Submission guidelines.

So what are the rules? Well really there aren't many. You won't find anything about proper photography techniques, how to expose correctly in low-light situations, or a tutorial on the rule of thirds here. We'd rather let you decide what's good and acceptable. There are, however, a few things we must require to ensure the project is fun for everyone and the final product is up to our quality standards. Here's what we're looking for:

• JPEG format. If your file ends in ".jpg" or ".jpeg" then it's probably a JPEG.
• More megapixels is better, 1 is the minimum. We'd prefer at least 2000 pixels on the longest side of the photo. It takes a lot of pixels to print photos in a book, so 2000 pixels would be nice. Anything under 1 megapixel is just too small to use, so we have to disallow photos less than 1 megapixel. Check the FAQ if you don't know how to find your photo's pixel count.
• Under 10MB in file size. We can't be bogging down our servers, plus you don't want to wait forever.
• You must be the photographer. Don't upload photos you didn't take. Simple as that.
• No borders. Yes, borders on photos are sometimes pretty, but just let us worry about borders when we layout the book.
• No text (or watermarks) on photo. We will credit you every time your photo is used, so don't watermark your photos, or write anything on top of them.
• No nudity. This is a kid-friendly publication.
• No cutouts. You know, like people create in image editing applications.
• No collages or multi-image photos. Just stick to one photo at a time.
• No enlargements. Upload your photo in its original size. Up-sized photos look terrible in print.
• No non-photos (like drawings, paintings, and screen shots). This is a photo project, silly, not a sculpture and art gallery.
• Must be taken from New Jersey.

Basically, we're after good looking photos that we can print in a book and put on a DVD. It would be a great help to us (and thus more likely to be prominently placed in the book) if you include a color profile with your image. We know this is over the head of most folks, so we don't require it, but it would be nice. It would also help to have really really big files. Instead of doing a bunch of math to figure out how large your photo should be, just upload the photo file that came from your camera. If you want to do some post-processing first that's fine, just don't upload a down-sized or down-sampled version.

It's not that complicated, really. If you're an average Joe (no offense, Joe) and upload pictures you've taken with your camera, you're probably going to meet the requirements. If you're really struggling with how to make sure your photo meets our guidelines, check out the FAQ then contact us if you still can't figure it out. We'd love to help.