The Love Your Coast Photography Competition opens for entries on 14th February 2025
This Valentine’s Day, An Taisce’s Clean Coasts Programme invites Irish photographers to fall in love with the coast with the return of the Love Your Coast photography competition for 2025.
Building on Clean Coasts’ 2025 theme of connection, the competition encourages photographers to capture the intersection of Ireland’s captivating coastal beauty, rich heritage, and biodiversity, alongside the deep bond shared by those dedicated to protecting and preserving these vital blue spaces. This year we are asking photographers to think about how spending time by the coast fosters a deeper connection to ourselves, nature, and our communities when taking their photos.
Now in its 16th year, the Love Your Coast competition consistently draws hundreds of photographers from all over the country every year. This year, we have moved the dates up to line up with Valentine’s Day, to encourage our photographers to fall in love with the coast and capture its breathtaking beauty.
With a prize fund of €5000, Love Your Coast offers photographers the opportunity to showcase their talent across five distinct categories. Each category of the Love Your Coast photography competition highlights different aspects of Ireland’s coastal environment, celebrating our unique coastline. From tranquil waves, dramatic cliffs, and golden sands to vibrant coastal communities, diverse marine wildlife, and rich heritage, each category offers a chance to showcase the beauty and significance of the Irish coast:
- Coastal Landscape
- Connecting with the Coast
- Source to Sea
- Wildlife and the Coast
- Underwater
These categories invite photographers to capture the diverse and breathtaking elements of Ireland’s coastline, celebrating its natural wonders and the vital connection between people and the sea, taken within the last 36 months.
To support participants, Clean Coasts will provide helpful resources and guidelines to improve their skills and submissions. This includes a detailed guide with tips from the competition judges and information on each category which will be published on our website.
Bronagh Moore, Clean Coasts Programme Manager, said: “Given our theme this year is “Connection”, we thought Valentine’s Day was the perfect day to launch the Love Your Coast photography competition. As an island nation we have always had a special connection with the sea and what better way to celebrate that relationship than to capture it, in all its glory, through a camera lens. The coast is always there waiting for us, giving us joy and energy, and always makes us feel better when we spend time with it, which is a lot more than can be said for some of our Valentine choices! We had some fantastic entries last year and we’re really looking forward to seeing how our photographers capture their love for the coast in 2025.”
For more information about Love Your Coast and to submit your entries, please visit https://cleancoasts.org/our-initiatives/love-your-coast/
How to find us:
WEBSITE: https://cleancoasts.org/our-initiatives/love-your-coast/
SOCIAL MEDIA
Facebook: @CleanCoasts
Twitter: @CleanCoasts
Instagram: @cleancoasts
YouTube: Clean Coasts Ireland
LinkedIn: Clean Coasts
TikTok: @cleancoasts
Hashtags: #CleanCoasts #LoveYourCoast
About Clean Coasts
An Taisce’s Clean Coasts programme engages communities in the protection of Ireland’s beaches, seas, and marine life.
Since 2003, Clean Coasts has been working with communities to help protect and care for Ireland’s waterways, coastline, seas, ocean and marine life. Clean Coasts strives to create tangible and immediate improvements to Ireland’s coastal environment, involving thousands of volunteers removing large quantities of marine litter from our coastline each year.
Year on year, Clean Coasts has grown from strength to strength and now includes two main national clean-up drives, as well as other initiatives, including the Green Coast Award, the Love Your Coast Photography competition, the Clean Coasts Roadshows for coastal communities and the Ocean Hero Awards. All these initiatives are aimed at celebrating the beauty of our coast and the efforts of our volunteers across all of Ireland.
Currently, there are over 2,000 registered Clean Coasts volunteering groups and 40,000 volunteers. There are a variety of group types such as community groups, residents’ associations, tidy towns groups, sports clubs, schools, businesses, universities etc. Clean Coasts organises hundreds of beach clean-ups annually mobilising thousands of volunteers, removing considerable quantities of marine litter from Ireland’s beaches and waterways.
About the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage
As part of its commitments under the EU’s Marine Strategy Framework Directive and OSPAR’s Marine Litter Action Plan, the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage is proud to support An Taisce’s ‘Clean Coasts Programme’, in its enthusiastic engagement with marine communities in relation to marine litter and in heightening public awareness and influencing positive behaviour among civil society. The Department would also like to acknowledge the tremendous work done by hundreds of local Clean Coast groups around the coast in protecting the marine environment, for the generations to come.
About Failte Ireland
Fáilte Ireland, the National Tourism Development Authority, is one of the sponsors of the Clean Coasts programme. The Green Coast Awards and associated Clean Coasts groups act as custodians for the beaches, seas, and marine life in Ireland, ensuring that they are managed appropriately and that they are litter and pollution free for our visitors to enjoy. Ireland’s coastline is a tremendously important tourism asset, and much of the Clean Coast and Coast Care groups and Green Coast beaches are located within the Wild Atlantic Way, Irelands Ancient East, and Dublin Programme areas. The achievement and display of the Green Coast Award at our beaches reaffirms our clean, green image to our visitors.