General

1 Entries must be taken within Otway Tourism boundary – See the map on this website or the last page of the entry form
2 Entries must be the original work of the entrant.
3 Entries must have been taken in the 12 months leading up to the closing date of 14 September 2009.
4 All entrants will be required to allow unlimited use of images by Otway Tourism, Geelong Otway Tourism and Otway Tourism members for tourism purposes in any format including internet. Recognition will be given of the photographer’s name in usage. Usage will be not for profit, but may be used for promotional materials such as booklets and calendars which may be sold to the public at a price that recovers printing costs.  Images will not be on-sold to another party. Under this shared copyright arrangement the photographer will also keep copyright for their own use.  Photographers wishing to keep sole copyright should not enter the competition.
5 Entry will be by electronic JPG image, judged using a projector.  Selected shortlisted entries will be converted to large prints (400mm x 500mm approx) for display and for the People’s Choice award.
6 Judging will be by 2 or more panels of 3 or more judges, using Australian Photographic Society guidelines.  The decisions of the judges will be final and without appeal.  Judges advertised may change depending on availability at the time of judging.
7 Images should faithfully represent the real situation with minimum enhancement. Manipulation is limited to cropping and minor colour adjustments. Monochrome is also acceptable for this competition.
8 A list of shortlisted entries will be emailed to all entrants prior to the presentation of prizes.  A catalogue of winners, runners up, certificates of merit and shortlisted entries will be emailed to all entrants in PDF format after the presentation of prizes. 
9a Entries will only be accepted on the official entry form or photocopy of it and in the format specified.
9b Submission of entry constitutes acceptance of these conditions.

Theme and Categories

10 The competition theme is Iconic Tourism.  Judges will be looking for striking pictures that best articulate the theme, combined with originality and technical excellence.  Consideration will also be given to entries with a strong identity that will reproduce well.
11 The intent of Landscape / Seascape category is to showcase the natural beauty in landscapes or seascapes of the Otways Tourism area.
12 The intent of Rural / Agriculture category is to showcase interesting aspects of farmed areas that may be less visible than higher profile tourism areas.
13 The intent of the Natural History category is for striking photographs of  flora and fauna in their natural setting, without people or artificial settings.  For example, but not limited to, Koalas and local birds
14 The intent of the Action Tourism category is to encourage a wide range of dynamic shots showcasing tourism.  This might include people and/ or animals and/ or local settings in Otway Tourism.  Makers should respect the privacy of the public and get a subject’s  permission before entering their image.  The committee may ask entrants to provide written proof of permission from clearly visible subjects.
15 Up to 4 entries can be made in each of the above categories. The entry fee shown below is per category, not per image.
16 The intent of the Showing the World category is to contribute high quality images from the Otways Tourism area onto the Panoramio geographically indexed website.  A selected number of images will migrate over time onto Google Earth and Google Maps, thereby becoming visible to viewers from all over the world.  Entries from Landscape/ Seascape, Rural/ Agriculture and Natural History categories may also be entered in the Showing the World category. Action Tourism entries are not suitable for Panoramio. 
Photographers must load photographs themselves on http://www.panoramio.com/ before the competition closing date and indicate such on the entry form. Photographers should keep a record of shot location to make loading easy to within about 20m on the Panoramio map. Comments on Panoramio are encouraged to refer to Otways in Focus. There is no fee for entering this category.
17 The same or substantially similar entries may not be entered in more than one category, except for the ‘Showing the world’ category as above.
18 The Junior section is for entrants aged under 18 at the closing date.  Juniors can enter all categories, and there is just one extra  prize for the best junior entry overall.  Junior fees are half of full entry fees.

Submitting your images

19 Each standard entry must be jpeg with a maximum image size of 1024 pixels wide (horizontal) and 768 pixels high (vertical) for a landscape format image. For a portrait format image the height (vertical) must not exceed 768 pixels. 
20 All entrants are also required to submit each entry in a high resolution JPG image suitable for enlargement -  typically 3000 pixels wide x 2000 high or larger.  Entrants are encouraged to take photographs on the highest resolution/ quality setting possible on their camera. RAW images are not acceptable.
21 Image files will only be accepted if submitted on a compact disc (CD). Standard images must be labeled with the entry title, eg Wild Seas.jpg.  High resolution image versions must be labeled with the entry title followed by hi-res suffix, eg Wild Seas hi-res.jpg.   File format must be JPG for Windows PC.  Entries submitted by email or other formats will not be accepted.
Version 3  22/1/9

The Showing the World category is for entries that are also submitted to Panoramio.com, the Google owned album that contains only geographically located pictures - showing the world in its current state.  It does not allow people.  A large proportion of pictures will be migrated by Google to Google Earth and Google Maps, thereby making them easily seen by users all over the world.

To enter your pics into Panoramio, go to www.panoramio.com, and login/register as a Google user.  You control your pictures.  When you enter each picture, you will be asked to locate each one on a map, so it can be easily found in geographical based searches.

The Otwaysinfocus Entry Form has a box next to each of your entries in the main competition categories;  just click the box to also enter the Showing the World category.