Readers travel photo competition: October – win a trip to Costa Rica

Use a camera rather than a phone when travelling? If so, and know how to create intelligent, witty or beautiful images, enter our competition and be in with a chance of winning a wildlife holiday for two to Costa Rica with Exodus Travels

Monday 2 October 2017 18.02 BST

There is no theme this year, so the field is open. Whether it’s a stunning landscape, poignant portrait or a vibrant street scene, we are just looking for great travel shots.

We’ll choose and publish a selection of our favourites, and the winning image for the month will receive a £200 voucher that can be used against an Exodus Travels holiday.

All the monthly winners will be entered for the overall annual prize, a fantastic 16-night holiday for two to Costa Rica with Exodus Travels.

Before he left Syria it’s likely he would have been an eyewitness to the destruction of buildings around him and, alas, of lives, too. Our immediate worlds, the things, people, animals and buildings around us, are the first act in the story of our looking lives. This boy’s first act is likely to have been one of visible rubble and rage.

Then he went on the road, north towards countries – Germany or Sweden – that he will never have seen in real life. When I was in Sarajevo during its siege, and even when I went on a much less difficult trip to China, I noticed how it was the unfamiliar things – buildings, faces, clothes, threats – that popped up visually. I can only begin to imagine my football friend’s forward tracking shot up through the Balkans.