Last year’s overall winner, “Fun Bathing” by Tan Choon Wee of Singapore

Photography competitions have stepped up in the last few years. No longer are they relegated to the select few, to the professionals with expensive equipment and years of framing, lighting and editing experience. Now they’re open to anyone with a digital camera and a knack for being in the right place and the right time.

One of the most well-known of these contests, the Digital Camera Photographer of the Year competition, sponsored by the U.K.’s Telegraph and the Royal Photographic Society, is currently underway and is expected to receive more than 120, 000 entries. Categories include World in Motion (“images that capture the moment and have a sense of drama”),  Black & White, Fashion, Man-Made (“aspects of our world that have been shaped by the hand of man”), People & Portraits, Planet Earth and the “anything goes” category, Digital Vision.

Organized by Britain’s largest photography magazine, Digital, the 2009 competition is free and open to photographers of any nationality. After today’s submission deadline (5pm GMT!), a team of judges will pick from the enormous amount of entries in all ten categories and will then tag an overall winner to receive the top prize of £10,000 ($16,000). The winning artist will also be declared Digital Photographer of the Year 2009.

Judges for the competition include such experts and luminaries as award-winning wildlife photographer Steve Bloom, the director of photography for news for Getty Images, Hugh Pinney, plus numerous editors and artists from major world-wide photography magazines.

So whether it’s that stunning portrait of Aunt Gracie everyone’s been complimenting you for, that fleeting snapshot you took of the falling leaf in Central Park or your brilliantly Photoshopped picture of the surf at daybreak, go and dig up your best shots and send them in to the planet’s biggest digital photography competition. Who knows, maybe you’ve got that one incredible image the world has been looking for.