Golden, Colo.-- Rooly Eyewear has joined the likes of Bigfoot Productions, Devon Balet Photography, Mountain Flyer Magazine and Pinkbike.com to turn the 2009 Mountain States Cup Photo Contest into the launching grounds for your career as a professional action sports photographer.

We want this to be more than your standard issue deal photo contest where we give the best looking photo a nice piece of schwag for some hard work and everyone else a “nice effort” blue ribbon. We’d rather give you the recognition, the mentoring, the networking and the opportunity to turn the best amateur photographer out there pro!

The grand prize for the MSC Photo Contest will include press passes to the 2009 Interbike Tradeshow in Las Vegas as well as to Cross Vegas, the race where high-profile athletes will be strutting their stuff and putting it down for the most-posh CX event of the season. In addition Devon Balet and Rooly Eyewear will guide you through a professional photo shoot with some of the best regional talent in action sports. If that’s not enough, your photography has the potential to be published in Mountain Flyer Magazine.

So how do you get on this program?

Start by getting your camera out and start shooting! We’ve already had several submissions on Pinkbike.com and they are already receiving feedback from our judges and votes from your peer online social networking peers. It’s free to enter. Just visit Pinkbike.com and start uploading to the MSC gallery.

CATEGORIES

The first three categories should have minimal to zero photo touch up. Common curves and/or contract are acceptable, along with minor color adjustment. If you are fixing for open sky illumination that is okay, but if you are trying to color match flashes, ambient light, sunlight, etc. you should have thought about that before pushing down the shutter button. Also you should have minimal to NO to cropping from the original to the submitted photo. The idea is to capture the image correctly in the camera. Just because we can fix everything on a computer doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get the correct exposure.

1. Gravity- includes downhill, dual slalom and 4x

2. Endurance- includes cross country, short track and time trials.

3. Lifestyle- hanging out at the pit, spectators, chillin’ in your hotel or at a restaurant. Pretty much anything to do with racing where you aren’t actually racing.

4. Photoshop- for you photo-chop lovers out there. Get crazy with it. Turn your best action shot into a digital work of art.

SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS

·        Images should be no smaller than 72dpi 6’’ x 9’’

·      Image title should be formatted in the following manner: photographer’s first initial and last name_race  name(G=gravity, E=endurance, L=lifestyle, P=photoshop)

              EX: dbalet_angelfireG_filenumber

·      Include “2009 MSC Photo Contest” in photo description

·      Do not place watermark going across the rider. If you want to copyright your photo do so on the bottom right side of the photo and include in the description.

·      Limit five photos per race per category. That is a total of 20 images per race.

CONTEST LAY OF THE LAND

After each MSC race, go to Pinkbike.com and download your submissions to the MSC gallery. If you don’t already have a profile on Pinkbike, you’ll have to make one first.

Contest is open to any non-professional photographer. If you make money taking photos your entries will be disqualified. The contest will run until September 21, 2009 11:59pm (one week after the Fall Classic). You don’t have to submit after each race, but your chances of winning will only be better if you do.

The idea is to base the contest on community judging. You like a certain shot in the gallery? Leave a comment, and give some kudos. Once the contest closes, the top 10 images of each category will move on to the finals, which would be judged by Devon Balet, Brian Riepe with Mountain Flyer, Karl Burkat with Pinkbike.com, Sarah Rawley with Bigfoot Productions and Dave Griebling with Rooly Eyewear. The top ten winners would be announced and displayed on both mountainflyer.com and pinkbike.com. If you shot has got the fire for print, you may see your photo in Mountain Flyer Magazine.

Top ten photographers will be asked to send the full resolution file of the final image. If we feel it is necessary you may also be asked to send original image straight from the camera. The idea is to push people to capture great images, not create them in photoshop.

From each race we will choose one photo to be featured on the home page of racemsc.com. Rooly is going to throw down some rad eyewear to each featured photo winner. Finalists will also receive some schwag from other MSC sponsors.

What are you waiting for? Start shooting! This may be the beginning to your new calling.