Film festivals and photography contests can provide great opportunities to share your work, network with other people sharing your interests, and of course engage in a little healthy competition. Listed below are a variety of such events. If you add a link to this page, and your event has a deadline for entries (or a date for the festival itself), please add these dates to our calendar as well.

Animal Behavior Society Film Festival: The Animal Behavior Society Film Festival was organized in 1983 to honor the outstanding amateur (non-commercial) and professional (commercial) films produced in the preceding five years that portray important concepts in animal behavior research and education. The Film Festival promotes the Animal Behavior Society’s goals of research, teaching, and conservation at the university and college level.From all submissions the Chair will select the semifinalist films will be shown at the festival. At the festival, a panel of judges will select one final winner for best amateur (non-commercial) and one final winner for professional (commercial) film. The festival is often attended by several hundred scientists, professors, applied practitioners, and students from across the globe.

Beneath The Waves Film Festival: From the website: "The Beneath the Waves Film Festival is one of the only film festivals that is housed within an academic conference. We are partnered with the Benthic Ecology Meeting, a group of marine scientists that meet once each year to present research, network, and promote collaboration." Submission deadline is February 15th, 2011, and the festival takes place at the Benthic Ecology Meeting in March 2011.

48 Go Green: An environmental variant of the well-known "48-hour Film Project," this contest will take place in multiple cities worldwide on February 18-20, 2011. Teams of participants will be given an ecological theme and then have 48 hours to write, shoot, and edit their film. The winners receive $5000 and their film will be shown at the Cannes Film Festival.

Wild and Scenic Film Festival: An annual film festival held in Nevada City, CA, organized by the South Yuba River Citizens League (SYRCL). From the website: "SYRCL’s Wild & Scenic Film Festival is a call to action. At Wild & Scenic, filmgoers are transformed into a congregation of committed activists, dedicated to saving our increasingly threatened planet. We show environmental and adventure films that illustrate the Earth’s beauty, the challenges facing our planet, and the work communities are doing to protect the environment. Through these films, Wild & Scenic both informs people about the state of the world and inspires them to take action."

The Vimeo Film Festival: The online video sharing community Vimeo hosts an annual film festival with a variety of categories including documentaries. The best video award will be selected by a group of judges from multiple categories and the Vimeo Awards staff. Winners will receive a $25,000 grant to produce new work. 

Sony World Photography Organisation: This is a more general photography contest, not only geared towards conservation but a great website/organisation to post, get comments, meet other photographers and maybe even win the annual competition ($5,000)! There are also a few other competitions through WPO such as the monthly Facebook competition and the Moving Image Award.

Leica Oskar Barnack Award: An international photography competition based on a series of images that shows the "interaction between man and the environment." Prizes are substantial. Excerpted from the website: "An international jury awards the Leica Oskar Barnack Award / Leica Oskar Barnack Newcomer Award to photographers whose unerring powers of observation capture and express the relationship between man and the environment in the most graphic form in a sequence of a minimum of 10 up to a maximum of 12 images. Entry submissions must be a self-contained series of images in which the photographer perceives and documents the interaction between man and the environment with acute vision and contemporary visual style – creative, groundbreaking and unintrusive." 2011 Submission deadline is March 1.

ANZANG Nature Photography competition: International photo competition of natural flora, fauna or wilderness. ALl photographs must be taken in the following bioregions: Anstralia, New Zealand, Antarctica and New Guinea. Entries in all sections are invited from photographers who use either digital or film cameras. Grand Prize $5000 with cash prizes for 2nd, 3rd, 4th and winners choice. Deadline March 18th 2011.

Nature Conservancy Annual Photo Competition: The Nature Conservancy is  looking for striking digital images of nature, highlighting the diversity of life on Earth. Your images may be taken anywhere in the world. Your images may show animal behavior, portraits of wildlife in natural habitat, plant life, natural landscapes, weather or people interacting with nature. Submission start in late May. Deadline in late September, early October.