For July’s “after hours” photo contest, we’re eagerly anticipating your best nighttime photographs that depict a good time. With summer come impromptu outdoor picnics and late nights at sidewalk cafes, so show us how you blow off steam after a tough work week. Craft cocktails at the Gibson? Friday jazz in the National Gallery Sculpture Garden? Dance parties at the Finnish Embassy? Whatever your take on a Washington night out is, we want to see it.

If you’re new to the game, here’s how our contest works: Submissions are accepted until noon on Monday, July 19. Our judges select the finalists, and then we open the voting up to readers to select a winner. The photo that garners the highest percentage of votes will be published in the September issue of The Washingtonian.

Photos—one per e-mail, please—should be sent to photocontest@washingtonian.com. Be sure to include the photographer’s name, phone number, e-mail address, and place of residence, along with a sentence or two about the photo—where it was taken and an explanation of why it fits the theme are both important details. You can submit as many photos as you’d like, but just make sure each is 300 dpi and at least four by six inches. And remember, the photographer and the subject must be from the Washington area, which includes the Maryland and Virginia suburbs. 

Snap away, late-night shutterbugs! As Friday night steadily approaches, we’re dreaming of exactly two things: an ice-cold mojito and your shots of Washington after the sun goes down.

>> Check out previous reader favorites in our winners’ gallery.