Over six years, the exhibition has moved through a range of themes, from birds, wildlife and movement to landscapes, macro and black-and-white work, giving South African photographers a public audience well beyond the usual gallery crowd. This year's theme asks a more open-ended question: when does a photograph stop being a record of something and start being art?

Entrants can submit work in any genre portraiture, landscape, still life, architecture, abstract or conceptual with judges looking less for a particular subject and more for a clear point of view: intentional use of composition, light, colour, timing and editing that shows the photographer interpreting a scene rather than simply capturing it.

Twenty images will be selected for large-scale print and installed along the promenade itself, turning the walkway into a public exhibition seen by both Cape Town residents and visitors passing through. Over its six previous runs, the competition has featured 120 photographers and drawn tens of thousands of entries, with more than half a million rand in prizes awarded to date.

This year's prize pool totals R100,000. First prize (R65,000) includes a Canon EOS R8 body with an RF 28–70mm f/2.8 lens and a R10,000 ORMS Print Room voucher. Second prize (R20,000) includes a Canon EOS R50 Creator Kit and a R5,000 voucher, while third prize (R15,000) includes a Canon PowerShot V1 and a R5,000 voucher.

How to enter: Photographers may submit up to five images per entry, with unlimited entries allowed. Images must be landscape orientation, JPEG format, and no larger than 5MB. Finalists will be asked to submit high-resolution TIFF files for A0-size printing; no watermarks will be accepted on final prints.

Entries close 16 September 2026. Submissions can be made via gleam.io/pN7y6/orms-x-canon-the-art-of-photography.

This year's judging panel includes Jason Ormrod (MD, ORMS), Roger Machin (Business Development Manager, Canon), Shani Judes (Founder and Curator, SJ Artists) and Tayla Hollamby (Curator and Exhibitions Manager, Norval).