Photographer

 

The First Annual Sky-Dog Award for
Equine Photography: 2010
Official Rules
The ‘Cimarron Sky-Dog Reserve’ is a wild horse sanctuary based in Cerrillos and Watrous, New Mexico. This year marks our tenth anniversary of being in business and to celebrate that we are starting an annual Equine Photography Competition to not only raise funds for our sanctuary but also to help promote our cause. All proceeds raised from this event will go to the Cimarron Sky-Dog Reserve, which is a 501(c)(3), non-profit charity. Obviously we are horse lovers by nature but the artistic beauty that they embody inspires many of us to want to pick up our cameras and try to do justice to and capture an element of their natural beauty and spirit. Some of us are more successful than others. We have been very fortunate to have the generous help of three of the finest Equine Photographers in the country to judge our competition.

Gregg Albracht

Lynne Pomeranz

Tony Stromberg
Many people out there will recognize these names and know that their work is truly some the most evocative and beautiful in the Equine Photography world today. Please go to their websites to see the kind work and experience that these judges will bring to this competition.

If you enjoy the world of equine photography and like to partake in it either as a hobby or as a potential career, this is a wonderful competition for you! You will not only be helping some of the divine creatures that are your chosen subject but you will also have the honor of being judged by three of the best in the business.

Entry deadline:

All entries must be submitted no later than October 20th, 2010 to be eligible for this contest. The winners will be announced on November 15th on our website. All winners will be contacted by e-mail and/or phone. A show is planned in Santa Fe, New Mexico to exhibit the winning photographs but there will be more details about this closer to the deadline.
All computer entries must be made before mid-night of the deadline. All prints submitted by mail must be post-marked the day of the deadline, at the latest, to be eligible for the competition. If a contestant pays by check that too must be dated no later than the deadline.

Prizes:
$250.00 first prize for each of the 2 categories and $75.00 second prize for each category.
(More prizes to be announced as the contest commences)
There will also be three honorary mentions for each category.

Entry Fee:

Get the Contest Entry Form here.
The entry fee will be $20.00 for a maximum of 3 pictures and the entrant may enter more than three photographs with each additional photograph being $5.00.
No photograph will be eligible for the competition without payment of the entry fee. All photographs must be accompanied by an entry form with the photograph’s title and the category.

Categories:
There are two categories.
1) Living Art: Everything about horses, their strength, their contours, their hair, the way they move, even the breath they take reflects that they are truly divine creatures. Their image epitomizes freedom in our imaginations. They are ethereal as well as powerful. Their souls are not merely buried under layers of skin, muscle and bone, they wear them on the outside and this category is about capturing that. The spirit of the horse is a much celebrated thing but it is rare that anyone can do justice to it. This category will be
judged on how much the entrant can capture that spirit in a single frame and convey it to our judges.
2) Honoring the Hero: This category is in honor of the debt we owe to horses as our helpmates, loyal friends and allies over the past centuries. The horses that helped us to explore new frontiers and plow our fields and who were more often than not ‘beasts of burden’. The horses that took us to war and fought as bravely as any man and who died, in huge numbers, to help us further civilization and commerce. We relied on these creatures for everything and in most cases they were willing and earnest in their desire to please us. This is not so much a category about the show horse, the horse that wins us accolades and prizes but the working horse who shoulders our burdens for little glory or reward. Even though the world has moved on from our reliance of these strong and generous creatures this category is looking for the best photograph that will ‘honor the hero’ and the debt we owe to these noble creatures.
**(Many people have asked me how you can capture something that no longer exists. The obvious examples are pack-horses and cowboy horses and dude ranch horses but there are many other ways of capturing the work horse. There are many re-enactments of times gone by that would be eligible. The Amish still use horses and wagons and horses are used extensively in other parts of the world and so all you world travelers out there could keep an eye out for a photo opportunity! The police still use horses and I saw a fabulous picture a couple of years ago taken of horses in the Prince Edward Islands wading in the surf to gather seaweed. Although our reliance on the horse has pretty much become redundant, there are still many ways in which they ‘work’ for us and help us in our endeavors.)

Judging:
The judges will be looking for photographs that evoke the true essence of the category. Technical skill will be very important but the entrants’ ability to ‘capture the moment’, their ability to use their natural ‘eye’ and to judge a good picture, in the field, is as equally important. Although some manipulating is acceptable, judges will be looking more at the skill of the photographer and their understanding of the subject matter rather than their technical abilities to manipulate the photograph later. Any photographs that add or replace elements in the image that were not originally there will be disqualified. Cropping or rotating the picture, softening it or texturizing it, removing red-eye, blurring, sharpening, spotting, dodging and burning, contrast and color adjustments are all acceptable. No panoramic photographs will be accepted.
Entries that fail to comply with the official competition rules will be disqualified with no refund. Please read these rules carefully before submitting your entries. All of the judge’s decisions will be final.

Who may enter:

Entrants must be 18 or older and residence of the United States. All photographs must be the work of the entrant and the entrant must be sole owner of the copyright of any image submitted. By entering this contest and submitting the entry form, the entrant guarantees that they are author and copyright holder of the submitted photograph. They also acknowledge that they have taken full responsibility for obtaining sufficient permission and release from any recognizable model or other persons appearing in the photograph. The organizers, of this contest, the judges and the ‘Cimarron Sky-Dog Reserve’ will not be responsible for any lawsuits or liability incurred by reproducing an image in which an individual(s) did not grant their permission to be displayed in any photograph included in this competition.
The contest is closed to any organizer, staff member, judge, or member of the board of the Cimarron Sky-Dog Reserve.

Submitting Prints:
Submitted prints can be up to a maximum 8.5 X 11 and must be labeled on the back. Each photograph must be accompanied by a signed printout of our official entry form and be accompanied by the appropriate fee. The photograph will not be included in the competition if the fee is not paid.
Please understand that we will not return these prints and so please do not send your photograph if it is your only copy. Please do not send us the negatives either.
Send photographs to:
Cimarron Sky-Dog Reserve
(Equine photo contest, 2010)
P. O. Box 583,
Cerrillos, NM 87010

Submitting Digital prints:
Submit prints on CD accompanied by a signed printout of our entry form and the appropriate fee.
Again, please understand we will not be returning your CD and please send it to the above address.

Ownership/ Use:
The entrant will retain the copyright to their photographs. By entering this contest, the entrant agrees to have their submitted photograph considered for display on the website (cimarronskydog.org) or any other advertising that could display ‘past winners’ or ‘past entries’ that could be used for future events. Entrants agree that the organizers of this competition, ‘The First Annual Sky-Dog Award for Equine Photography,’ will contact them to obtain permission for use of these photographs in this way first. All entrants are aware that there will be a show of the winning photographs in Santa Fe, New Mexico at the culmination of this competition (yet to be announced) and that the ‘winning photographs’ and the three honorary mentions of each category will be on display. By filling out the entry form and entering this contest the entrant has agreed to display their photograph(s) at the awards show in Santa Fe, New Mexico (yet to be announced), at the culmination of this competition (2010).

Winners:
Judges will select a first and second place winner from each category plus three honorary mentions for each category. Winners will be notified approximately 3-4 weeks after the contest deadline has passed. They will be contacted by phone or e-mail using the information provided by the entrant on their entry form. The organizers of the competition and the ‘Cimarron Sky-Dog Reserve’ will not be responsible if the information provided is incorrect or out of date, illegible or unintelligible. Please be sure to fill in your entry forms as accurately and clearly as possible. If an entrant is not
available by either phone or e-mail, the organizers will assume that the entrant is no longer at either address, and award the prize to somebody else. We do not want the prize(s) to be sent out if we are not assured that they will go to the entrant named on the entry form.

Donate/ sale of artwork:
This competition is a fund-raising event to raise funds and awareness for the ‘Cimarron Sky-Dog Reserve’, a wild horse sanctuary. There will be a show at the culmination of this contest (yet to be announced) where the contest winners, plus the six honorary mentions will be put on display and put up for sale. By entering this contest and signing the entry form the entrant agrees to these terms and agrees that a minimum of 25% of the proceeds of the sale of their photograph will go towards the ‘Cimarron Sky-Dog Reserve.’ If an entrant would like to donate more than that percentage that is up to them and would be very much appreciated.
Show details will be available soon. If an entrant is to be included in the show in Santa Fe, at the culmination of the contest, we will contact them with details about submitting their show piece. It will be up to the entrant to submit (deliver, at their expense) a framed show piece that would be suitable for display and for sale. If the entrant’s show piece is not sold in the show, it will be up to the entrant to retrieve their artwork (at their expense) at the culmination of the show.
We thank everyone who enters in advance and apologize for the serious nature of these ‘rules’ but we would like everything to be clear with no confusion. We are a charity that relies on the generosity of folks like you and so THANK YOU for your participation!

Additional Terms and Conditions:
The organizers of this competition and the ‘Cimarron Sky-Dog Reserve’ are not responsible for computer system, hardware, software, or program malfunctions or other errors, failures, or delayed computer transactions or network connections that are human or technical in nature. Furthermore, the organizers of
this contest and the ‘Cimarron Sky-Dog Reserve’ are not responsible for 1) lost, misdirected, misplaced, illegible, unintelligible, incomplete, or late entries or 2) any act, failure to act, or delay regarding the transmitting or processing of entries. Or the failure of the U S Mail or any other shipping means of transporting entries. The organizers of this contest and the ‘Cimarron Sky-Dog Reserve’ reserve the right, in their sole discretion, to cancel, suspend all or any portion of this contest without notice if factors beyond the organizers or ‘Cimarron Sky-Dog Reserves’ control, including technical difficulties, disrupt or corrupt the fair or secure administration or operation of this contest. Void where prohibited. The organizers and the ‘Cimarron Sky-Dog Reserve’ are entitled to interpret these rules as needed and their decisions are final. The organizers and the ‘Cimarron Sky-Dog Reserve’ reserve the right to disqualify any entry that the organizers and the ‘Cimarron Sky-Dog Reserve’ have reason to believe is not the original work of an entrant, or does not otherwise meet the contest rules. If a winner is disqualified or determined to be ineligible, an alternate winner will be selected using the same judging process/ criteria described in the rules.
By participating in this contest, the entrant agrees to release and hold harmless the organizers of this competition and its judges and the ‘Cimarron Sky-Dog Reserve’ and its employees, volunteers, officers and affiliates from any and all damages, injuries, claims, causes of actions, or losses of any kind resulting from his or her participation in this contest, including infringement of intellectual property rights and artistic property rights. The entrant also agrees to release and hold harmless the organizers of this competition, its judges and the ‘Cimarron Sky-Dog Reserve’ and its employees, volunteers, officers and affiliates from any claims, costs, injuries, losses or damages related to or based on entrants’ rights of publicity or privacy, or entrants’ claim that he or she has somehow been defamed or portrayed in a false light or if any subject represented in an entrants’ photograph makes the same claims.