My latest non-writing project is a local photography contest, though as usual I have found a poetic angle to it.

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The competition is for pictures summing up what makes the town where I live, be it a building a monument or a person. Although, writing and reading are my main passions, I do enjoy playing around with a camera, so I thought I'd give the contest a go. (One of the hardest things so far being to come up with something big enough in scope to sum up the town, while avoiding cliched monuments and buildings that many people are likely to go for.)

Besides the main prizes, which I'm unlikely to stand a chance at, a selection of photos will also be chosen for an exhibition in town. This is where poetry comes in for me as I'd like to persuade them to include some of my poems alongside the chosen pictures. But this has left me with a dilemma as to when I should approach them with this idea, as I don't want to affect my chances in the photo contest, nor tie my poems in with my pictures, as they would probably be suitable for accompanying other entries in the competition.

The issue is further complicated by the fact that a much smaller scale photo contest (also mentioning an exhibition) was run by different organisers last year for pictures specifically featuring the town's summer festival. Unfortunately, the weather badly affected the planned events, so I suspect there may not have been many entries. In any case, certainly no winners were publicised in the local papers and there has not been an exhibition as far as I know. On the off-chance however, I had sent a couple of my poems to the organisers with an SAE, suggesting they might want to use them for the planned exhibition. I didn't hear anything back but I'm not sure if that is because they weren't interested or because they didn't have enough photos for an exhibition.

Any advice or suggestions welcome, plus any winning photography tips!