Photo Contest winners debut in new Photo Gallery

Give to your favorite trails by making a tax-deductible contribution to Washington Trails Association by December 31. You'll help us reach our year-end goal of $25,000 so that we can start strong in 2011.

We have two exciting developments to announce today - the unveiling on the website of the 16 winners in WTA's 2010 Northwest Exposure Photo Contest and the debut of a brand new Photo Gallery.

2010 Northwest Exposure Photo Contest Winners Announced

Washington Trails Association members already have seen the photos, as our bi-monthly magazine arrived in mailboxes a week ago. We love this year's entries, particularly this year's Grand Prize winner David Hogan's starry sky at Mount Rainier. He worked hard for this beautiful shot, hiking all night taking photos.

You'll see a few patterns with the winners. Sunrises and sunsets nabbed four of the top prizes. Composition was important too, from the unfurling fern to the hiker dipping her fingers in Blanca Lake to the sandy-footed child riding in the backpack.

This year we added a new category - Families on Trail - and we really enjoyed the entrants in this category. The M&M girls is a personal favorite of mine. In the Landscape category, I'm partial to the cave photo - the lighting is gorgeous.

Click here to see all of the winners and let us know your favorites!

New Photo Gallery Debuts

So how can you see these gorgeous photos? In WTA's brand new Photo Gallery, of course! After ten years and a technological revolution in photo sharing, we have said good-bye to our old gallery and welcomed in a new one.

We are pretty jazzed about this new Photo Gallery. It offers expanded details about each photo (including links to its Hiking Guide entry), a Flickr-esque slideshow, and enhanced searchability.

For folks who'd like to upload their pictures, we ask that you choose your very best - please limit your photos to three per month. You'll see as you upload your pictures that you can add what trail you hiked and tag words. By selecting the appropriate tags and hiking information for your photos, they will pop up in search results. This will be a great way to figure out the best places to go hiking.

There's a lot to discover, and there will be much more as you add new photos to the gallery. Take a peek! And then go find your best to add to it. (For those wishing to browse the old gallery, go here.). Enjoy!

The Photo Contest was sponsored by LowePro and EverGreen Escapes. The Photo Gallery was built by Groundwire.