Privacy Policy

This site is a public directory of photographers. Your name, username, country, city and approved photographs are meant to be seen — that is the product. Your email address, password and the way you voted are not, and are never shown to anyone else.

The controller of your data is [legal entity name], [registered address]. For anything on this page, write to takedown@photonations.com.

• Email and password — to create and secure your account. The password is stored hashed; we never see it.
• Username, full name, country, city — these place you on the map and on your country and city boards. Public.
• Your application — the website or Instagram link you give us, and anything you write in the optional statement. These sit on your profile and are public.
• The decision on it — whether you were admitted, when, and any private note the reviewer left. The note is visible only to moderators, never to you or anyone else.
• Profile details you choose to add — biography, exhibitions, clients, specialisation. Public, and entirely optional.
• Photographs, titles and descriptions — public once you are admitted. Work uploaded before that, or belonging to a suspended profile, is visible only to you and to moderators.
• Votes — recorded so you are not shown the same photograph twice and to compute scores. Never published, and never attributed to you.
• Reports you file — visible only to you and to moderators. The person you report is not told who reported them.

The lawful bases are: performing our agreement with you (running your account and the competition), your consent (optional profile fields), and our legitimate interest in keeping the site free of stolen and misattributed work.

• No advertising, no ad networks, no selling or renting your data.
• No third-party analytics or tracking pixels.
• No email address is ever displayed publicly or exposed through the site.

• Supabase — database, authentication and image storage. Region: [hosting region].
• Hostinger — web hosting and content delivery.
• Mapbox — renders the map. It receives the requests your browser makes for map tiles.

Where a provider processes data outside the European Economic Area, that transfer relies on the European Commission's standard contractual clauses.

We use no advertising or analytics cookies, so there is no consent banner to click through. Your browser stores a session token so you stay signed in; it is strictly necessary for the site to work and is cleared when you sign out.

Account data is kept while your account exists. Delete your account and your profile and photographs are removed from public view. Results, scores and badges from completed seasons may remain in the historical record — a past season would be meaningless if it could be rewritten — attributed or anonymised at your request. Reports and moderation decisions are kept while needed to handle repeat problems.

Under the GDPR you may request a copy of your data, correct it, have it deleted, take it elsewhere in a portable form, restrict how it is used, or object to processing based on legitimate interest. Email takedown@photonations.com and we will respond within one month.

You can also complain to your data protection authority. In Austria that is the [Datenschutzbehörde — add contact details].

This site is not intended for anyone under 16. If you believe a child has created an account, tell us and we will remove it.

If work of yours has been published here by another person, or your details appear on a profile you did not create, use the reporting and takedowns process. You do not need an account.