Photography Competition 2007

Terms & Conditons

1. The Owner of the competition is Reef Check Foundation Limited. The annual competition is open to anyone except those involved in its organisation and other employees of Reef Check Foundation Limited and the competition Sponsors.

2. All Entries must be original digital images, scans of transparencies or scanned prints with sufficient native resolution to be printed at >A3 size at exhibition quality.  One digital image may be entered in each category. Images may not be entered in more than one category. Black and White images are acceptable for any category. Images may be cropped before submission to either a 4:3 or square format. Digital images must not be adjusted beyond rule 4 prior to submission. Prints, mounted transparencies and CD based entries are not permitted. All entries must be submitted as digital files via the membership pages on the www.reefcheckaustralia.org website. It is a condition of entry that all entrants sign up to become members of the Reef Check Australia website and maintain their contact details for the duration of the competition.

3. Digital format guidelines: Images must be of sufficient native resolution that if they are shortlisted for the Reef Check exhibition they can be printed or viewed at A3 size or greater. As a guide this will require images with a native resolution of 6 million pixels or above. For upload purposes images must not exceed 1Megabyte (MB) in size. Submissions will then be automatically resized and optimised for screen viewing on the integrated Macromedia flash picture viewer. The Owner will contact you to request a high resolution version of your image if it is shortlisted. Contact will be made via your Reef Check Australia membership contact email address supplied on sign up. The original image capture EXIF data as it was recorded by the camera with no manipulation applied will be requested if your image reaches the final stages of the competition and must be supplied to RCA in late August 2007. File labelling should include your name, the category number or title and the key subject (eg JBrown.Cat2reef2020.jpg or JbrownCreativeVisions.reef2020.jpg). Please label all images using the same format. Full contact and picture details should also be inserted into the pull-down-file information box (eg from File>File Info in Photoshop).

4. Digital adjustments: The intention is for submitted images to remain “photorealistic” whilst conveying the overall competition theme and encouraging creativity, originality and vision in the interpretation of each component category. Hence digital adjustments and enhancements are acceptable in all categories if limited to cleaning, noise reduction, levels, curves, colour, saturation, contrast, sharpening and cropping. In addition images created by compositing, multiple exposures, photomontage, the use of selective filters and illustration are acceptable as entries for categories 2 and 3.

5. Copyright: You must be the sole author and owner of the copyright for all images entered. Where photomontage / multiple exposures techniques are used to generate images each image must be your sole copyright. By entering your images into the competition, you grant to the Owner a non-exclusive licence to reproduce the images for any purpose including, but not limited to, the following purposes:
1. Judging the competition,
2. Display at the exhibition of the winning entries held at the Perc Tucker Gallery and within Australia and subsequent international tours,
3. Inclusion within the Reef Check Australia online gallery, publications or similar.
4. Inclusion within promotion of the competition and exhibition organised by the Owner.
5. Inclusion (if selected as one of the promotional images) within the Owner’s marketing and promotional materials (including press packs) for the competition, exhibitions and the International Year of the Reef activities.
6. Use on competition- and exhibition-related merchandise to be sold by the Owner to generate not for profit revenue. NB: Royalties will be negotiated with the copyright owner for commercial uses of images beyond the scope of this agreement bearing in mind that Reef Check Australia is part of an international non-profit organisation. Hence all revenues generated from commercial products or merchandise including those that include images submitted to the Reef Check photography competition must be used to support Reef Check activities.
7. You grant the Owner the right to sub-licence images to the press for reproduction in connection with the competition and exhibition.

6. Ethics: If manipulated behaviour, cruel or unethical practices are suspected by the Owner and or the judges, the entry will be disqualified.

7. Legal requirements: Entries must not contravene relevant Environment Protection legislation and be compliant with relevant permits where images are taken in designated marine parks.

8. Previous competitions: Images that have already won a prize (winner, runner up or commended) in a major competition (one receiving more than 500 images) are not eligible for entry.

9. Online gallery: the Owner reserves the right to remove any entry from the online photo gallery if it contravenes the rules, entry requirements or is not deemed to be of sufficient standard for the competition. Any entry that at the sole discretion of the Owner and or judges is deemed to be indecent, obscene, discriminatory or offensive will be immediately disqualified from the competition and will be removed from the online gallery and appropriate action will be taken. Entries that include images of children (<18 years of age) must comply with all federal and state government rules and requirements. In general written permission must be sought from the child’s parent on guardian for their participation.

10. Online voting and shortlisting: only registered members of the Reef Check Australia website are eligible to use the online gallery voting system. Entrants are not eligible to vote for their own entries. Only one vote per entry is permissible per member. Members are encouraged to vote for each entry in a category to provide a fair representation of their opinion across all the entries. The votes cast through this system will be used to guide the shortlisting process however the judges decision on category winners will be final.

11. Judges: will be appointed by the Owners to choose the winners. The Owners' decision on all matters relating to the competition is final, and no correspondence will be entered into concerning the competition's judging and organisation. Should the quality of entries fall below the standard required, the Owner reserves the right to remove these entries from the online photo gallery and not to award prizes.

12. Notification: Winners and commended photographers will be notified in September 2007. Shortlisted, winning and commended pictures may be kept until after the opening of the exhibition in September. The results will be published on the Reef Check Australia website in October 2007.

13. Reproduction: The Owner and sponsors are entitled further to rule 5 above to reproduce and exhibit in all media (now known or hereafter created) prize-winning and commended entries, but only in connection with the promotion of and publicity for this competition, the exhibition and tour.

14. Merchandise: The Owner is entitled further to rule 5 above to reproduce the prize-winning and commended images on or in relation to competition merchandise.

15. Entry conditions: this is a free to enter competition. However as previously noted the Owner is a not for profit organisation hence a membership donation of $10 AUD is encouraged from all competition entrants and new members. These monies will help support the development and national promotion of this competition and other programs for the second international year of the reef in 2008. Donations can be made through the secure link on the www.reefcheckaustralia.org website.

16. Closing date: for digital submissions to the online gallery is Friday 31st August 2007.