VR Photography Competition Categories
Category 1: 360° Landscape & Nature VR
This category celebrates the art of capturing expansive natural environments in full 360° immersion. Successful submissions transport viewers to breathtaking locations ranging from majestic mountain ranges and serene forest canopies to underwater coral reefs and desert vistas. Unlike traditional landscape photography, VR landscape images must maintain visual interest and proper exposure in all directions, requiring careful consideration of lighting throughout the entire spherical field. Photographers should pay special attention to the zenith (sky) and nadir (ground) areas, ensuring they contribute to rather than distract from the overall composition. Technical challenges include managing dynamic range across the entire sphere, minimizing parallax errors during stitching, and creating seamless transitions between multiple exposures. This category also welcomes astrophotography VR images capturing night skies and celestial events in immersive format.
Category 2: Architectural & Urban VR Photography
Architectural VR photography captures built environments in their complete spatial context, allowing viewers to experience structures as if physically present. This category includes interior spaces like museums, cathedrals, and modern buildings, as well as exterior urban environments and cityscapes. The unique challenge lies in managing perspective distortion in 360° space, balancing exposure between interior and exterior views through windows, and capturing the scale and proportion of architectural elements from all angles. Submissions should demonstrate understanding of architectural lighting, both natural and artificial, and show sensitivity to spatial relationships that become apparent only in immersive viewing. This category also encompasses historical preservation VR, documenting heritage sites in detailed spherical images that serve both artistic and archival purposes, and innovative approaches to capturing urban life and city rhythms in immersive format.
Category 3: Creative & Experimental VR Imaging
The creative category pushes the boundaries of what's possible in VR photography, encouraging experimental techniques, digital manipulation, and unconventional approaches to immersive image-making. This includes but is not limited to: VR photo composites creating impossible spaces, time-blended VR images showing transitions over time, 360° light painting and long exposures, VR panoramas from unconventional perspectives (aerial, microscopic, etc.), and mixed reality captures blending physical and digital elements. Submissions in this category should demonstrate artistic vision and technical innovation while still utilizing photographic principles as their foundation. We welcome explorations of VR-specific narrative techniques, interactive elements within static VR images, and experiments with stereoscopic 3D VR photography that creates depth perception through headset viewing. This category celebrates the pioneering spirit of VR as a new artistic medium.
360° Landscape
Fully immersive natural environments
Architectural VR
Spaces experienced in full 360°
Creative VR
Experimental and boundary-pushing work