2008 Popular Photography Images of the Year Competition

OFFICIAL RULES

1. ELIGIBILITY:
You must be 18 years or older as of September 12, 2008 to enter the contest. Employees of Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., Inc. and members of their immediate families are not eligible to enter or win. The contest is open to both amateur and professional photographers.

2. CONTEST DEADLINES:
The Contest commences on April 23, 2008 and continues until September 12, 2008.


3. CATEGORIES:
Action/Sports
Architecture
Candid/Humor
People
Nature
Travel/Places

4. ENTRY FEES:
Single Entry: $10

4. PRIZES:
GRAND PRIZE
The Grand Prize winner will receive a 50" Panasonic HDTV, HD Camcorder, Blu-Ray DVD Player, Lumix Digital Camera, and an all expense paid trip to Ireland for two. The Panasonic Prize package will be set up or installed by firedog, Circuit City's highly trained professionals. The winner will also receive a SmugMug Lifetime Pro account with full customization, $500 of free prints/gifts from the SmugMug website, entry to exclusive 2009 SmugMug Workshop, a 3 year world membership from fotocommunity.com, as well as a X-Rite ColorMunki Photo.

CATEGORY WINNERS
The winners of each category will receive a new Panasonic Lumix Digital Camera, a SmugMug Liftetime free Pro Account, as well as a 2 year world membership from fotocommunity.com.

5. SUBMISSIONS
The competition is open to work produced from September 1 2007 - September 12, 2008. Entries can be submitted by uploading the image and making a payment on the www.popphotocontest.com website.

File specifications: submissions should be in JPEG format. This compresses the size of your file and should make for quick uploads. It's important to set your JPEG compression to maximum image quality (minimum compression) in order to prevent deterioration of image quality.

In Photoshop, saving your file via Save As, select JPEG for your image type, and put the quality slider to 12 (all the way to the right).

Filename should not have spaces i.e. "blue car.JPG" instead
"blue_car.JPG"
File must have the correct extension ().
Filename should not have slashes i.e. "women/child.jpg"
Filename should not have odd charachters i.e. "%$@#*()

Contest is open to amateurs and pros.

Employees of Sponsor, Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., Inc., publisher of Popular Photography and Imaging magazine and popphoto.com web site ("Sponsor") and their immediate families are not eligible to enter or win.

Entrants name, address, email address, and category must be affixed to all entries.

6. JUDGING/WINNERS:
The judging will be done in two stages: The initial stage will be done by the Popular Photography & Imaging promo staff. The second stage will be done by a jury of outside experts selected by the editors of Popular Photography & Imaging. Entries will be judged equally on creativity, technical expertise and aesthetic value. Entries will be ranked in descending order. The decisions of the judges are final.

Winners will be notified via email or mail by October 19th, 2008.
Winners may be required to sign and return an affidavit of eligibility, grant of rights, and a publicity and liability release within 14 days of notification, or alternate winners will be selected (alternate will be next highest ranked entrant). By entering this Contest and/or accepting a prize, you agree to allow Sponsor to use your name, city and state, voice and image in connection with publication of your winning entry and for promotional purposes (except where prohibited), without review, notification or approval.

7. MISCELLANEOUS:
This Contest is subject to all federal, state, and local laws and is void where prohibited. Winners agree that Sponsors and Prize Contributors, including their parents, subsidiaries, affiliates, officers, directors and employees, shall not be liable for injury, loss or damage of any kind resulting from participating in this promotion or from the acceptance or use of any prize awarded. HFM reserves the right to verify eligibility qualifications of any winner(s). Sponsor, in its sole discretion, reserves the right to disqualify any person tampering with the entry process, the operation of the web site, www.popphoto.com, or who is otherwise in violation of the rules. Sponsor further reserves the right to cancel, terminate or modify the Contest if it is not capable of completion as planned due to, for example, infection by a computer virus, bugs, tampering, unauthorized intervention or technical failures of any sort. In the event of early termination of the Contest, winners will be selected from all eligible entries received at the time of termination in accordance with the judging procedures described above. In no event will Sponsor be responsible for any damages or losses arising out of access to and use of the web sites or the downloading from and or printing material downloaded from said site.

Sponsor is not responsible for lost, late, incomplete or misdirected entries. In the event of a dispute concerning the identity of a person submitting an online entry, the entry will be deemed submitted by the person in whose name the e-mail account is registered.

8. WINNERS LIST: A winners list will be available upon request once the January 2009 issue is released.

Sponsor: Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., Inc., 1633 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.

Prize Contributors: Panasonic, Circuit City, FireDog, Tourism Ireland, Smugmug, fotocommunity.com