Attention Photographers: Firefox OS Needs Your Help!

Greetings fellow Mozillians. The Firefox OS team needs your help…read on for details.

Project Goal:
Apply an appropriately Mozilla feel to both the Firefox OS product and its corresponding marketing campaigns by sourcing unique and high-quality photography from Mozillians. We need your help!

Photo need #1 – Phone wallpaper:
As you all know, every smart phone comes with a set of default wallpapers that users can choose from to set the look & feel for their device. Of course, they can also add their own imagery but these built-in wallpapers play an important role in setting the tone for how both the product and brand are perceived. We need your help sourcing approximately 10 default wallpapers for the first Firefox OS device.

Creative direction:

• Your images should be either scenic nature shots or abstract textures (i.e., no people photos here). The images should be striking and of professional quality, but the content and composition should be fairly simple as they will need to work well with the various app icons that will be layered on top.
• The first priority is to find beautiful images, but additional credit will be given to pictures that also encapsulate values of our brand like unconventional, engaging, openness, innovative, inspiring, optimistic and human. (These are of course abstract qualities and are not meant to be taken literally, but they may help guide you.)
• For reference, here are a few sample wallpapers from other mobile operating systems. Please note that we very much want to create our own unique imagery for this project, so these are only presented for the sake of comparison rather than any direct inspiration. Follow your own creative instincts rather than copying these, in other words.
• We would like to find a wide range of scenery, textures and colors. It’s a bonus if the dominant color in an image matches the Firefox color palette.

Other details:

• Image submissions are due by July 31.
• To submit your image, upload it to Flickr and tag with #fxb2g. This is very important! Images that aren’t properly tagged won’t be seen and thus can’t be considered. (If you want to make doubly sure that your images are included for consideration, please send a link to jslater@mozilla.com.)
• Images should be of professional quality and at least 1280 x 1920 pixels (even bigger is preferred). For reference, the wallpapers will be cropped to a 2:3 aspect ratio (320×480).
• No more than 10 submissions are allowed per entrant.
• The final selection will be made by members of Mozilla’s Engagement, Product and UX teams. Winners will need to sign a document granting Mozilla permission to use their photo(s).

Photo need #2 – People shots:
Any time Firefox OS is discussed in the press or a marketing campaign, we’ll want to feature screen shots of the product so people can see what it’s all about. Many of these screenshots will include interface elements that feature people – shots of the contacts page, or of an incoming call, or of the video player for example. We need your help sourcing approximately 8-12 photos of real people that can be used in these screenshots. (As an example, see “Ally Lam” on this page.)

Creative direction:

• Your images should be relatively close-up face shots of people. The images should be well-lit and generally of professional quality, but also should feel appropriately ‘real’ (as opposed to having the too-polished look associated with stock photography).
• The photos should have personality. They don’t necessarily have to be overly posed or seem like formal head shot…again, showing an image of a person that has character and seems ‘real’ is highly valued. We should feel like we know something about the subject simply by seeing the picture.
• We’re seeking a range of photos that will speak to the global diversity of Mozilla’s audience. All ages and races are very much encouraged, but because of our expected target audience at launch bonus points will be given to photos of people who are a) young and b) representative of the South American (and most notably, Brazilian) market.

Other details:

• Image submissions are due by July 31.
• To submit your image, upload it to Flickr and tag with #fxb2g. This is very important! Images that aren’t properly tagged won’t be seen and thus can’t be considered. (If you want to make doubly sure that your images are included for consideration, please send a link to jslater@mozilla.com.)
• Images should be of professional quality and at least 1280 x 1920 pixels (even bigger is preferred).
• No more than 15 submissions are allowed per entrant.

Update 7/24:

To clarify, this isn’t a contest. There aren’t actually winners and prizes, but we do intend to send thank you gifts to the photographers whose photos are selected for use.

We’ve also gotten a lot of questions about copyright ownership and licensing. We have no desire to own the photos. We are asking that photos submitted for consideration be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) license. If we’d like to use your photo, we’ll contact you and ask that you respond confirming that you are the photographer and that you are providing the photo under the CC BY license.

If you are submitting photos of people for promotional use (we won’t use photos of people as wallpaper), we will also send you a model release. Everyone in the photo will need to sign and return a model release before we can use the photo. Please don’t submit photos of anyone under 18. There are additional requirements for use of photos of children and we’d rather not have to worry about those.

Thanks!