General
1 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.
2 Entries must be taken within Otway Tourism boundary – See the map on this website or the last page of the entry form
3 Entries must be the original work of the entrant
4 Entries must have been taken in the 12 months leading up to the closing date of 30 July 2010.
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 1 or more panels of 3 or more judges.  The decisions of the judges will be final and without appeal.  Judges advertised may change depending on availability at the time of judging.
7 Except for the ‘Out There’ creative theme, all 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. 
9 Entries will only be accepted on the official entry form or photocopy of it and in the format specified.
10 Submission of entry constitutes acceptance of these conditions.

Judging Criteria
11 Judges will be looking for striking pictures that best articulate the theme, combined with creativity and technical excellence.  Consideration will also be given to entries with a strong identity that show people taking part in the experience illustrated.
Categories
12 Wet Wet Wet – Water theme category is to showcase the natural beauty associated with the sea rivers or lakes in the Otways Tourism area.
13 Take a Hint – Hinterland and Bush theme category is to showcase interesting aspects of the inland towns, farmed and rural areas that may be less visible than higher profile tourism areas.
14 Feathers Fur and Fins – Fauna theme category is for striking photographs of  flora and fauna in their natural setting, with or without people, but not in highly artificial settings.  For example, but not limited to, Koalas and local birds
15 Eventful Otways – Events theme category is to encourage a wide range of dynamic shots taken at Otways events.  Information about the  calendar of events is shown on www.otwaysinfocus.com.
16 Out There – Creative theme theme category is to encourage creativity by photographers. The only condition of this category is that some element of the image should be identifiable as originating in the Otways Tourism area.
17 Major Attraction categories showcase the attraction nominated: -.  These include The Great Ocean Road, The Great Ocean Walk, The Cape Otway Lighthouse and The Otway Fly.  Location of these attractions are described on www.otwaysinfocus.com
18 Makers should respect the privacy of the public and where a person can be clearly recognised eg their  face is clear they must get a subject’s  permission before entering their image. Download from website here The committee may ask entrants to provide written proof of permission from clearly visible subjects.
19 Up to 2 entries can be made in each of the above categories. The entry fee shown below is per category, not per image.
20 The intent of the Showing the World category, see below, 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.  Photographers must load photographs themselves on 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.
21 The same or substantially similar entries may not be entered in more than one category.
22 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
23 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. 
24 All entrants who are subsequently chosen to be shortlisted will also be requested to submit each entry in a high resolution JPG image suitable for enlargement -  typically 3000 pixels wide x 2000 high or larger.  If a high resolution image is not supplied , it will be removed from the shortlist.
25 All Entrants are advised to take photographs on the highest resolution/ quality setting possible on their camera.
26 Image files will  be accepted by email or by compact disc (CD). Images must be labeled with the entry title, eg Wild Seas.jpg.   File format must be JPG for Windows PC.  RAW images are not acceptable.

Version 5  18/3/10

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.