This privacy policy (hereafter, the Privacy Policy) sets out how G & W Media LLP (hereafter, “G & W MEDIA LLP” or “Us” or “We”) processes Personal Data and how various obligations under the Data Protection Legislation are met.

G & W Media LLP is registered in England and Wales, our registration number is OC382349 and our registered office is at Southborough, Walford Road, Ross-On-Wye, Herefordshire, HR9 5PQ.

G & W Media LLP is considered as being the Data Controller under this Privacy Policy.

This Privacy Policy applies to all visitors and customers using or accessing this website and our associated services.

For any privacy-related questions, you can contact us by email ([email protected]) or using any other email addresses published on our website.

Your rights

You may instruct us by email ([email protected]) at any time to not process and/or delete some or all of your personal information. This will exclude data we are required to retain for accounting or security purposes, and any data we are required to retain by law. In addition, you can unsubscribe from our email newsletters using the link at the bottom of each edition.

Collecting personal information

We may collect, store and use the following kinds of personal information:

(a) information about your computer and about your visits to and use of this website – your IP address, geographical location, browser type and version, operating system, referral source, length of visit);

(b) information that you provide to us when you register to the award – your name, username, billing country, email address, social media accounts;

(c) information that you provide when submitting images to the award – image files and statements or image descriptions if provided (you should avoid submitting image files with EXIF GPS location metadata).

(d) information that you provide when you complete your public profile page – your name, profile picture, biographical information, uploaded images and any statement or descriptive information if provided;

(e) information that you provide for the purpose of subscribing to our email notifications and/or newsletters – your name and email address;

(f) information that you provide when buying physical content from us, such as the Life Framer Annual – your name, email address and postal address

Using personal information

Personal information submitted to us through this website will be used for the purposes specified in this Privacy Policy or on the relevant pages of this website. Any information you provide through this website will be used in accordance with General Data Protection Regulation 2018 (GDPR). You can refuse to provide personally-identifying information, with the caveat that it may prevent you from submitting to the award or using certain part of the website.

Your personal information is collected only for the purpose of administering your entry, membership or other purchase (e.g. of the Life Framer Annual), or keeping you abreast of news with the award. This information is kept secure and confidential, and is not shared.

We may also use your personal information to:

(a) personalize this website for you;

(b) enable your use of the services available on this website;

(c) supply to you services or goods purchased through this website;

(d) send you our email newsletter (you can inform us at any time if you no longer require the newsletter) or other “system” emails, such as password reset requests or payment notifications/receipts even if you have not opted-in to email marketing lists;

(e) provide third parties with statistical information about our users (but those third parties will not be able to identify any individual user from that information);

(f) manage complaints, feedback and queries, and handle requests for data access or correction, or the exercise of other rights relating to Personal Information

(g) keep this website secure and prevent fraud;

(h) administer social media and web advertising campaigns. These service providers use cookies on our site and/or pixel tracking to serve ads across the different platforms – Google AdSense & DoubleClick (privacy policy, opt out) Facebook (privacy policy, opt out);

(i) manage our business operations and IT infrastructure, in line with our internal policies and procedures, including those relating to finance and accounting; billing and collections; IT systems operation; data and website hosting; data analytics; business continuity; records management; document and print management; and auditing;

(j) comply with applicable laws and regulatory obligations (including laws and regulations outside your country of residence), comply with legal process and court orders; and respond to requests from public and government authorities (including those outside your country of residence);

(k) establish and defend legal rights to protect our business operations, and secure our rights, privacy, safety or property, and that of our group companies or business partners, you, or other individuals or third parties; to enforce our terms and conditions; and pursue available remedies or limit our damages.

All of our financial transactions are handled through our payment services providers, Braintree (privacy policy) and Paypal (privacy policy). We will share information with our payment services provider only to the extent necessary for the purposes of processing payments you make via this website.

Our web servers and hosting are managed by us and our contractor on the LiquiNet Ltd platform. This includes website hosting, backups, web database, file storage, and log files. Our Content Delivery Network (CDN) may store web log information of site visitors, including IPs, UA, referrer, Location and ISP info of site visitors. Files and images served by the CDN may be stored and served from countries other than your own. MaxCDN’s privacy policy can be found here.

Disclosing personal information

We may disclose your personal information to any of our employees, contractors, officers, insurers, professional advisers, insofar as reasonably necessary for the purposes set out in this policy. Some of those employees or organizations may be located outside of your home country; by using our websites and services, you consent to the transfer of such information to them.

We may disclose your personal information:

(a) to the extent that we are required to do so by law;

(b) in connection with any ongoing or prospective legal proceedings;

(c) in order to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights.

Except as provided in this policy, we will not provide your personal information to third parties.

G & W MEDIA LLP acknowledges that all individuals have the right to access the personal information/data that we maintain about them. If you want to access, correct, or delete your data, you should contact us as [email protected].

Amendments

We may update this policy from time to time by publishing a new version on this website. You should check this page occasionally to ensure you are happy with any changes to this policy. We may notify you of changes to this policy by email.

External links

This website includes hyperlinks to, and details of, external websites. We have no control over, and are not responsible for, the privacy policies and practices of external websites.

Our cookies

A cookie is a file containing an identifier (a string of letters and numbers) that is sent by a web server to a web browser and is stored by the browser. The identifier is then sent back to the server each time the browser requests a page from the server. Cookies do not typically contain any information that personally identifies a user, but personal information that we store about you may be linked to the information stored in and obtained from cookies.

Cookies may be either “persistent” cookies or “session” cookies: a persistent cookie will be stored by a web browser and will remain valid until its set expiry date, unless deleted by the user before the expiry date; a session cookie, on the other hand, will expire at the end of the user session, when the web browser is closed. We use both session and persistent cookies on this website and the purposes for which they are used, are as follows: to recognize a computer when a user visits this website, to track users as they navigate the website, to personalize the website for each user and to target advertisements which may be of particular interest to specific users.

If you do not wish to have cookies placed on your computer, you should set your browser to refuse cookies before using our website. Certain features may not function properly if you do so.

We use Google Analytics to analyse the use of this website (privacy policy, opt out). Our analytics service provider generates statistical and other information about website use by means of cookies.

Data breach procedures

Should any event occur where your data has been lost, stolen, or compromised, our policy is to alert you via email within 48 hours of our team becoming aware of the event. We will also report such incident to any required authority.

Last updated: 25/06/2018

These rules are in place to protect your rights as well as ours. Along with our more general Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, they constitute the entire agreement. By entering the Life Framer Photography Award, you are deemed to have read and accepted all aspects of the rules described on this page. If you have any concerns or questions, don’t hesitate to contact us – [email protected]

Competition

The Life Framer Photography Award (‘Award’), encompassing both the monthly themed competitions and the annual Series Award is open to both amateur and professional photographers (‘Entrants’) aged 18 years and over (or of the age of majority in jurisdictions in their respective country), and from all over the world. Entrants must not be an employee, officer or agent of Life Framer, nor an employee, officer or agent of any person or organisation involved in the running of the Award, nor a family relation of any such person.

The applicable costs for entering the Award are set out on the website, and the prizes shall be as specified on the website.

There is no maximum number of entries to the Award per person.

The monthly themed competitions and the Series Award that make up the Award shall close for entries at the time and on the date specified on the website. We may extend the deadline without prior notification if needed.

Usage and rights

• Your copyright and moral rights:

We respect your rights and do not claim copyright for photographs or text submitted to the Award. You will retain full copyright in each entry. In addition, your moral rights are respected. Whenever your work is published on this website you will be credited. Failure to publish a credit due to error or oversight shall not be deemed a breach of this condition. We will seek to correct any errors or oversights as soon as we are notified.

• Image eligibility:

We accept all types of photography from analog and digital devices including mobile phones. We allow editing and post-processing, as well approaches such as mixed-media, collage and compositing, provided that photography is at the heart of the work. There is no restriction on when images were produced – they can be new or old. We do not accept artificial intelligence or AI-generated imagery.

By entering the Award, you (as an Entrant) warrant to Life Framer that you created your competition entries, that you are the author of your work, you own all of the copyright in those entries, that it does not include trademarks, contract rights, or any other intellectual property rights of any other third person or entity and that the use by Life Framer of the entries in accordance with these terms and conditions will not infringe any person’s intellectual property rights or other legal rights. You must not submit to the award any material that is or has ever been the subject of any threatened or actual legal proceedings or other similar complaint.

You will be responsible for any claim made by any third party in respect of your entry and to fully indemnify Life Framer and its sponsors in respect of all royalties, fees and any other monies owing to any person or entity by reason of your breaching any of the foregoing. Life Framer reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to disqualify any entry that does not comply with any of the above, even after the entry is submitted on the competition website.

• Use of works:

By entering the Award, you agree that any work you submit may be used by Life Framer (and our print and gallery partners) solely for purposes in connection with the Award or future Awards, and any successor website and no other purpose. These uses include:

• – Judging the competition
  – Displaying entries on the Life Framer website and social media outlets, and those of its partners
  – Displaying the entries at the gallery exhibitions
  – Using the entries on posters, postcards, adverts both online and offline to promote the Award
  – Cropping and re-sizing the work as necessary to fit pre-defined formats to promote the Award and any related exhibitions
  – Sub-licensing the entries to the press for reproduction in connection with the Award
  – Inclusion within any materials promoting the Award or any exhibition organised by Life Framer
  – Displaying the entries in a book, magazine or exhibition catalogue, or similar

You hereby grant Life Framer a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence in each entry throughout the world in all media for the uses described above for the duration of the Award.

You acknowledge your responsibility for protecting your entry against misuse by third parties, through means such as the embedding of metadata. Life Framer (and its partners) can assume no responsibility and is not liable for any misuse of your work by third parties.

Any reproduction of entries outside of the uses listed above will occur only after receiving the Entrant’s express permission. The Entrant will be contacted and given the opportunity to negotiate any such usage with the parties concerned independently of the Award. We will never sell your work.

Life Framer uses the social media platforms Facebook, X and Instagram. While Life Framer guarantees that photographers will be fully credited when posting images on social media and through any of the other channels listed above, Life Framer cannot guarantee that others who copy or re-post images will do the same.

Judging

Within 3 days of each competition end, Life Framer’s editors will screen entries and submit selected entries to the judge for his or her review. The judge will then select the shortlist and 1st, 2nd Prize entries based on the photographic skill, artistic sensibilities, emotion, impact and originality. The decisions of the judge are final.

In the event that a judge has to withdraw their involvement for any unforeseen reason, Life Framer reserves the right to find an alternative judge. All entrants will be notified.

Images submitted will be treated completely anonymously throughout the whole process to ensure total fairness. The judge will have sole discretion of his or her selection and attempting to contact any judge directly in order to influence them will result in disqualification of the Entrant.

Life Framer aims to announce the shortlist and winners for each contest within fourteen days of the submission close date. The winners and shortlisted photographers will be notified by email and published on the Life Framer website and associated social media. The 1st Prize Entrant will have 90 days from the email date to claim their cash prize (they will be notified of their prize and any further instructions in the email). Failing to do so will result in loss of the prize. Winners are accountable for costs associated with the award acceptance, such as any applicable federal, state, provincial and local taxes.

Life Framer reserves the right to change, or modify the prize at any time before the end of the Award, but will make sure to inform all Entrants.

If a competition Entrant does not meet the eligibility requirements or is subject to any entry restrictions, that Entrant shall not be entitled to be judged a winner, and will not be entitled to a prize in any circumstances.

Image specification

Entrant’s images should be sized under 8mb each and in .jpg format. There is no need to name images as they will be automatically named according to the theme during upload. If images have individual titles, these can be included in the description / statement box during the upload process.

Right to cancel

Life Framer reserves the right to cancel or suspend the Award at its own discretion if not capable of continuing as planned for any reason that is beyond its control.

If the Award is cancelled for a particular month, Life Framer will refund the entry fees for all Entrants of that month and will not reserve the right to use any of the submitted photographs. There will be no refunds associated with the cancellation of the end-of-year exhibitions.

If the Award is cancelled in its entirety, memberships older than 3 months will not be compensated. Memberships 3 months old will be compensated with 40% of their payment, memberships 2 months old will be compensated with 70% of their payment, and memberships bought in the month of cancellation will be compensated with 100% of their payment. There will be no refunds or compensation associated with the cancellation of the end-of-year exhibitions.

Refunds

Life Framer does not provide refunds, save due to cancellation of the Award as outlined under ‘Right to cancel’.

Modification of competition rules

Life Framer reserves the right to change the competition rules. If this happens, all Entrants whom the changes affect will be notified by email.

Legal responsibility

Life Framer will take no responsibility for the repercussions of any photograph submitted to the Award, nor any problems incurred by the Entrants while participating in the Award.

Last updated: 12/05/2023