Manfrotto is a well known global brand, particularly by all those with an interest in imaging. Their products, camera and lighting supports, are manufactured by Lino Manfrotto + Co., S.p.A. at their HQ in Bassano del Grappa in Italy. Perhaps less well known is that the Manfrotto brand is one of many imaging related brands owned by the UK based Vitec Group's Imaging and Staging Division. On 11th May 2011 Manfrotto launched a photography competition entitled 'Imagine More' which finished on July 14th 2011 attracting over 7,000 entries.

This spring, International Garden Photographer of the Year received lots of entries from around the world for its 4Seasons category, which featured a theme titled ‘New Mornings’.

In May 2011 Canon USA launched a new promotion, Project Imagin8tion. The promotion is, as many promotions are, a photography competition, but to give it an added appeal Canon formed a partnership with award winning Hollywood film director, Ron Howard. This competition is different from the usual run of the mill competition in that the entrants are invited to take photographs that represent any one of eight themes, then the winning photo submitted for each theme will be used by Ron Howard as the inspiration for creating a short film. Great idea, but the execution of the Canon idea is far from inspiring.

When we read the revised terms that TwitPic had imposed on their users we could hardly believe what we were reading. We were sure that some foolish person in TwitPic's legal department was just having a bad day. That it was all a dreadful mistake, the culprit would be fired for being incompetent, the terms would be corrected, and the world would be reset to 'happy' again. Sadly, it has not turned out as we hoped and outpourings of tears and rage are clogging up social media even as we write this story.