Every year, Dallas Voice launches its Readers Voice Awards polling with a photo contest — Top Dog, Ultimate Diva even last year’s My Gay Texas. And every year, scores of folks submit their photos for the chance to win … and it’s not just bragging rights you take home. It’s cash.

Yep, send us your photo and if you make the list of nine finalists, you can be voted on at DallasVoice.com by readers who vote in the Readers Voice Awards for the best of Dallas. If you win, your photo will grace the cover of the March 22, 2013 edition. And Dallas Voice will donate $1,000 in the winner’s name to the non-profit of your choice!

This year’s theme is Top Hat. What does that mean to you? Well, that’s the point: Are you someone who likes to wear an Easter bonnet? Or do you have a collection of baseball caps from every team in the league. Maybe your Halloween costume was as a pirate — or even Marie Antoinette with a tiny pillbox perched atop her huge mass of hair. How about a rainbow yarmulke or a Fedora bedecked in Obama stickers? If you can think of it, we want to see it. Be creative! We’ll look at ’em all!

Just email your imaginative idea of a Top Hat photo to TopHat@Dallasvoice.com; submission deadline is Friday, Dec. 7. We’ll post the finalists on our webpage starting the first of January and you could be in the running to win some dough for charity. And wouldn’t that be a feather in your cap?

Include with your photo your name, email and cell phone, plus a statement of model release for any people in the shot and the name of your charity. Now, let’s blow the lid off this thing!