COMPETITION CATEGORY DEFINITIONS

Categories

Nature – Overall Definition

Nature photography is restricted to the use of the photographic process to depict observations from all branches of natural history, except anthropology and archeology, in such a fashion that a well informed person will be able to identify the subject material and to certify as to its honest presentation. The story telling value of a photograph must be weighed more than the pictorial quality while maintaining a high technical quality. Human elements shall not be present, except where those human elements enhance the nature story. The presence of scientific bands, scientific tags or radio collars on wild animals is permissible. Photographs of artificially produced hybrid plants or animals, mounted specimens, or obviously set arrangements, are ineligible, as is any form of manipulation that alters the truth of the photographic statement. No techniques that add to, relocate, replace, or remove pictorial elements except by cropping are permitted. Techniques that enhance the presentation of the photograph without changing the nature story or the pictorial content are permitted. All adjustments must appear natural.

A photographer may perform any enhancements and modifications that improve the presentation of the image to make it more closely represent the original scene photographed but that does not change the truth of the original nature story. Cropping and horizontal flipping (equivalent to reversing a slide) are acceptable modifications. Flipping well know scenics can be risky. Removing spots due to dust on your sensors is allowed. Removing rounded slide mount corners on scanned images is allowed. Adding elements to your images, removing pictorial elements from your image other than by cropping, combining pictorial elements from separate images or rearranging and/or cloning and/or copying elements in your image are not acceptable and can lead to disqualification of your image in the competition. HDR techniques and focus stacking techniques such as Helicon Focus techniques are techniques that enhance the presentation without changing the pictorial content and considered allowable techniques. Please note that all adjustments must still look natural. Just because a technique is legitimate does not guarantee the image it was used on will get a good score.

Please note that “pictorial quality” is not the same a technical quality. Technical quality is still an important criteria for evaluation and judging of images.

Wildlife – Authentic Wildlife is defined as one or more organisms living free and unrestrained in a natural or adopted habitat.

For NCC purposes, the Nature category will permit images taken at zoos, wildlife preserves, game farms, and butterfly houses and other areas not considered natural wildlife areas, but absolutely no “hand of man” elements can be present in these photos. NCC will not restrict our nature images to “authentic wildlife” for 2011-2012 since we will not have any Wildlife competitions. However, any image submitted to other outside club competitions will need to follow the rules of the competition that is to be entered.

Nature – Birds Only

This category has been developed because of Florida’s numerous bird photography opportunities and requests by members to isolate this competition. This category must follow all of the above overall nature definitions.

Nature Other

This category has been developed to enable members to enter animals, insects, landscapes, and other nature categories that do not include birds. This category must follow all of the above overall nature definitions.

Creative-Altered

This category is meant to be a “creative category” where the entries are photos that are recognizably altered.

The image must obviously display a change in natural color, form, shape or any combination of three. High Dynamic Range (HDR) images without further changes are not considered creative-altered.

The original image must be made by the entrant. All images must be original and may not incorporate elements produced by anyone else. Original images must be altered by the maker; artwork or computer graphics generated by the entrant may be incorporated if the original photographic content predominates. Images may not be constructed entirely within a computer. It is necessary that the image's core content be identifiable. Any subject matter is acceptable as long as the Creative-Altered guidelines are apparent.

Open

This is the general category of images not defined in any other categories such as nature or creative.

Assigned

Subject matter as defined in the schedule.

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Photojournalism: Images shall consist of pictures or sequences with informative content and emotional impact, including human interest, documentary, sports, and spot news. The journalistic value of the photograph shall be considered over pictorial quality. In the interest of credibility, photographs that misrepresent the truth, such as manipulation to alter the subject matter, or situations that are set up for the purpose of photography, are unacceptable in photojournalism competition.

Photo Travel: A photo travel image must represent the feeling of a time and a place, portray a land, its people or a culture in its natural state, and has no geographic limitations. Ultra close-ups which lose their identity, studio-type model shots, or photographic manipulations which misrepresent the true situation or alter the content of the image are unacceptable in photo travel competition.

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