The NPPA Student Visual Journalism Contest provides eligible members with an opportunity to compete against their peers and have their entries reviewed by working professionals.

DEADLINES AND ENTRY PERIODS:

WHICH ENTRY PERIOD SHOULD I SUBMIT MY PHOTOS TO?

Entry Period 1: Images from January/February/March/April/May/June 2022

Entries open: July 1, 2022 | Entries due: July 15, 2022 | Judges: TBA

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Entry Period 2: Images from July/August/September/October/November/December 2022

Entries open: February 1, 2023 | Entries due: February 15, 2023 | Judges: TBA

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The deadline to submit entries is at 11:59pm PDT on the day of the deadline.

QUESTIONS:

Please direct questions to student.photo@nppa.org.

RULES:

ELIGIBILITY

The Student Visual Journalism Contest is open to all NPPA student members in good standing.

To be eligible, you must have been enrolled as a full-time student for at least one semester or quarter, in the contest calendar year. You may enter work done during internships or jobs but pictures do not need to have been published.

NUMBER OF ENTRIES

Each student may enter a total of twelve entries each period. If more are entered, all clips for that entry period will be disqualified. Entries can be in any category or combination of categories.

PHOTO STORIES

All photo stories should be entered in the Picture Story/Essay category. Each story entered counts as just one entry even though it has multiple pictures. Individual images from a picture story can be entered as singles in other categories, but they will count as separate entries.

INDIVIDUAL WORK

Each photo must be the work of a single photographer. If two or more people collaborate to produce a single project or multimedia package, each must submit only his or her portion.

CATEGORY DESCRIPTIONS

Spot News – SPNW (All images judged as singles)

Coverage of events for which no advance planning was possible. Examples include, but are not limited to: accidents, fires and natural disasters.

General News – GENW (All images judged as singles)

Coverage of events where advanced planning was possible. Examples include, but are not limited to, courtroom events, funerals, news conferences, and campaigns. Spot news that develops during the course of planned events (such as riots at a protest) should be entered in Spot News.

Sports Action – SPAC (All images judged as singles)

Action photos from a sporting event.

Sports Feature – SPFT (All images judged as singles)

Feature photos from a sporting event. Photos found outside the action of competition.

Feature/Single Picture – FTSG (All images judged as singles)

Found moments or slices of life. Images and subjects that don’t fit in Spot News, General News, Sports or Illustration. Portrait/Illustration – POIL (All images judged as singles)

Portrait of a subject in a controlled or uncontrolled scenario that reveals the essence of a subject’s character. Digitally manipulated images or photo illustrations may also be entered here, with a note on the type of manipulation or set up in the image’s caption.

Photo Story/Essay – PSES (Images judged as a sequence)

Entries in this category must include multiple images. The category is intended for more in-depth work including photo essays, investigative work, and series. Images from planned events or sporting events may be entered in this category but ONLY if they possess a narrative arc through the entry.

ETHICS AND COPYRIGHT

The Student Visual Journalism Contest rules rely on the honesty of the participants. Any abuse of trust will not be tolerated and will result in suspension of NPPA membership for a period of time to be determined by the NPPA’s governance and judiciary committees. All entries must abide by the high ethical standard set forth in the NPPA Code of Ethics.

It is understood that any copyright of an entry remains the property of the photographer or employer of the photographer.

However, all participants agree that by entering the contest, entrants give permission to NPPA for its regional and national publications to reproduce winning entries, either through hard copy or electronically, including and not limited to, regional publications, News Photographer magazine, commercial online services and NPPA presences on the Internet. Reasonable precautions will be taken to ensure the security of electronic reproduction.

CAPTIONS

Please make sure the File Info/IPTC caption information is filled out correctly BEFORE uploading your images.

Your caption should include:

Journalistic description of image.
Date the photograph was made.

The photographer’s name as well as the publication name when applicable should be added to the “Creator/Photographer” section of your IPTC info.

The contest chair has the authority to disqualify any image that fails to have the required IPTC information properly placed.

Captions should be located in either the IPTC Caption field (for Photo Mechanic) or IPTC Description field (for Photoshop).

IMAGE FORMATTING

All images must be saved as good quality JPEG files with a maximum dimension of 2,750 pixels on a side (11″ at 250 dpi). Image files should be 3 MB or less.

FILE NAMING

Each image file must have a unique name.

Entries should be labeled as follows:

For SINGLES, please label your pictures with the category abbreviation then an underscore (_), then your phone number, (_), image name and an underscore (_).

Example: GENW_8675309867_imagename.jpg

For PICTURE STORY/ESSAY category, please label your pictures with the category abbreviation and an underscore (_), then your phone number and an underscore (_), then the name of the story and an underscore (_), then number of the image in the sequence. Pictures will be viewed in the order of the filenames.

Example: PSES_8675309867_storyname_01.jpg,

PSES_8675309867_storyname_02.jpg,

PSES_8675309867_storyname_03.jpg,

All submissions are final. Contest chairs reserve the right to assist changes in submissions before the contest deadline date if time permits.

RECOGNITION:

POINT SYSTEM

Students will earn 1 point for each period that they enter the contest.

The top three winners for each category will receive 11 points for first place, 8 points for second place, and 5 points for third place, 2 points for honorable mention. There are no ties.

AWARDS

Student Visual Journalism Contest Photographer of the Year

The title of NPPA Student Visual Journalism Contest Photographer of the Year is awarded to the photojournalist who accumulates the most points during the calendar year.

If there is a tie for an POY title, the following list of tiebreaker criteria is used to break any deadlocks:

most works placed
most first place winners
most second place winners
most third place winners
most honorable mention winners
most works entered

If a tie still exists, Co-Photographers of the Year will be awarded.

Student Visual Journalism Contest Chapter of the Year

The title of NPPA Student Visual Journalism Contest Chapter of the Year is awarded to the NPPA Student Chapter who accumulates the most points during the calendar year.