CONTEST RULES

The Picturing the Future of the Bay Area Photography Contest is open to all amateur and professional photographers living in the 9-county San Francisco Bay Area (Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, Sonoma), except employees of the Transportation and Land Use Coalition (TALC) and immediate family members of TALC employees. Amateur photographers are all those photographers who do not receive any income from photography.

Your entry into the contest constitutes your agreement to allow your photographs (and your name and city of residence) to be published as an entry, selected finalist, or award winner in any TALC publication and on TALC’s website, as well as for your photo entries to be published and used in print or electronic form in any TALC publication or on TALC’s website. Any photograph used or reproduced by TALC will include a photographer credit.

TALC has the right to verify, in their sole judgment, winner eligibility. Images will be judged on how they reflect the contest theme and specific category, originality, technical excellence, composition, overall impact, and artistic merit. Decisions made by the judges are final.

Photographs cannot be digitally altered beyond standard optimization (standard optimization includes the removal of dust, cropping, adjustments to color and contrast, etc.); if so, they will be disqualified. Scans of non-digital photographs are acceptable.

Photos must be taken in the 9-county San Francisco Bay Area. All entries must be received digitally via email before midnight, August 31, 2007. Submit no more than one photograph per category. TALC will not accept photographs submitted through the mail. Photographers must hold all rights to a photograph, with any recognizable people in photos having filled out a release form that must be sent to TALC.

Two winners will be selected from each category, with at least one amateur photographer winner in each category. The grand prize winner will be chosen from the finalists and awarded at TALC’s October 18, 2007 10-Year Anniversary Event at the Oakland Museum of California. Please do not contact TALC about the status of entries. Finalists will be notified of their status by September 15, 2007. Photos will be judged by a panel of professional photographers including Alex Schoenfeldt (www.schoenfeldt.com) and Scott Hein (www.heinphoto.com).