Have you entered our annual photo contest yet? You have until January 11 to submit your images that show the life and culture of Washington, D.C. and the metro area. We’ll be announcing more exciting details about this year’s show soon—make sure you’re a part of it! And now on to Friday Links:

• Capital Weather Gang shared their 5 favorite weather photos from last year.
• Scroll back to all those garden beauty shots you took last spring and enter them into Washington Gardener Magazine’s 12th annual photo contest before January 22.
• Sign your high schooler up for Photography for Teens at The Art League, an eight-session class starting January 21.
• Aerial photographer Mark Holtzman talked to the Atlantic about how he took this photo of a B-2 stealth bomber over the Rose Bowl.
• Pacific Standard features Anthony Carbajal, a 28-year-old with ALS who decided to use his photography skills to find hope.
• Go see the finalists of the Air & Space / Smithsonian photo contest and vote for your favorite to get a Readers’ Choice prize before January 14.
• Photography exhibition documents the immigrant experience from the 1860s through 2015. On view at Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York until Jan. 27.
• Senior writer for Adorama Learning Center shares five digital photography technology predictions for 2018.
• From 1893 to 1897, Carl Størmer used a hidden camera to photograph life in Oslo, Norway while attending university.

Take some of your holiday time off to enter our 12th annual photo contest. Show us what you love about living in the D.C. area. And now, enjoy our last Friday Links of the year. See you in 2018!

• Every publication is pushing out their end-of-year lists, so get your fill of 2017’s best photography at the Washington Post, the New York Times, The Atlantic, the New Yorker, TIME magazine, and Getty photographers.
• Annie Leibovitz is offering her first-ever online photography course.
• The Museum of Selfies opens in Los Angeles this January, but at least the organizers seem to have a sense of humor about it.
• Engineers at Dartmouth claim to have made a breakthrough in imaging sensor technology for high-quality, low-light photography.
• The late actor Anton Yelchin turned out to be quite the secret photographer. See his work in W Magazine or in a new exhibit in Chelsea through January 20.
• In Houston Aristocracy v. Instagrammers, the score is currently 0-1.
• ICYMI: This look into the life of renowned art bookmaker Gerhard Steidl from May made Longreads’ best profiles of the year list. Steidl “summons the world’s most influential artists and photographers to his workshop for days of emotional terrorism in service of books that are, in the words of photographer Edward Burtynsky, ‘the haute couture of printing.’ Depending on how you read [the profile], it’s an artistic fairy tale, a psychological horror movie, or some kind of thrilling fusion of the two.”

From cooler temperatures and our first snow of the season to a bunch of Santa Clauses roaming around town, it’s starting to feel like winter is actually here. You know what that means. It’s time to enter our annual photography contest! Now on to Friday Links…

• The Atlantic is asking photographers what they think is the most influential photograph in history.
• Peek-a-boo orangutans, fluffy flamingo babies, and stunning canyons make up the winning images in National Geographic’s 2017 nature photography contest.
• Oh thank goodness? There’s a photography element to the Cat Person story.
• The critic for the Guardian shares his top ten photography exhibitions of the year.
• Head to Blind Whino on Saturday for the closing party for the Best of IGDC competition.
• We are so grateful that the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards comes through at just the right time to close the year.
• Travel photographer Daniele Cagnazzo captures stunning images of the Middle East at night.
• View the finalists for this year’s Art of Building architectural photography competition.
• Sign up for an upcoming class or special event from the Capital Photography Center. There are holiday-related ones if you’re looking to get in the spirit. Or you might try one of these at Glen Echo Park.
• Google launched three new photography apps this week.
• Smartphones designed to take more flattering selfies along with beautifying apps installed on over a billion phones. More on China’s selfie obsession in this long read.

Our annual photo contest is open! You don’t want to miss this chance to be part of our celebration of life in D.C. with our spring exhibit. This is our 12th year, so get ready for some surprises. Find all the information here, and show us your best shots.

• Today, Glen Echo Photoworks Gallery opens its third annual exhibit from their regular Coffee & Critique members. Join them for a reception this Sunday, 4 to 6 p.m. They’re also offering holiday portraits with your family this Saturday for a donation to the gallery.
• Berlin-based photography team Billy and Hells created the emotional portraits that accompany Time magazine’s Person of the Year issue, featuring “The Silence Breakers” who spoke out about sexual harassment this year.
• Los Angeles Times staff photographer Marcus Yam captured the devastation of the Southern California wildfires this week in one iconic image.
• Let’s get the end-of-year lists started with The Atlantic’s top 25 news photos of 2017.
• Photographer Amy Davis shows how Baltimore’s theaters have changed over the decades.
• Norwich University of the Arts looks to reinvent the traditional photography degree with a focus on individuality and creating a visual voice.
• Photographer provides rural Cambodian villagers with first portraits of themselves through the charity, My First Selfie.
• Émile Zola, best known as an author, also spent the last eight years of his life obsessed with photography and was taking his own selfies back around 1900.