Mark Zilberman, a semi-professional photographer based in North Bergen, NJ, took a trip last summer to one of America’s most favored photo locations: Coney Island. “It was riotous,” he says. The result of his visit was his image “Coney Island Romance,” featuring a man and his snake. It is one of three entries to the American Photography Open 2023 contest singled out by our judges, along with Heath Robbins’s shot of two boys playing soccer on a sidewalk in Chefchouen, Morocco, and Zach Doehler’s photograph of a winding road in Valley of Fire Desert State Park, Nevada. Zach and Heath's images are entered in the Tamron category and are eligible for additional prizes

Now is the time for you to enter the contest: It’s open to photographers at any level using any device, from DSLRs and mirrorless cameras to smartphones. All Open winners will receive prizes including selected products and services from our partners Tamron Americas, SanDisk, PhotoShelter, The Photo Closer and  Vital Impacts, whose mission is supporting organizations who are protecting people, wildlife and habitats. (Go here to see more).

The Open Grand Prize winner will receive $5,000, a Tamron 28-75mm F/2.8 Di III VXD G2 (model A063) for Sony mirrorless cameras ($899 value), a SanDisk 1 TB Extreme Pro Portable SSD, the choice of an 8x10 open edition print with a certificate from Vital Impacts, a 2-year Pro account from our sponsor PhotoShelter, and a 2-hour business consultation with The Photo Closer.

In addition, Tamron Americas is once again sponsoring our Landscape and Travel category Grand Prize and runners-up winners. (Please note this is open to residents of USA and Canada only.) The Tamron Grand Prize winner will receive a Tamron 35-150mm F2-2.8 Di III VXD (model A058) for Sony mirrorless cameras ($1,899 value). All Tamron entries will also be eligible for the Open prizes, so there is no need to enter twice. You can enter both competitions as many times as you wish. The deadline is August 31.

In the meantime, take some inspiration from our three highlighted entries from June:
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Mark Zilberman: “Coney Island Romance”

Mark Zilberman describes himself as a “semi-professional” photographer—“I make money from photography, but it’s not my principle source of income,” he notes. Zilberman, who is based in both North Bergen, NJ, and Andes, NY, has in fact been interested in photography since the age of five, when his mother gave him a Kodak Instamatic 104. “We’d gone on a trip to see blossoms,” he recalls.

Last summer, Zilberman took a trip to one of America’s most favored photo locations, Coney Island, and the result was his image “Coney Island Romance,” featuring a man and his snake. Zilberman shot the photo with a Ricoh GR III compact camera. “I just came across him on the promenade. I didn’t get his name. At Coney Island there’s little resistance to picture taking,” he  says. The shot was published at Instagram and was a finalist in the Brussels Street Photography Festival and the Miami Street Photography Festival.

See more of Mark Zilberman’s work at Instagram.
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Heath Robbins: “Concrete Champions”

“I’ve always loved photography and have been taking pictures since I was in high school,” says Boston-based Heath Robbins. “After college and then 4 years in the advertising business I decided to quit and travel the world for a year develop a portfolio and become a professional photographer.”

Once a year, Robbins takes solo trips to locations around the world—“just me and my cameras exploring a place I’ve never been. When I do I always look for moments that tell the story of what it feels like to be there,” he says.

This April he was visiting Chefchouen, a city in the Rif Mountains of northwest Morocco that is known for the blue-washed buildings of its old town. There, he saw two boys kicking a soccer ball on the stairs of an alleyway. “There isn’t a lot of open area to play soccer there and I loved how they made the space work for them,” says Robbins, who shot with a Nikon Z 7II. “I spent some time waiting for a moment that captured their energy,” he says.

See more of Heath Robbins’s work at his website and Instagram.
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Zach Doehler: “Highway of Fire”

Based in Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Zach Koehler has been doing landscape and nature photography professionally since the summer of 2019. “During my teens, I wanted to learn how to capture the night sky. I knew I couldn't do it with my phone, so after a little research I discovered that I needed a DSLR and so I asked my parents if we had one. Sure enough we had an old Canon Rebel XT with a kit lens, so I started photographing at night with that and then eventually started trying out other forms of photography as well. By that point, I was hooked,” he says.

Last December Doehler and his wife made a 17-day car camping trip to Arizona; on the way, they visited Valley of Fire Desert State Park, Nevada, a nature preservation area northeast of Las Vegas that derives its name from red sandstone formations. “I was just amazed by the twists and turns of the scenic road through this incredible desert landscape,” Doehler says. He photographed the scene on the first day of his visit but was dissatisfied with the light. After camping for the night, he shot it again shortly after sunrise with a a Sony a7R IV camera and a Sony FE 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 G OSS lens.

See more of Zach Doeler’s work at his website www.calibreus.co and Instagram.