RULES | fotofestivalpelt

COMPETITION RULES & REGULATIONS

SUBMITTING PHOTOS: 15 October 2024 – 3 February 2025

In this TUTORIAL you will be guided step by step in submitting your photos
To participate, you must first register. Registrations from 2023 are still valid. Registrations from 2017, 2019 and 2021 are no longer valid.

CRITERIA

The competition is open for professional and amateur photographers worldwide of a high level.
To be eligible for the professional category, the photographer must be registered with the government as a professional photographer and have a valid business/VAT number.
The theme of the photos is ‘Lens op de Mens’ meaning that photos have to be about people in the large meaning of the word. For example, photos can represent documentaries or art.
The sub-theme for edition 2025 is ‘The human vulnerability’ (not mandatory).
Before submitting photos, the photographer must first register on the Lens op de Mens – Fotofestival Pelt vzw site
After registration on the website of the festival the photo files can be uploaded to the festival
Every photographer can upload a maximum of 10 photos.
Black and white, monochrome and colour are permitted.
To complete his/her photo upload the photographer has to pay 20 euro for every photo uploaded to share costs.
Uploading photos is only valid after payment has been made.
The submission period starts October 15th, 2024 and ends February 3rd, 2025 at midnight.
Photos are selected by an international jury depending on photographic qualities. It is not possible to appeal against their decision.
The copyright of all images submitted remains with the copyright holder. However the Pelt Photo Festival ‘Lens op de Mens’ reserves the right to use any of the images submitted, without payment, for display and publicity purposes for this and future Pelt Photo Festival projects. It is vital that the candidate obtains the permission of the client and/or the copyright holder and any relevant model release forms, where appropriate before submitting the work.
Photos have to be submitted as jpg-files, compression High (10-12). The longest side of the pictures must be 50 cm (= 5906 pixels at 300 dpi).
The total number of pixels in a file must not exceed 100 Megapixels (100 million pixels) otherwise it will not be accepted by the system.
A file name is preferably composed by: Last name of the photographer_first name_serial number
Example: Johnsson_John_01
The file name of the photos should consist of a maximum of 32 characters and should not contain any special characters with accents, commas, umlauts, dots, tildes, etc. and therefore no non-Latin characters. Only aA-zZ and 0-9. Capital letters in the name are allowed.
No visible names, coloured borders or any text, logo or copyright symbol may be added to the original image by the photographer. It must be a pure image. The photographer’s name may of course appear in the file name.
The photo may be portrait, landscape or square in size but must be correctly oriented when uploading.
Images that have been fully created/generated using AI-Artificial Intelligence are NOT allowed.
Composite and digitally manipulated images (edited with Photoshop or similar) are allowed. All the elements that make up the essence of the final picture (especially the human elements) must be taken by the photographer and NOT be fully digitally created images. Non-original image elements should contribute only minimally to the overall image.
If the Competition Chairman or a judge has any doubts as to the authorship of the constituent images, Lens op de Mens reserves the right to ask for and examine the original files used to create the final picture.

RIGHTS AND LIABILITIES

The copyright on all photos submitted remains the property of the holder of these rights.
By submitting, the participant grants vzw Lens op de Mens – Fotofestival Pelt the right to exhibit all submitted images several times and without compensation and to use them in its own publications concerning these and future competitions and projects organised by vzw Lens op de Mens – Fotofestival Pelt and this both in print and in digital or electronic format.
Entrant details will be used to contact winners.
The participant must be the creator of the photo(s).
Each participant undertakes to have received the necessary permission from the person(s) depicted and to be able to prove portrait rights.
vzw Lens op de Mens – Fotofestival Pelt cannot be held liable for copyright obligations towards the persons photographed.
If the submitted photo in any way infringes the copyrights, portrait rights or other rights of third parties, the participant is fully responsible.

EXHIBITION

The selected photos will be printed by the organization at the highest possible quality without any extra cost to the participating photographer and exhibited during the open air exhibition from 8 June – 28 September 2025.
The name of the photographer, the code of his country of origin and his e-mail address and/or the URL of his website will be inserted by the organisation under each photo. Logos of partners and sponsors can also be included under the photo.
Photos may be rejected for ethical reasons (pornographic, sexist, political or offensive reason,…).
When the festival is finished and the exhibition is dismantled, the photographer can collect all photos. This will be in October 2025 at set days and times. These will be advised at a future date. If the photographer doesn’t collect the photos, they will automatically become property of the organization. For organisational reasons, photos will not be sent.

PRIZES

The selected photos are automatically entered into a competition. Prizes are awarded in different categories.

Awards for amateur photographers

gold
silver
bronze
honorable mentioning

Awards for professional photographers

gold
silver
bronze
honorable mentioning

Prize for the most promising photographer aged 30 years our younger.

Prize for the best photo with the theme ‘The human vulnerability being’,

Prize for the most creative photography

Participants agree to all rules when submitting photos.

GENERAL RULES

Participants agree to all rules when submitting photos.
To submit photos for Lens op de Mens, the photographer must first register as a user on the competition pages of the website.
The competition is entirely web-based. Registration, hosting and judging are done on-line.
Participants who already registered in 2023 can check their details and, if necessary, change them. Participants only need to enter their personal details once.
A registration will only become definitive after the registration of the participant, upload of the photos and payment of 20 euros per photo submitted.
A participant can still add additional photos or delete photos and replace them with other photos until the maximum of 10 photos per participant is reached.
Only after paying 20 euros online per submitted photo is the participation valid and the photos are admitted to the pre-selections.
If the final number of photos submitted is less than the number originally paid for, the entrant will NOT be able to reclaim the excess amount paid.
After uploading and completing payment, the submitter will see a confirmation that the upload was successful.
The jury consists of a non-voting chairman and a minimum of five members, selected by the jury chairman. They are all photographers with extensive international experience in judging competitions and qualifications.
Participants will be informed by email in the course of March 2025 whether or not their photos have been selected by the jury for the exhibition.
The results of the competition will be announced at the opening ceremony with awards ceremony of Lens op de Mens – Pelt Photo Festival on 8 June 2025.
vzw Lens op de Mens – Fotofestival Pelt reserves the right to disqualify participants if it considers that they are not acting in accordance with these competition conditions.
By submitting the photos and completing the registration form the photographer gives permission for the submitted photos to be used at the international photo festival ‘Lens op de Mens’, including upcoming editions.
The jury’s decisions are final and uncontested. There’s no correspondence about the course and outcome of the judging.
Lens op de Mens – Photo Festival Pelt vzw reserves the right to postpone or cancel the competition, or not to choose a photo if the circumstances so require.
Participating photographers are themselves responsible for entering their personal details correctly, and the correct spelling of their name is very important. These details can still be changed by participants until the closing of the competition. Any certificates or prizes awarded will be provided on the basis of this information, as well as any information referring to the photographer in question in Lens op de Mens’ communications on its website and to the media.
The authors of all photos potentially eligible for an award (with a wide margin to compensate for any disqualifications) may be asked by the jury chair to submit the original raw files used to compose the submitted image. A validation committee, together with the jury chair, will make the final decision on whether to accept the photos in question.
Photographers should ensure that when they upload photos for Lens op de Mens, the original unedited files of their submissions are available and kept in a safe place accessible to them anytime, anywhere. Excuses such as, for example, lost files due to damaged storage media or ‘files unavailable due to staying abroad’ will not be accepted. It is the sole responsibility of the photographer that the original files are available at all times when requested.