The United Nations Development Programme has launched a new photo contest called "Picture This," open to entries from both amateurs and professional photographers, and judged by some of the world's top photojournalists and change-makers.

The purpose of the photo contest is to bring awareness to the issue of climate change in the developing world, and the UN's work in those areas.

Are you an amateur or professional photographers who have spent at least 6 months living in Africa? Here's your chance to have your photographs viewed and judged by a panel of VIP judges from the UN that includes the likes of Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathi, Mark Garten, Chief of Photography for the United Nations,  and reknowned South African photojournalist  Peter Magubane. Entries will also be critiqued by John Isaac, Lifetime Achivement Award Winner from the International Photographic Council, and famed international journalist/AFP bureau Chief Paola Messana. Single photos and photo essays are accepted.

The contest is inspired by the upcoming 15th climate change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, taking place this December. The focus of the conference is on reaching a new greenhouse gas emissions reduction agreement, to succeed the Kyoto Protocol.

To date the contest has been translated into French, Arabic and Portuguese.

If you have lived in Africa for a 6 month period or more, visit the contest page, click the "Enter Now" button at the top right and follow the registration directions.

Olympus is giving away three prizes of new cameras to the winners, including an Olypus E-3 body with a Zuiko 12-60mm lens.

It's a long story how this came to be, so I'll boil it down to the >140 character version: We asked, they agreed, and the rest is history.

And so it was that last night, yours truly ventured into the masses of people crowding the beaches of the West End, trusty light-weight HD video camera and tripod in tow (with thanks to Warren Frey for the loan of the hi-def equipment), to shoot what will be the official video production of all four nights of the HSBC Celebration of Light. Which, if you're keeping score at home, is the "World's Largest" off-shore fireworks competition.

My contact, Zirka, was extremely accomodating and secured me a prime spot on the roof of the English Bay public bathhouse. I'm happy with the footage I shot on the first night featuring Team Canada; their "Attack" theme was very original and certainly kept people's attention. Apologies for not making some of that footage available already, but it is currently trapped in the post production workflow, and will emerge in all of its fully-edited glory soon. 

Now, to the question you have all been waiting for: Yes, the performances of all three competing countries (this year featuring Canada, the US and China) will be made available on Strutta.com, and you may cast your votes on which show you enjoyed the most. For good measure, we'll go ahead and include the Grand Finale as well, which features all three countries and an additional 8 minutes of artistic explosivity brought to you by BC150. This year, the voting on Strutta will be purely for sport, but I don't mind saying publicly that I hope our software will drive the "People's Choice" award next year, with text and web voting, Facebook widgets and the works (We'll be sure and get the performances uploaded as close to live as possible if this is the case). 

No sense waiting to see my footage (which is hardly a substitute for seeing it live anyway) when you can still get yer booty to any of the great vantage points in the city for any of the remaining performances. 

*image of 2007 COL fireworks above by my good mate Rob Masefield, who has photographed fireworks on three continents, and offers an excellent tutorial on shooting fireworks with a Digital SLR camera here.