Competition Rules

ENTRY RULES:

• Digital entries only. No email entries will be accepted.
• Entries must be submitted via the SAMA photography competition website: www.samedical.co.za/photography 
• Images can be a landscape or portrait format. 
• Images can be black and white or colour.

ENTRY FEES:

• R50.00 per entry per category. 
• R25.00 per entry per category for students and interns.

COMPETITION RULES:

• SAMA organises this photography competition in conjunction with MPS. Entries are invited from all SAMA members.
• The original file/s of your digital entry may be necessary for winning entries. 
• An entry fee of R50.00 per entry per category is payable, or R25.00 per entry per category for interns and students. 
• Authors may not enter the same/similar image in different categories. Such entries will be disqualified. 
• All images must be original and must not incorporate elements produced by anyone else. 
• By virtue of submitting an entry, the entrants certify the work as their own. 
• Submission of entries signifies acceptance of the conditions of entry and the competition rules. 
• The entrant must be the sole author and owner of the copyright of all entries. 
• Judges appointed by the organisers will choose the winning entries. The organisers’ decision on all matters relating to the competition will be final, and no correspondence will be entered into. 
• Should the quality of entries fall below the accepted standard, the organisers reserve the right not to award prizes. 
• Every effort will be made to notify winners of the competition within six weeks of the closing date of the competition. 
• The organisers reserve the right to free reproduction and exhibition, in any media, of the competition entries. Photographer credits will be acknowledged. 
• The digital manipulation of images will not be allowed. Please see below for guidelines to what is permitted.

DIGITAL:

• Images must be converted to a sRGB colour profile, as it cannot be guaranteed that images, which have a different colour space, will display correctly when judged.
• Images must be resized so that the horizontal axis will not exceed 900 pixels and the vertical axis will not exceed 900 pixels 
• Maximum jpeg size should not exceed 500kb. 
• The inclusion of a frame/border is permissible as long as it stays within the above-mentioned size restrictions. No wording or text is allowed on the image unless it is an integral part of the image. 
• All entries must be clearly marked:
  Category number, Author; Title. e.g.: 2_Piet Poggenpoel_Pink Rabbits. 
• The following data must be supplied on the entry form:
  Camera used, Exposure (Aperture, Shutterspeed, ISO), focal length and a short description of the image.

DIGITAL MANIPULATION:

• The following will not be considered as digital manipulation:
  
  1. Removal of dust and scratch marks on scanned images or spots from dust particles on the CCD/CMOS sensors of digital cameras. 
  2. Specific lens/sensor aberrations such as chromatic aberrations and purple 
  3. Fringing may also be corrected/removed. 
  4. Overall adjustments to exposure and contrast. Selective adjustments are not allowed in the category - Nature. 
  5. Adjustments/corrections of colour balance. This can either be done by selecting an appropriate white balance during the conversion in the RAW images, or by adding/subtracting colours in the photo editing software. 
  6. The post capture application of digital colour correction filters like warming and cooling filters, similar to the 81 and 82 series of filters, is also allowed. 
  7. Application of colour saturation. Non-selective saturation that is applied to the whole image is permissible. 
  8. Reduction of digital noise, especially in high ISO images from digital cameras, or film grain in scanned images. 
  9. Sharpening the image. All modern sharpening algorithms and techniques such as edge sharpening. 
  10. Luminance sharpening and mode sharpening is permissible. 
  11. Cropping and re-sizing is permissible.