Best of Photojournalism 2006: Picture Editing

• Number of entries allowed
• Editing Entry Preparation
• Categories
• Submitting your Entries

Overview

The Best of Photojournalism Picture Editing competition recognizes the individuals and publications that practice and promote great photojournalism through great picture editing.

Picture editing is a complex process which serves many roles. Great editors help teach the photographers they work with to see and communicate more clearly. They find the best pictures and make them available to the public. They help make the text and pictures work together to tell a story. And they ensure that those stories are seen and appreciated through page design and layout.

Picture editing is in a sense always a team effort, in that its raw materials are the image, the story, and the page. The act of editing itself may be a team effort, or it may be performed by an individual, but it is never conducted completely in isolation.

Contest format change

This year entries in Newspaper and Magazine Picture Editing categories must be submitted in PDF format; only the Best Use of Photography categories (EU01, EU02 and EU03) will use hard-copy entries. This change should make the entry process faster and easier for everyone, especially for those outside the US.

Registering Yourself for the Contest

Everyone must obtain an identification code to enter Best of Photojournalism 2006. Please note that:

• you must register even if you entered in a previous year
• you cannot simply re-use last year's entry code

Obtaining the code is easy: simply complete the online Contest Registration Form, and you will be given your unique Contest Identification Code within minutes.

Your Contest Identification Code will serve as your ‘name’ for the contest: you must include this 8-digit code on the Editing Entry Form for each PDF or hard-copy edition you enter.

Note that if you are entering more than one division of the Best of Photojournalism competition (for example, Photo Editing and Web Sites), you can use the same Contest Identification Code for all divisions.

For entries in the Magazine and Newspaper Picture Editing categories, you can submit your PDF files by FTP. When you complete the Contest Registration Form, the FTP server address, user name and password will be emailed to you within 15 minutes.

Preparing your Entries

The intent of the Best of Photojournalism Picture Editing contest is to judge the best of picture editing in each of the categories published during the past year. To that end, the contest judges should see exactly what the readers saw in print. Presenting a PDF with content different from that in the final printed publication is inconsistent with the goals and ethics of the competition. Entries that have been altered or re-edited for this contest will be disqualified. (Note that compressing your PDFs for screen display is not considered to be alteration.)

Modified “Smallest File Size” PDFs will be used to judge all categories, except for the Best Use of Photography categories. The Best Use of Photography categories (EU01, EU02, EU03) require complete printed editions of each publication.

Each entry in the Photo Editing division (whether in PDF or hard copy) must be accompanied by a completed online Entry Form. The entry form takes your contest ID and category, and generates an internal "ticket" for the entry. The confirmation page provides you with a file name for your PDF entries, and a printable entry label for the hard-copy Best Use of Photography entries.

Number of entries allowed

There is no limit on the number of entries allowed per editor or editing team, but we encourage entrants to exercise “good editing” in entry preparation.

PDF Format Requirements

• Only “screen resolution” or “smallest file size” entries should be entered. As part of the “smallest file size” compression, images with resolutions above 240 DPI should be downsampled to 150 DPI using bicubic interpolation.
• Font subsets should be included.
• If possible, the color space should be set to sRGB to ensure accurate reproduction on the projector.
• No slide show or special program should be used. Simply save each page or multiple page presentation as a PDF file, using Adobe Acrobat or your page layout program.
• Pages for multiple-page PDFs must be assembled in reading order (using natural spreads) and not in printing order (printer spreads). This is critical if judges are to comprehend the sequence flow of pages presented to the readers of your publication.

Categories

Assurance: The judging body will attempt to ensure that all entries are judged in an appropriate category. In some cases, that may mean that entries will be re-categorized. Entrants will not automatically be disqualified for choosing the wrong category; however, we strongly encourage entrants to use care in selection.

Magazine Picture Editing

Newspaper Picture Editing

The term ‘single page’ is defined in the newspaper portion of contest as a lone page (tabloid or broad sheet). A double-truck or center spread will be defined as a multiple page entry.

Best Use of Photography

Note: These categories must be entered with complete editions of the publications (But please remove the advertising inserts and stuffers.)

Naming your Files and Folders

When your PDFs are imported into the contest database, the file names (and folder structure) are used to identify the category that the file is entered in, as well as to assign credit to the right entrant. Please fill out the online Entry Form for each entry, and use the file name it gives you.

To avoid filename conflicts on the entry server, and to make it simpler to find your images if you should have a question, we further ask that you organize all your images into folders by category, using the 4-character Category code as the name of the folder. The category folders, in turn, should be collected into a folder named with your Contest ID Code.

Submitting your Entry

All entries must be submitted on or before the deadline of February 10th, 2006.

Submitting Via FTP

FTP has been an important part of the Still Photography division of the Best of Photojournalism contest, and has greatly improved the ease of entering. Now, with the advent of all-PDF entries for the Magazine and Newspaper Picture Editing categories, those efficiencies are being carried over to the Photo Editing division as well.

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. organize your PDFs into folders, and compress the top-level folder (which should be named with your unique Contest ID code) using StuffIt, ZIP, or tar format. You will end up with a file called something like (using our example folder name above) 00008250.sit, 00008250.zip, or 00008250.tgz

   This will be a single 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.

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

PDF entries sent by FTP must be received by the end of the day on February 10th, 2005.

Submitting Entries by Mail

All entries which are shipped to NPPA must be sent on or before the deadline of February 10, 2006. The postmark or shipping label date will be used to confirm shipment times for entries received after the deadline.

In addition to direct submission by FTP, PDF entries can also be sent in on CD, DVD, and Zip disks, in either Mac or PC format. All disks must be labeled clearly:

• Label each disk with your contest division (Photo Editing), plus your name and organization. The label must be legible.
• If submitting more than one disk for your entries, please number the disks. (for example, ‘1 of 2’, ‘2 of 2’...)
• Indicate on the label whether the disk is formatted for Mac or PC.

All entries in the Best Use of Photography categories must be shipped, as those categories require full printed issues of your publication (see the category rules for details).

Mailing Address:

Please mail disks, and hard-copy entries from the Best Use of Photography categories (with attached Entry Labels) to:

Copyright 2002-2006 NPPA.org
For more information, email the Contest Coordinator.