What you need to know

The competition is open to anyone except those directly involved in the organisation and judging.

The Adult competition is open to all individuals aged 18 and over. Amateur and professional photographers of any nationality are eligible. The Young Persons competition is open to individuals under 18 years of age on 4th June 2010 and to schools and community youth groups.

Images may be submitted for entry online in digital form or in the form of a photographic print, on or after the opening date 21st January 2010 through to the closing date of 4th June 2010.

Preparing your digital images

While there are no restrictions on the type of camera used, please note that part of the judging criteria will be technical excellence and it is therefore recommended that you use the highest possible quality setting on your camera. The file should be as large as you can achieve with your equipment. Please ensure that your camera is on its highest-quality setting.

Ideally the image should have been taken using a camera with a sufficiently high resolution to allow the image to be reproduced at A4 size or above (at 300 ppi). We recommend that you use a camera of 4 mega pixels or more, if possible, enabling the image to be of sufficient size for printing and inclusion in the exhibition.

More advanced users should aim to supply image files in 8bit TIFF format, with a file size between 20-50 mb – this size would enable us to make larger prints if desired. We recommend setting the camera to either the RAW file mode or Large High resolution JPEG file mode. The colour profile for all digital images should be Adobe RGB 98. Please keep your original RAW, JEPGs and TIFF files - these may be requested at any time.

If you are successful in being short listed for the final round of judging, we will request your largest file (TIFF or JPEG) for judging and reproduction purposes.

Scanned images

You can also submit images that have been scanned from film or negative. Please note that a high-resolution scan will be required for short-listed images and should be between 20 and 50mb as an uncompressed tiff file, although a high-quality jpeg is acceptable (8 bit, Adobe RGB 1998 colour space).

Initial digital submission

For your initial submission we require small jpegs at a resolution of 72 ppi (dpi) with no more than 800 pixels along the longest edge. Maximum size of image 250Kb. This means that your original images will need to be copied and resized before being uploaded, as the files from your camera will be too big. Filenames are for your own reference only. They should be kept short: less than 50 characters with no spaces or punctuation characters other than hyphens or underscores.

Save your original file before resizing. This is very important

Please make sure that you keep copies of your original large file. Be careful not to accidentally save it directly into a small size for uploading - and then not be able to retrieve the large file again!

Make a copy of your original large file first and then resize the copy. You can resize your copy image either using Photoshop or your own camera software. Your camera software or imaging software may have options to save images for web use or for e-mail – choose this option as this will be 72 ppi (dpi). Please keep copies of all your original and resized images safe.

Please make sure you retain your original digital file or film negative / transparency. If shot in RAW mode please keep both the RAW file and subsequent TIFFs.