Last Updated on 05/07/2019 by Mark Beckenbach
Red Bull Illume, the world’s biggest competition for action and adventure sports photography, brings awesome prizes from Sony, Skylum, SanDisk, and COOPH.
Looking for the perfect channel to showcase your incredible photos of heart-stopping action and adventure sports? It’s time to dust off your drives and select your best snaps; the Red Bull Illume Image Quest, the world’s biggest competition dedicated to action and adventure sports photography, is now accepting submissions. For its 2019 run, the competition now has new categories, a judging panel of 50 international photo editors and digital experts, an innovative worldwide exhibit tour, new partners, and more prizes.

The Red Bull Illume has 11 categories, two of which are new for this year: Best of Instagram by SanDisk, which ask for ‘gram-worthy moments of adventure and action sports submitted directly through Instagram; and Moving Image, which is for video sequences between 5 and 30 seconds. Three categories were also updated: the Emerging by Red Bull Photography category highlights submissions from rising photographers who are 25 years old and below only; the Raw category is looking for images “straight out of camera” to evaluate composition, exposure, and lighting done in front of the lens; the Innovation by Sony category is after images that reveal a unique angle or visual idea, or a different format and use of light and flash effects. The rest of the categories are Creative by Skylum, Energy, Lifestyle, Masterpiece, Playground, and Wings.

Top 55 finalists (five in each category) will be chosen for the pool of 11 category winners, from which one overall winner will be announced at the Winner Awards Ceremony in November. All the finalist images will also be part of the Red Bull Illume Exhibit Tour visiting cities and cultural hubs across the globe in 2020.
Category winners will bring home over $100,000 in prize packages, including some camera equipment and photography accessories from Sony, SanDisk, Skylum, and COOPH. The winner of the Creative by Skylum category will also receive a special prize from Skylum, and will be part of the Global Skylum Ambassador Team. Red Bull Photography has also reserved a spot for the winner of the Emerging category at the Red Bull Rising Talent photography workshop. The Overall Winner will also get the Sony Alpha A9 camera with a 24-70mm f2.8 G-Master lens, and will go on a shoot with a SanDisk Extreme Team Member.

Ready with your action-packed photos? Head to the Red Bull Illume competition page to register and enter. You can submit each image to two categories, and a total of 10 images per category.