Terms & Conditions | Natural Landscape Photography Awards

Terms & Conditions

 

Photographer’s Agreement

By entering photographs into the competition, the photographer certifies the following:

  • The entry or entries are wholly their original work and under their sole ownership.
  • As we are aligned with the Nature First Principles, the entry or entries have been captured in accordance with local laws and National Park rules. This includes permits, licences, and permissions (including drone laws).
  • Winning photographers agree to provide additional materials to the competition,  including a bio and profile image.
  • There is no time limit on when an entry is captured; however, in order to qualify for the Photographer of the Year prize, greater than 50% of your entries need to have been captured within the past 5 years. There is no time limit on images captured for the Project submissions.
  • Previous winners of the Photographer of the Year Award are only eligible to win this prize once in their lifetime; however, they are eligible to win the other awards in subsequent years.
  • Entrants chosen to have images represented in our perennial fine art photography book are required to provide us with detailed captioning after images have been selected for the book. Failure to provide this information in a timely fashion will eliminate your image from the book (and you won’t receive a free copy).

Additional Guidelines

  • Images should be predominantly natural subjects. Man-made objects are permitted; however, they should not be a major part of the image.
  • Entering multiple substantially similar entries may result in judges disqualifying one or more of the entries.
  • Our competition emphasizes creativity and unique images, so we highly encourage photographers to avoid familiar or iconic compositions.

Entry Fees

  • Entry fees are in USD and are payable by credit card (via our secure Stripe Payment Gateway) which will convert your currency to USD for a small fee.
  • You may add entries at any time until the competition closes; however, once the entry deadline occurs, they are unable to be changed.
  • Only one discount code may be used when checking out and paying for entries.

Image Preparation

  • Entries may be shot on digital or film.
  • Film images must be submitted digitally.
  • AdobeRGB or sRGB color space.
  • 3000px minumum; 4000px maximum (preferred) on the long edge (for instructions on how to do this, see here for PS and here for Lightroom).
  • JPEG files only, max file size 8MB.
  • No borders or watermarks.
  • You do not need to rename your files. We will randomly assign a name to each entry.
  • RAW files must be available for verification in later stages of the competition. If you do not have RAW files or shoot with film, see below.
  • Photographers submitting film images will be contacted about verification.
  • Higher resolution files may be requested by us for our fine art book.

Project Submission Requirements

  • Projects should be submitted together as a collection of between 6 and 10 images. There is a separate section of the submission form for this process.
  • Each individual image that forms part of the project should follow the individual image submission requirements above.
  • Photos should be submitted with filename numbering in the order you wish them to appear (if this matters).
  • You should also submit an accompanying description with your images. This description is entirely up to you and can consist of just a few words or be up to 200 words long. It should be written for a non-photography literate viewer.

Terms and Conditions

  1. The promoter of the competition is Natural Landscape Media Ltd, a company registered in the UK with company number 07120795 (which may also trade as Natural Landscape Photography Awards).
  2. By entering the Competition you hereby accept all of the competition’s rules, terms, and conditions, including the rules above as well as the summary on the rules page.
  3. The Natural Landscape Photography Awards will refund any competition submission fee up to one week before the close of entries for the competition.
  4. The Natural Landscape Photography Awards will refund any pre-order of our competition book at any time until they have been despatched.
  5. The Natural Landscape Photography Awards will replace any books that are deemed faulty by normal publishing standards.
  6. The Natural Landscape Photography Awards will refund any returned books within 14 days of ordering and as long as the books are in the same condition they were despatched in.
  7. Books will be start being delivered once we receive them from the printer with the early orders prioritised. Delivery costs fluctuate but we will ensure we choose the optimum delivery service depending on the country being delivered to.
  8. You agree that any or all of your submissions may be disqualified by the competition for not adhering to the rules and that no refunds will be given for entries not meeting the rules.
  9. The entry fees for the Main Competition in 2024 are: $16 for 1 image, $44 for 6 images, $66 for 12 images, and $110 for 18 images. No photographer may submit more than 18 images for the Main Competition.
  10. The entry fees for the Project Category in 2022 are: $33 entry for 6-10 images, with a limit of two entries per photographer.
  11. The photographer retains full copyright of each entry to the contest.
  12. The Natural Landscape Photography Awards assume no rights with respect to entered photographs with the exception of the below usage rights.
  13. All entrants understand that any image submitted to the competition may be used by the Natural Landscape Photography Awards for marketing and promotional purposes for the competition as well for our book(s). You hereby grant The Natural Landscape Photography Awards a non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free, perpetual license for each entry throughout the world in all media for any use in connection with the Competition, including, but not limited to:
    • Judging the competition
    • Displaying at public exhibitions showing the Natural Landscape Photography Awards in perpetuity
    • Inclusion within our website and or Awards catalog in perpetuity
    • Inclusion in a fine-art book or e-book to be published by the competition
    • Inclusion within any materials promoting of the Competition and / or any exhibition organized by the Natural Landscape Photography Awards in the promotion of the competition
    • Sub-licensing the entries to the press for reproduction in connection with the Competition and any exhibition for a period of 3 years
    • Allowing viewers of the website to view images on a computer screen, PDA, tablet, or mobile telephone, in perpetuity
    • Submitting to media outlets for the promotion of the competiton.
  14. Sponsors may use your submitted images and entrants grant them a non-exclusive royalty-free and irrevocable licence with regards to the images that win, are commended or awarded runners up for the Awards for the purpose of promoting the Awards including without limitation through their own social media channels and email marketing, refer to the Awards in their own websites without territory or time restrictions. Our sponsors do NOT assume rights of use for commercial purposes.
  15. Judging will be “blind.” All metadata will be stripped from every entry so that no judge can know which person the photograph belongs to. All images will go through a pre-judging phase by which the competition organizers will select a percentage of images that will be moved forward into the second judging round. Each judge will be invited to participate in the pre-judging. 
  16. Entries will be randomly ordered for review by the judging panel.
  17. Any image(s) entered into the competition must also have the RAW file(s) that went into the creation of the image which must be made available to the Competition for judging and rule validation. We will review all images making it to the final round(s) against the submitted RAW files and reject any that clearly don’t meet criteria set out in the rules, marking any in red if they are borderline to refer to final round judges. Entries made on film will be verified through other means (we will be in touch with you). If you happen to only make photos in .jpg mode (straight out of camera), additional verification will be requested from you if your image makes it to the final judging rounds. 
  18. All entrants must be prepared to supply a high resolution image suitable for printing in a large exhibition or within a fine art book, if asked, within 10 days of any request from the competition. No larger than 8MB. In addition, the long edge cannot be greater than 4,000 pixels (3,000px minimum). This image will be requested at the second round stage.
  19. By entering the Competition, you agree and acknowledge that the Natural Landscape Photography Awards is permitted to receive your registration data, which will only be used according to its Privacy Policy.
  20. To enter the Competition, you must upload your images via our website and follow the on-screen instructions carefully.
  21. The Natural Landscape Photography Awards reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to disqualify and remove any entry that does not comply with the following requirements:
    • You must be the sole owner and author of each entry including all post-processing done to finalize the image.
    • Entries must be 100% photographic in origin.
    • Entries must not contain any infringing, threatening, false, misleading, abusive, harassing, libelous, defamatory, obscene, or pornographic content.
    • Entries must not contain any material that could constitute or encourage conduct that would be considered a criminal offense or violate any law.
    • Entries must not infringe upon the copyrights, trademarks, or intellectual property rights of any other party.
    • Entries may not include any elements purchased through stock images or produced from the public domain – 100% of the content must belong solely to the entrant.
  22. By entering the competition, you agree to accept the decision of the judges and agree not to contact any judge directly in relation to your entries or the competition or engage in attacks on judges, organizers, or the competition in any media, including social media.
  23. The Natural Landscape Photography Awards may disqualify any entry at our discretion.
  24. The Natural Landscape Photography Awards will strive to include a credit line for any images used to promote the competition; however, any failure to provide a credit line shall not be deemed to be a breach of this agreement as long as the Natural Landscape Photography Awards seeks to rectify this failure within a reasonable period of time.
  25. The Natural Landscape Photography Awards assumes no responsibility for technical, hardware, or software failure of any kind, including lost network connections, failed or garbled transmissions, or other technical malfunctions regarding the competition or entering the competition. 
  26. No replacement prizes will be given and prize recipients are responsible for any applicable taxes associated with those prizes, whether financial or physical prizes, in your own country. 
  27. In no event will the Natural Landscape Photography Awards, it’s sponsors, directors, judges, organizers, employees, or representatives be responsible or liable for any damages or losses of any kind arising out of any contestant’s access to and use of the website or entry into the competition. 
  28. Everything provided on the website is provided “as is” without warranty of any kind.
  29. By entering the competition you agree to participate in related publicity and to use your name and likeness for the purposes of advertising, promotion, and publicity in connection with the competition without additional compensation.
  30. Winning entries will be published on our website – www.naturallandscapeawards.com
  31. No late entries will be accepted unless the competition organizers determine that the entry deadline is to be extended.
  32. The Natural Landscape Awards is not responsible for any bank fees associated with currency conversion upon entry into the awards.
  33. Prizes will be paid in USD via bank transfer and currency conversion fees are at the winner’s expense at the time of payment.
  34. Winners are responsible for any import tariffs required for the shipment of winning prizes. 
  35. The decisions made by judges and the competition are final and the Natural Landscape Photography Awards retains the right of rejection or refusal at any time.
  36. Judges, sponsors, fees, or dates may be changed without notice at any time by the competition. 
  37. The Natural Landscape Photography Awards is not responsible for any non-delivery of prizes from sponsors.
  38. All entries are subject to the laws of the United Kingdom.
  39. By entering, you agree to allow Natural Landscape Photography Awards to share your email address with its sponsors for marketing purposes.
  40. All Terms and Conditions are subject to change without notice.