Best of Photojournalism 2004: Pictures

Instructions for Entering

All contest entries in picture categories must be submitted as digital files via FTP or on CDs or Zip disks (either PC or Mac). Slides or prints are not eligible.

Best of Photojournalism 2004 is open to professional photographers, editors and online photojournalists, and there is no entry fee. All entries must have been taken or initially published between January 1st and December 31st, 2003. Photographers do not need to be members of NPPA to enter.

Number Of Entries Allowed Per Photographer

Photographers may enter in any combination of single and portfolio categories.  Each photographer will be limited to 20 entries. A picture story or portfolio is considered one entry. A single photograph may not be entered on its own in more than one category. However, a single photo may be entered in both a single category and a Picture Story.  A picture entered in the wrong category will NOT be reclassified and the judges reserve the right to disqualify it.

Picture Category Codes And Descriptions

CATEGORY CODE DESCRIPTION MEDIA
1.  Cliff Edom's ‘New America Award’ NAA

In diverse communities and small towns we see the spirit and celebration of everyday life.  Our goal is to recognize award winning photographic storytelling about rural and ethnically diverse people – under-covered communities in America.  Acknowledging the effectiveness of Cliff Edom's approach and passion for teaching, we move his vision forward. A portfolio of no more than 25 images.

Cliff Edom (1907-1991) began his experiment in photographic education in 1943, his purpose was to provide access to the community life of a small town for photographers so that they could hone and develop photojournalistic skills.

 Newspaper
2.  Newspaper Photographer of the Year NPY A portfolio of no more than 40 images.  (see instructions for portfolio) Newspaper
3.  Magazine Photographer of the Year MPY A portfolio of no more than 40 images.  (see instructions for portfolio) Magazine & Photo Agency
4.  Sports Portfolio of the Year SPY A portfolio of no more than 20 images. May include a Sports Picture Story. Newspaper, Magazine & Photo Agency
5.  International News INN A picture of spot news, general news or issue reporting event taken outside of the U.S.  Newspaper
6. International News Picture Story INS A series of pictures taken outside of the U.S. that depicts a story line or single theme.  This story may be spot news, general news or issue reporting.  12 images maximum per story.  Newspaper
7.  General News  GNN Recognizing that much of the daily news coverage is planned in advance, we seek to reward outstanding achievement based on creativity and timing at organized events such as general meetings, promotional events and staged coverage opportunities. A photograph taken in the U.S.  Newspaper
8.  Domestic News  DON A photograph that is unplanned and immediate - An event where the photographer hasn’t the time to plan but reacts on instinct, adrenaline and news judgment. A photograph taken in the U.S. Newspaper
9. Domestic News Picture Story DNS A series of news pictures taken in the U.S. that depicts a story line or single theme. This story may be spot news, general news or issue reporting.
12 images maximum per story. 		Newspaper
10. Feature FEA A picture of a “found” situation that features strong human interest, or a fresh view of an everyday scene. Newspaper
11. Feature Picture Story FPS A series of pictures that depicts a story line or single theme.  This picture story category is for non-news essays.  12 images maximum per story. Newspaper
12.  Portrait and Personality PAP A picture that captures an aspect of the subject’s character. Newspaper
13.  Pictorial PIC A picture that exploits the graphic or aesthetic qualities of the subject with an emphasis on composition. Newspaper, Magazine & Photo Agency
14. The Arts ART A picture that captures the quality, production or expression -- The realm of what is beautiful or of more than ordinary significance. Example, performing arts, fashion, architecture. Newspaper, Magazine & Photo Agency
15. Computer Image Illustration CII In this powerful age of computer imagery and technology, the time has come to reward the creative and dramatic work that graces the pages of newspapers and magazines that use photographs as the source material.  This category is for digitally created images.  Newspaper, Magazine & Photo Agency
16. Conceptual Illustration COI When illustrating, the idea is key. We seek to reward outstanding execution, without digital means, for an idea that raises the bar on creativity and execution in the area of the illustrative. This category is not for digitally created images. Newspaper, Magazine & Photo Agency
17.  Nature & Environment NAE A picture that captures, with all its phenomena, the air, water, minerals, and life (flora and fauna) – an appreciation of the world. Newspaper, Magazine & Photo Agency
18.  Nature and Environment Picture Story NPS A series of pictures that depicts a single theme or story line that captures, with all its phenomena, the air, water, minerals, and life (flora and fauna) – an appreciation of the world.
12 images maximum per story.		 Newspaper, Magazine & Photo Agency
19. Individual Sports Action SAI A peak action photograph that captures the competitive spirit and game of an individual athlete. Newspaper, Magazine & Photo Agency
20. Team Sports Action SAT A peak action photograph that captures the competitive spirit and game of an athletic team. Team sports action recognizes a photograph taken from an event where a number of persons form one side of the team, e.g. soccer, football, basketball, baseball, etc. Newspaper, Magazine & Photo Agency
21.  Sports Feature SPF A sports related feature picture other than game action, outside of the field of play.  Newspaper, Magazine & Photo Agency
22.  Sports Picture Story SPS Any sports oriented subject portrayed in a multiple picture fashion.  The pictures should be related to convey a singular story line. 12 images maximum per story. Newspaper, Magazine & Photo Agency
23.  Magazine Feature MAF A picture of a “found” situation with strong human interest, or a fresh view of an everyday scene. Magazine & Photo Agency
24.  Magazine Portrait and Personality MPP A picture that captures an aspect of the subject’s character. Magazine & Photo Agency
25.  Magazine News MAN A picture of spot news, general news or issue reporting event. Magazine & Photo Agency
26. Magazine News Picture Story MNS A series of news pictures that depicts a story line or single theme.
12 images maximum per story		 Magazine & Photo Agency
27. Magazine Feature Picture Story MFS A series of feature pictures that depicts a story line or single theme.
12 images maximum per story		 Magazine & Photo Agency

Portfolio Rules: Newspaper And Magazine Photographer Of The Year

Portfolios will be judged on their impact as a unit, demonstrating diverse ability and photojournalistic excellence.

Scanning Specifications For Negative Or Transparency Film

Remember, Best of Photojournalism 2004 is only accepting digital applications for the still portion of the contest. If the images you wish to submit currently exist only in negative, slide or print format, you will need to scan those images.

Important Tip

We strongly recommend that you do all your scanning and adjustments first, then save the images on your hard drive using temporary file names. Entering the caption and entry info for your images will be much easier to do as a group, one right after another. Though it may look intimidating at first glance, entering all the info will only take a couple of minutes for each picture.

Digital Specifications & File Size Information For Images

Obtaining Your Entry Identification Code

Remember, there is no fee to enter, but all photographers must obtain an identification code to enter. Obtaining the code is easy: simply complete the interactive online entry form, and your unique identification code will be emailed to you within minutes. You must use this code in the object field of captioning information for ALL the images you enter. This code will serve as your "name" for the contest. The confirmation email also provides the FTP server address and password for those who wish to submit their entries online.

Entering Caption And Picture Info

All captions and other pertinent information will be entered using the ‘Merlin Caption Best of Photojournalism Edition’ Photoshop plug-in

This plug-in can be used in Adobe Photoshop 5.0 and higher, on both Windows and Mac OS. If your system does not meet these requirements, please contact NPPA.

Downloading the MerlinOne Plugin

To download this plug-in, go to the Best of Photojournalism section of the MerlinOne Web site: http://www.merlinone.com/nppa.html. Please follow Web instructions for downloading and installation. If your system does not meet the requirements of Merlin One, please contact NPPA at contests@nppa.org.

The MerlinOne Plug-in will allow you to enter all necessary name, category and caption information required for Best of Photojournalism. The plug-in works through Adobe Photoshop. To find the Best of Photojournalism caption fields, choose Automate from the File menu. In the Automate popup menu, choose 'MerlinCaption Best of Photojournalism.' When the caption dialog appears, fill in the fields as outlined below to begin preparing your entry.


Above is a picture the Best of Photojournalism caption field, and following is a step-by-step guide to entering the information:

Caption As they taught all of us in basic caption writing, use the five W’s: who, what, where, when and why.
Date created When was the photograph taken?
Object Please complete this field according to the instructions below. The Object field is used to uniquely identify the picture for indexing purposes.
City, State/Province, Country Where was the picture taken?
Caption writer Leave blank
Byline Leave blank
Credit Photographer’s name. Please be consistent from photo to photo. For example, please use Joe E. Smith for each image, not Joe Smith on one, Joseph Smith on another, etc.
Source Your employer or client.
Transmission ID Your email address. This is the field we are using to send your confirmation, so make sure the address is correct.
Copyright Check the box, and in the field next to the box, identify who has the copyright
Special instructions NPPA Members: Enter your membership number
Non-Members: Enter “No”
Category This is a pull-down list with the 26 categories in the contest; select the category you wish to enter.
Keyword Leave blank.

Object Field

Entering the correct information into the object field is critical to your entry. This information is used in your email confirmation as well as in sequencing your images in picture story and portfolio entries. In order to complete the object field, you must have completed an online, interactive registration form and have received an email containing your unique Contest Identification Code.

Entries in Single Image Categories

Fill in your unique Contest Identification Code in the object field. If you have more than one entry in the same single-image category, enter a hyphen and number after your Unique ID Code.

Example, one entry per single image category: ########

Example, more than one image per single image category: ######## -1, ######## -2, etc.

Entries in Picture Story Categories

Fill in your contest Identification Code, the subject of the story, and the order of the picture in the story (001-012).

Example: ######## -Wedding-001

IMPORTANT!

Entries in Portfolio Categories

Use your Unique Identification Code, the portfolio category abbreviation for the subject, and the position of the picture in the portfolio sequence.

Example: ######## -NPY-001, or ######## -MPY-001, or ######## -SPY-001.
(001-040 for newspaper and magazine photographer of the year and 001-020 for sports photographer of the year).

IMPORTANT!

Naming Your File

File names are not important for cataloguing your images when using the MerlinOne system. The index information is all extracted from the caption fields encoded in the images themselves. So if you already have a unique naming system for your images, feel free to keep the names as is.

If you do not have such a system, you will need to make sure that all the files in a folder are unique, so as to avoid overwriting other images. We thus recommend that you sort your files into folders by category (see below), and that you name your final saved files using the Object Name field from the Merlin Caption plugin. (Tip: to avoid typos, copy and paste from Object Name.)

Folders/Single Entries

Use a separate folder for each category. Put all single entries from the same category in the same folder. Name the folder using the category codes listed earlier.

(Example: If you have five entries in the Domestic News category, all five should go in a folder named “don”.)

Picture Story and Portfolio Entries

Use a separate folder for each picture story. Put all individual pictures from a picture story in one folder. Name the folder using the category codes listed earlier, followed by an underscore, followed by the slug. (Example: For twelve pictures in News Picture Story slugged “rally,” all 12 pictures should go in a folder named “nps_rally.”)

Submitting Via FTP

FTP has become an important part of the Best of Photojournalism contest, and has greatly improved the ease of entering a photo contest. To submit your images via FTP, you must complete the online, interactive entry form.Once you complete the form, the FTP address, user name and password will be emailed to you automatically. Please allow 15 minutes for the information to be sent. Please save the information in case you choose to submit additional images or your connection fails.

To reduce upload times, to ensure that picture stories and portfolios are correctly judged as single units, and to simplify troubleshooting if there is a transfer problem, you must create a single compressed archive of all your images in ZIP, Stuffit, or tar format, and upload that compressed archive to the server, rather than transferring each image individually. To do so:

  1. Create a single folder for all your images, and name it with your unique contest ID code.

    For example, if your contest id were 00001234, you would create a folder named 00001234. Obviously, you should substitute your actual unique contest ID here, rather than using 00001234.

  2. Put all your single images and category folders in your contest ID folder.

    For example, if you were entering images in International News, Feature, Nature and Environment Picture Story (with a story called ANWR), Team Sports Action, and Sports Portfolio of the Year, your folders would look like this (in List view)

    • 00001234
      • INN
      • FEA
      • NPS_ANWR
      • SAT
      • SPY

    Your folder list will look different, depending on which categories you are entering.

  3. Compress that contest ID folder using StuffIt, ZIP, or tar compression. You will end up with a file called something like (using our example folder name above) 00001234.sit, 00001234.zip, or 00001234.tgz

    This will be a large file containing all your images in compressed form, plus all the organizational/folder structure information.

    If you don't have a compression program, there are free trial versions of StuffIt, WinZIP, and other compression programs online.

  4. Upload this single compressed file to the FTP server, using the server address, username, and password you were sent in your confirmation email.

Submit your entries only once. Please check you entries on the website between March 5th and 9th. If you're unfamiliar with using FTP, you can visit www.merlinone.com/nppa.html for generic instructions.

Submitting Via Zip or CD

Both Mac and PC disks are acceptable. All entries submitted via ZIP or CD must either be postmarked February 13, 2004. This postmark requirement includes the label ship date for all entries shipped using private shipping services such as FedEx.

All disks must be labeled correctly:

Mailing Address:

Please mail disks to:

National Press Photographers Association
3200 Croasdaile Drive, Suite 306
Durham, NC 27705
Phone: 919-383-7246

Confirmation Of Images Received

NPPA recommends that photographers review the website of contest entries to ensure your images have been received and processed.

The entry preview site will launch March 5, 2004 and will be accessible through the NPPA Website, www.nppa.org.

You will be sent a confirmation email listing the images received. (Images will be listed by the information provided in the object field).  Confirmation emails will be sent out on or before March 5th, 2004.

IMPORTANT! YOU WILL ONLY RECEIVE CONFIRMATION EMAILS FOR THOSE IMAGES THAT INCLUDE A CORRECT EMAIL ADDRESS IN THE TRANSMISSION FIELD!

If you do not get confirmation emails for you images by March 6th, please check the contest site featuring all entries for your images. If you do not find your images there, then contact NPPA via email (contests@nppa.org) or phone (919-383-7246, ext. 11)

Final Checklist

Image Specifications

Shipping your entries 

3200 Croasdaile Dr, Suite 306,
Durham, NC 27705.

REMEMBER: All entries must be postmarked by February 13, 2004.