Yearly EGU Photocontest General Information

Welcome to the EGU General Assembly Photo Competition page

The European Geosciences Union (EGU) is holding, since 2010, a yearly photo competition and exhibit in association with its General Assembly (GA).

Eligibility: Every participant in the EGU GA can submit up to three images (see format below) on any broad theme related to the Earth, Space and Planetary Sciences. To submit images for the competition, one must be pre-registered for the EGU GA. Additionally, one must be the photographer that has taken the photos. Please read carefully all the information in this page before submitting your images to the competition.

Opening of the submission: A submission page for the competition of each year is opened in IMAGGEO approximately two months prior to the General Assembly.

Deadline: The submission page remains active for about three weeks (exact duration may vary from year to year).

Copyright: If you submit your images to the yearly EGU photo competition, you also agree that they will be included to the EGU Photo Database, IMAGGEO. Being open access (see copyright/terms and conditions), it can be used by scientists for their presentations or publications as well as by the press. If you submit your images to IMAGGEO, you retain full rights of use, since they are licensed and distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons licence. If a winning entry, you also agree for the photo to be exhibited at the EGU GA.

Format:

The still image (photo) should be in jpg, tif, png or gif format. For 4:3 pictures, the resolution should be 1500 x 1125 pixels minimum. Pictures in the format 3:2 should be 1800 x 1200 pixels minimum. Maximum file size for still images is 100 Mb.

Starting in 2013, also moving images (short, unedited videos of the type a digital camera can take, so-called "footage") can be submitted. The best moving image receives the EGU Photocontest Special Moving Image Prize. Moving images (short videos/footage) should be in MOV, AVI, MPEG, MPG and WMV format. Please submit to the competition only videos/footage shorter than 3 minutes in duration.

Taking part in the EGU Photo Competition requires registering in the EGU IMAGGEO Database, so that we can appropriately process your photo.

Procedure: After the submission page is closed, there is a two-stage selection: 1st stage: A jury of six people is set up. The jury consists of the three winners of last year’s competition (if they agree) plus three or more people nominated by the Outreach Committee and the Programme Chair. The judges select up to nine runner-up images each.

A vote for a photo is based on a combination of the following points:

- The overall aesthetics of the photograph.

- The uniqueness of the story-telling image content, especially with respect to the geophysical information content.

- The technical quality of the image (with respect to exposure, noise, grain, foreground/background sharpness, dynamic range, no skewed horizon, no burnt highlights etc.).

- The composition of the image (e.g. horizon positioning, golden cuts, no cut image content, leading lines...).

2^nd stage: The still images (minimum 8 photographs and up to maximum of 12 photographs) that get the highest number of votes are preselected for exhibition during the coming Assembly. These are printed in large format and are then exhibited during the General Assembly. In the exhibition room at the EGU GA, two voting terminals are set up. Each participant of the Assembly can then vote for up to three of their favourite exhibited photos. The public voting takes place from Monday 8:00 to Thursday 15:00. The votes are counted automatically and the three photographs with the highest number of votes are the winners.

The moving image (short video/footage) that gets the highest number of votes during the 1st stage, is automatically selected for the EGU Photocontest Special Moving Image Prize. This is not open for public voting during the Assembly. This moving image is exhibited in a specially set up terminal during the Assembly.

The winners get free registration for the following year’s General Assembly and are also part of next year’s preselection jury (if they agree). All photographs that are selected for the 2^nd stage get one free book of their choice. The winning photo is awarded on Friday during the lunch break.

Exclusions from the Competition: Excluded from the competition are past winners of the EGU GA photocompetition and judges for the 1^st Stage for the year of the competition.