Changes in the Guidelines of HPA 2015

Have you read the Guidelines of HPA2015? You will notice some changes if you are familiar with our previous ones.

Category of “Education, Recreation, Sports & Technology” Taken Out

It is one of the six HPA categories and has been with us for 16 years. Frankly, we take it out because the amount of entries in this category has always been outshone by those in the other five. There could be so many wonderful stories in each of the four sub-categories, like education, recreation, sports and technology. However, its very extensive coverage may bring confusion to photographers. Therefore, we make a change to make it easy. We put education and folk medication into the Category of Living Custom and sports, recreation, music, dancing, drama and others closely related to festivals into the Category of Festivities. Now “Production and Commerce” is independent from the previous Category of Living and Production Custom and becomes a new Category.

Winners of Nomination Awards Competing for Jury’s Special Awards

In previous HPAs, only 66 winners of Documentary Awards can go to the table of final jury members, who will see only these 66 sets of photos and decide the winners of 6 Grand Awards and a number of Jury’s Special Awards. The jury members are not happy and have been requesting to see more and therefore have more choices. In HPA2015, their wish will be fulfilled, since they are going to choose 6 winners of Grand Awards from 66 winners of Documentary Awards and a number of winners of Jury’s Special Awards from 100 winners of Nomination Awards. For final jury members, they can see more; for HPA photographers, they have more chances to win. Moreover, by this change, we hope to offer support to more folklore photography lovers and encourage more camera-holders to join in our folklore photographer family.

Special Favors for Local Photographers in Certain Regions

It may seem unfair at first, but it is closely in line with HPA’s ultimate goal, which is to encourage people from all over the world to record endangered cultural heritage. To this, we are fully committed though with limited strength and power. Therefore, we pay more attention to photographers in regions where the enthusiasm of participating in record, promotion and sharing of cultural heritage is still waiting to be fired up – “As a way of encouragement for photographers in Arabic countries, Africa, Latin America and Caribbean region to record local cultures, Nomination Awards-winning photographers in those regions will have the chance of getting transport allowance.”