Some Explanations on HPA2015 Guideline

Explanations on HPA2015 Guideline

1:Entry Categories
An entrant may submit to any category from the following six categories: Portrait & Costume; Architecture; Living Custom; Production & Commerce; Festivities; Traditional Rites.

An entrant may submit a maximum of 3 sets of photo story with 8-14 photos in each set. Like in previous HPAs, photos in sets rather than a single photo are accepted. A set contains 8-14 photos is defined as a Qualified Entry while 0-7 photos in a set is regarded Unqualified Entry.

2: Prizes and Awards

All prize winners and entrants are required to log on to the site before Sept 16 2016 to download either a digital award certificate or a digital participation certificate.

All award-winners and participants are required to log on to the official contest website within the specified time frame to download digital award certificates and participant ion certificates Award -winners who will attend the Award Ceremony and other events may receive paper award certificates; those who will not attend those events will receive digital certificates only. Certificates may be printed out and made into paper ones if needed. In case certificates are not printed out during the specified time frame, entrants need to contact the HPA2015 work team.

3. Registration and Entry Submission

All entries should be submitted online. Please register and upload your photos at HPA2015 official website. Registration may be filled out done in either Chinese or English.

HPA2015 accepts entry submissions online. Please register and upload your photos on HPA2015 official contest websitehttp://2015.hpa.org.cn in Chinese or in English. On the upper right corner of the contest home page, there is a button for English and Chinese Switch. All entrants from China including entrants from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan are required to register on the Chinese site while all entrants outside China are required to register on the English site. If you do not know how to register for the contest,  please contact HPA work team and to ask them to upload photos for you.http://2015.hpa.org.cn/EN/NewsPage.aspx?nid=267

4. Image Specifications

HPA 2015 accepts entries submitted digitally on its official site in JPG format with the size of a photo be kept to 1-4 MB

All entries are required to be in JPG format. If your original photos are not saved in this format, please save them in this format. The size of a photo should be kept between 1024 KB to 4096 KB. There are no specific requirements about resolution and dimension. Please edit your photos according to the image specifications before uploading them to the contest site. 

5. Image Editing
Before submitting your entries, please ensure your photographs are in technical compliance with the image editing guidelines. The objective is to remain faithful to the original experience, and to never deceive the viewer or misrepresent the reality of the cultures and customs. Entries are accepted with some necessary editing to be done without altering the original look of a photo. No technical editing including addition, deletion and color management on a large scale will be accepted. Moreover, images with addition of borders or background will not be allowed. In order to ensure authenticity of the entries, works done with multiple exposures, composite, or sandwich shots that add elements will be not judged. 

Please do not add either borders or backdrop to your photos. Entrants are encouraged to think about the ethos of the competition, and to document the cultures and customs in a truthful way. An entrant may select 8-14 photos in a set from many of their works to submit. Moreover, a caption will help the juries to determine whether an entry may advance to the next round. Please do not attempt to include more photos by composite. 
6. Personal Information

In order to ensure fairness of the contest, any personal information is not allowed to be shown either in the caption or anywhere on the entry. Any violator will be excluded from the contest.

If any personal information including name, telephone number and email box is shown in the caption or anywhere on the entry, it will affect how an entry be judged fairly. As all of the relevant personal information has been filled out on the registration form, there is no need to include the information in the caption or on the photo.
Entry Uploading and Image Adjusting
1. Steps of Uploading an Entry

Step One. After you log on to the HPA2015 official contest website, select Entry Submission, you will see entry categories; fill out information on shooting time and location, ethnic background and complete the caption. Then move on to the next step. If your caption goes beyond 400 characters, please select Upload button to upload your file saved in doc., docx., or txt. Please note this step is NOT for uploading your photo entry.

Step Two of Uploading  An Entry

You may start uploading  your photos when you move on to Step Two. If the network speed is fast enough, you may upload an 8-14 photo set in one go. A caption box for description of the photo will appear next to the photo you have uploaded. You may complete the caption, or you may choose to leave it blank. In this step, you may also arrange the order of the photos in a set and hit the Complete button afterwards.

2. Image Adjusting

If the entry you have submitted is unqualified (0-7 photos submitted in a set) or if the entry you have submitted is qualified (8-14 photos in a set) and you would like to submit more entries, please click Entry Editing button to enter the Submission Editing page. There are Editing and Upload buttons displayed on the upper right corner. The Editing button allows you to delete a photo, edit caption and arrange the order of photos.

You may click the Submit button to upload more photo entries. You may not delete an entire set of photos. If you substitute your old entry with new one, please perform the following steps: select the photo that you have uploaded, enter the editing mode to delete the old one, substitute it with a new photo, edit the caption and upload a new photo. 
Regarding Work Team Upload Your Entries for You
1. Upload your entries online via an email box
You may send your photos to us via a designated email box and ask the work team to upload your photos for you. Please ensure your photographs are in technical compliance with the image editing guidelines Please note that you need to include a caption for the photo set only. If you would like to include a caption for each photo, please attach a word file saved in doc., docx., txt., wps.  Please note that information about entry category, shooting time, location and ethnic background is not required to be included with each photo as such information has already be filled in the form for the photos set.

2. Send Your Entries on DVD, USB or by Mail.

You may mail your entries to HPA2015 and ask the Work Team to upload them for you. Please keep in mind that the deadline for Entry Submission is April 15, 2015. We suggest that you should do it as early as possible to avoid any delay of your entries reaching us before the deadline in time for the contest. 

For any inquiry, please contact HPA2015 Work Team  

China Folklore Photographic Association

Tel. +8610-62252175

Email：link@hpa.org.cn