How our Photo of the Month competition works

We've had Community Photos running on the site for a while now, and a few people have asked exactly how it works, so here's the full picture.

Anyone signed in can submit a photo. It doesn't need to be a prize-winning shot of a landmark. Some of our favourite submissions so far have been a mural on a back street, a hanging basket outside a tea room, or just a view most of us walk past without noticing. Add a caption if you like, pick the town it was taken in, and it goes into a review queue.

Once a photo's approved, it appears in the public gallery and anyone can browse it by town. If it was submitted in the current calendar month, Verified Local residents can also vote for their favourite. Voting is entirely advisory. It doesn't automatically pick a winner, but it does give us a good steer on which photos people are actually responding to.

At the end of each month, we pick one Photo of the Month. Only Verified Local submitters are eligible to win. If you've verified your address since submitting, you're automatically back in the running. We check eligibility at the point we pick a winner, not when the photo went in. Winning is recognition only. There's no prize attached, just a badge on the photo, a spot in our past winners hall of fame and, if you're comfortable with it, a shoutout on our Facebook and Instagram pages.

If you want to see what's won before, we keep every past winner on the site. And if you fancy having a go yourself, it takes two minutes to submit a photo, no professional camera required, just an eye for something worth sharing.