As some of you are aware I’m an active participant on GooglePlus, which I term ‘Facebook for grown-ups’. The low compression of photographs and the ability to filter on keywords makes your news feed relevant and useful, certainly more so than updates on what your mate had for breakfast. In fact keyword searching and filtering is key to a successful time on Google+, and this is why hashtags (search keywords) come into their own. Recently I created a new hashtag, #WallpaperWednesdayContest.

The Google+ community has thoroughly embraced hashtags, and photographers use them to create daily themes to tag their work. Each theme is curated by a Google+ user. On Monday you can post up a mountain picture on #MountainMonday, curated by +Michael Russel. Tuesday you might wish to share a picture that falls into the category #TuesDecay, curated by +Ian Ference.

And now on Wednesday you can submit your photograph to #WallpaperWednesdayContest, curated by yours truly! My hashtag is a little more involved, however, as it is a weekly competition where I select a winner and convert the winning image into a digital wallpaper. This winning wallpaper is posted on my website which you may then download for your computer (e.g. wide-screen image at 1920×1200 pixels), tablet (e.g. iPad wallpaper at 1024 pixels wide), or smartphone (e.g. Android phone at 640×960 pixels). This way you get free wallpaper, and the photographer gets recognition for their marvelous work.

The Rules

1. Upload your image to GooglePlus (digital manipulation is allowed but it should be a photograph or a painting). You may upload as many images as you wish but only one image per post is permitted (that is, if you wish to submit multiple images each one should exist in its own post. Do not submit galleries).
2. Tag your post with #WallpaperWednesdayContest.
3. Tag your image with +WallpaperWednesdayContest
4. Add ‘Curated by +Jamie Furlong’ in your post.
5. Email ‘jamiefurlongphotography@gmail.com‘ a high-res (3800px minimum), non-watermarked version of the shot along with some information about the shot, about yourself and any links to your work (blog, flickr, 500px etc).

That’s it! I do the rest of the work by selecting a winner and then reformatting the image into 13 different sizes to be posted up in the winner’s gallery.

Bask in your glory and know that someone, somewhere, may be viewing your image on their smartphone somewhere in the world!

If you need further inspiration, check out the previous winners here.

The official GooglePlus page for WallpaperWednesdayContest is here.

All images are only used for this non-commercial competition. I do not make money from them, do not give them to anyone else and you hold complete copyright over them.

Good luck!