Professional rules

The professional Alexia Grant recipient will receive $15,000 for the production of the proposed project. See the student rules for information about the student competition.

Introduction to the Professional Competition Rules

The Alexia Foundation offers the professional grant to enable a photographer to have the financial ability to produce a substantial picture story that furthers the Foundation's goals of promoting world peace and cultural understanding.

Eligibility

• Any photographer may apply for this grant. Proposals that have received grants or awards exceeding $1,000 in the previous calendar year are not eligible.
• This award is for an individual photographer. Collaborative applications are not accepted.

Judging Criteria

The Alexia Grant was not established with the single purpose of rewarding the best photographers -- this is not a portfolio competition. The grant will be awarded to a photojournalist who can further cultural understanding and world peace by conceiving and writing a concise, focused, and meaningful story proposal, and who can demonstrate the ability to visually execute that story with compelling images. There is no mathematical formula for determining grantees, but the proposal and photography must both be considered of the highest quality.

Professional applications will be judged in two rounds. First, members of the Alexia Board and its executive advisors will review portfolios and move those demonstrating strong visual skills to a second round. In that round, judges that are industry leaders first read and rank the story proposals for all those portfolios brought forward. If no judge thinks the proposal is worth considering, the portfolio is not reviewed in the second round. A winner is chosen based on the judges' determination of the combination of the strongest proposal and photography.

Application Procedure

There is no application form for this grant. An application shall be composed of the following:

1. A proposal of not more than 750 words for a photo story, picture essay, or photo-documentary project that explains your idea for a set of pictures that will promote world peace and cultural understanding. These may include projects already in progress. Anything over 750 words will be cut. Judges will only see the first 750 words.
   • Do not put your name or other identifying information on your proposal. We judge the applications anonymously.
   • Only one application per person each year.
2. A summary of the main idea of your project consisting of no more than 25 words.
3. A portfolio consisting of no more than twenty pictures, including captions. Must include at least one picture story.
4. A resume. Be sure to include your phone numbers and address. Also include names and phone numbers of three references on the resume. Do not send letters of recommendation.
5. Professional grant applicants who are staff photographers must provide written permission from their employer granting them a leave of absence of approximately 3 months over the course of a year to allow time to complete their project. It is not necessary for this time to be a single block. While all other application elements will be submitted online, this permission letter should be mailed to:

   David Sutherland, The Alexia Competition,
   Professional division,
   S.I. Newhouse School of Communications,
   215 University Place,
   Syracuse NY 13244-2100

Portfolio Format and Requirements

Applications must be submitted through our online application process. (If you find it impossible to make digital entries, contact me in writing or email and we will find a way to get your entry into our system.

Your portfolio must not have more than 20 photographs.

Deadline

Applications must be received by 5 p.m. EST, January 12, 2010.

To Enter

Use the Alexia competition entry site to submit your application. We will begin accepting applications on December 6, 2009. Entries are due by 5 p.m. EST, January 12, 2010. Be prepared with text files of your 750 word proposal and your resume, and have digital photo files formatted as medium-quality JPEG images at no more than 1024x768 pixels for landscape, or 768x1024 pixels for verticals (72dpi preferred). Each image must have a caption. We read captions from file info, or you can insert captions during the entry process.

If you have questions

If you are uncertain about any of these requirements, please contact David Sutherland at 315-446-1144 or by e-mail at dcsuther@syr.edu. (E-mail is preferred.)

Or by mail to:
David Sutherland
The Alexia Competition
Professional division
S.I. Newhouse School of Communications
215 University Place
Syracuse NY 13244-2100.

Requirements on Winners

Recipients of any awards agree that credit to the Alexia Foundation be given on publication of the funded works. Alexia Grant recipient are obligated to provide to the Alexia Foundation a set of 11" X 14" exhibition prints of their completed picture story with captions and a CD with digital files of each photo within a year of receiving the award.

Grant of Rights

All applicants acknowledge and agree that effective with the awarding of each Alexia Grant, the Foundation shall have a perpetual non-exclusive royalty-free license to copy, publish, distribute and display, in any medium and in any publication, venue or program sponsored or authorized by the Foundation for the advancement of its mission and goals, any and all photographs submitted with each winning application. Each applicant warrants and represents that every photograph submitted with such applicant's Alexia Grant entry is his/her own original work and that he/she has the unrestricted right to grant to the Foundation the license described below.

Alexia Grants will be awarded subject to these additional terms:

• The license granted herein by the recipient to the Foundation for use of photographs submitted with the recipient's Alexia Grant application shall be extended in all its terms to all works created by the recipient in the course of any project funded by the recipient's Alexia Grant.
• Each recipient shall be deemed to have consented to the use of his/her name, portrait, and/or picture by the Foundation in promotional and public relations materials or for any other purpose related to the Alexia Grant program or the Foundation.
• Each recipient shall agree to reasonable requests by the Foundation to present such recipient's work and/or represent the Foundation at photography workshops, seminars and/or conventions, provided that any necessary expense associated with such presentations is paid by the Foundation.
• Each recipient shall be responsible for determining his or her own tax liability arising from acceptance of the Alexia Grant, and for satisfaction of any such liability.