Friends of the Blue Hills Blue Hills Photo Contest: How Voting Works & How to Win

A conservation group's photo contest, decided by the public

Friends of the Blue Hills is the Massachusetts organization behind the Blue Hills Photo Contest, and it publishes the contest on its own website rather than through a third-party poll service. The contest page explains that photos will be posted for public voting online, which makes it a popular-vote photo ballot in the best-of family rather than a juried exhibition.

The organizer's site also carries visit guides and maps, suggested hikes, volunteering and programs, so the contest sits inside a wider outdoor audience. People who follow the Blue Hills tend to arrive from those pages, which shapes who is likely to see the photographs and vote for them.

No city or county is named in the contest text, so this page places the program at state level only: a Massachusetts photo contest owned by a single nonprofit organizer.

What the 2025 season fixed, and what stayed open

The Blue Hills Photo Contest 2025 page carries two dates. A note on the page says voting begins October 16, 2025, and a second line says voting continues until 5:00 pm on Sunday, October 26, 2025. Together they define a voting stage that ran across the second half of October 2025, ending on a Sunday afternoon.

Those dates belong to the 2025 cycle only. This is the first confirmed edition; whether it returns next year is not yet published; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

Friends of the Blue Hills has not printed a submission deadline for photographers, and it has not said when winners are announced. Anyone planning around a photo should treat every unlisted item as unknown rather than filling it in from another contest.

How a supporter votes on the Friends of the Blue Hills page

The mechanic is simple on paper. A visitor opens the contest page at friendsofthebluehills.org/photo-contest/, finds a photograph among those posted for public voting, and votes for it online. Voting ran from October 16 until the 5:00 pm Sunday close on October 26 in 2025, so the practical advice is to vote early and spread the link around before that afternoon.

What the page does not describe is the finer print. The step-by-step button or form is not described in the text, so a supporter should rely on what the live page shows. Whether a visitor needs to sign in is not stated. The Blue Hills contest text says nothing about a daily allowance or a ceiling on votes, and the page leaves eligibility open as well, so no number should be quoted to a friend as fact.

Seeing the entry you want

Photographs are grouped into categories, since prizes go to the top three in each one, but the group names are not in the page text. Check the headings on the live Friends of the Blue Hills page to see where your photograph sits before sending anyone to it.

Prizes follow the vote: the placing of a photograph within its category decides the top three. That makes timing matter, because late votes after the Sunday close do not count toward the 2025 outcome.

Where this ballot sits beside other Massachusetts programs

Massachusetts has several public-vote programs in the best-of vertical, and most of them poll readers about local businesses. The Blue Hills Photo Contest is different in subject: it asks the public to choose photographs, and the organizer is a conservation group, not a newspaper or magazine.

Each of those programs has its own organizer and its own ballot, so support earned in one does not carry over to another. The Blue Hills contest also stands out for its host: the organizer's own site carries the photographs, which means the contest page is the only place to confirm anything about it.

Building support for a photograph without breaking the spirit of the vote

A Blue Hills photographer has one dependable tool: people who love the Blue Hills. Because the 2025 voting stage ran only from October 16 to October 26, a plan should start before the stage opens, with a short list of friends, hiking partners and family who will visit the Friends of the Blue Hills page and vote while it is open.

The organizer has published no rule on outside vote services, so nobody can say how it would treat one. The organizer's page describes public voting online, and prizes go to the top three in each category. Guesswork about how a particular tactic would be treated is a poor basis for a plan. For a general look at honest methods, read how to get more votes online, and for the legal side see whether buying votes is legal. Readers who want background on paid support in general can read buying votes online, though no service can promise a placing.