The first Creative Commons Photography Contest Awarding Ceremony and Exhibition of Award-winning Works was held in the Wenhui Hall of National Library of China on Nov. 4th.

The event was hosted by WANG Chunyan, associate professor of RUC Law School and project lead of Creative Commons China Mainland.

We have honorable guests presenting at the event including Joichi Ito, Chairman of Creative Commons, Prof. HAN Zishan of Fine Arts School of Tsinghua University, Chair of the Panel of judges for the contest, Dr. XU Chao, Deputy – Director General of Copyright Division of National Copyright Administration of PRC, and. many other notable people. Also, there were journalists from Sohu.com, Popular Photography Magazine, Foto-video Magazine, Artnow.com, and Nphoto.net, as well as a lot of photography fans.

Mr. Ito, Prof. HAN and other guests gave their congratulations to the success of the first photography contest that adopts the Chinese Mainland version of CC licenses. Meanwhile, they expressed their view on the following aspects—— Creative Commons, copyright protection and photographic creation, etc.

Co-organized by Creative Commons China Mainland and nphoto.net, and sponsored by the Ford Foundation, the contest is dedicated to spreading the word to share ,remix and reuse legally. The contest received enthusiastic support from amateur photographers and from professional phtographers as well.

There were 10,000 submissions of professional and amateur works licensed under various localized CC licenses. There were three categories: “Society & humanity”, “Nature and Landscape” and “Portraits”. Winners were chosen by a panel of judges consisting of 5 notable people in the photography area in China including Prof. HAN Zishan, Ms. CHEN Xiaobo, Mr. ZHANG Tao, Mr. CHAI Xuan and Mr. CAI Qing, There is a web page of the winning photographs.

The first- place under the category of Society went to “School at basement courtyard” by LI Yufeng from Shanxi province, China, the first place under the category of Nature went to “Nurture” by MA Jun from Inner Mongolia, and “Jump Series” by LING Shisheng from Shanghai won the first place under the category of Portraits. Together with some other winners, the three first prizes winners were presenting at the ceremony.

After the awards ceremony, we had a CC Salon with presentations from an illustrious and interesting group of speakers including Mr. Joichi Ito, Dr. Catharina Maracke, Dr. Stewart Cheifet, ,Prof. Daniele Bourcier. Prof. HAN Zishan, Ms. ZHAO Xiaobo, and Mr. GAO Lei. Moderated by Mr. LI Xu, a member of Creative Commons China Mainland, the speakers discussed with attendees on topics such as “how to choose a license” , “the CC porting system”,“how to make money with your photos ”, “the Power of Image”, “Current State of China’s Documentary Photography” and “International Dialogue of Visual Culture and Art”. These topics attracted extensive interests from the attendees.

CC licenses are to create a reasonable and flexible copyright system and help solve problems in traditional copyright systems, especially meeting the need of protection and use of copyright in digital era. So CC China Mainland licenses have been widespread concerned since their launch in March 2006 by many communities such as open education resources, creator groups and web communities, such as China Open Resources for Education, www.qiji.cn and nphoto.net.

Further information about CC licenses and  the award-winning photos, please contact:

Mr. ZHU Handong  Mobile: +86-13601136018   E-mail:zhuziphoto@yahoo.com.com

Mr. SHU Jianwei  Mobile: +86-13810664302   E-mail: shujianwei@cn.creativecommons.org

Or visit the contest website (in Chinese): http://cc.nphoto.net/