabama, and his adopted home of NYC. View more info at www.sdotpdotmedia.com.

Beverly Ailisha Price was introduced to photography in 2016 when she first began what she believed to be a casual detailing of the people and atmospheres she would visually encounter on an everyday basis. As someone born and raised in the Capitol Hill region of the District of Columbia and passionate about her community, photography quickly developed into Price’s method of preserving the culture and communicating the stories of her often forgotten and disenfranchised commonality. View more info at www.beverlypricephoto.com.

Gerry Suchy finds his street photography these days is influenced by his previous career as a Clinical Social Worker. His photos are informed by the belief that storytelling matters more than hashtags and likes. More about Gerry and his work can be found at gmsdesignsphoto.com.