IMPORTANT:
Click here for checklist and explanations of this definition.Also both entrants and judges are asked to review the "Guide for Nature Division Judges" downloadable from the PSA website.

See Special Note regarding Alterations and Limitations on Borders.

Nature photography is restricted to the use of the photographic process to depict all branches of natural history, except anthropology and archaeology, in such a fashion that a well-informed person will be able to identify the subject material and certify its honest presentation.

• The story telling value of a photograph must be weighed more than the pictorial quality while maintaining high technical quality.
  
  
• Human elements shall not be present, except where those human elements are integral parts of the nature story such as nature subjects, like barn owls or storks, adapted to an environment modified by humans; or where those human elements are in situations depicting natural forces, like hurricanes or tidal waves, and those forces are acting directly on the human element and have clearly affected that element.
  
  
• Scientific bands, scientific tags or radio collars on wild animals are permissible.
  
  
• Photographs of human created hybrid plants*, cultivated plants, domestic animals**, feral animals**, or mounted specimens are ineligible.
  * Fungi, such as mushrooms, are not plants or animals and are therefore allowed.
  ** Click here for a list of domestic animals (only the first list is applicable). Feral animals are domestic animals gone into the wild or animals in the wild descended from domestic animals.
  
  
• Photographs of all flowers and plant blossoms, hybrid or not, in any stage of development (including, buds, seedpods, fruit etc.) are ineligible - unless they are acting as an adopted habitat for eligible living organisms that are the main focus of the image*. However, small flowers may be included provided they are incidental to the main subject of the image.
  * Such as a bee in the wild pollinating in a flower, its adopted habitat for the purpose.
  
  
• Any form of manipulation that alters the truth of the photographic statement is not allowed.
  
  
• Infrared images, either direct-captures or derivations, are not allowed.
  

In addition, to be eligible for Nature Wildlife:

• Images entered in Nature Wildlife sections meeting the Nature Photography Definition above are further defined as one or more extant (that is, still in existence) zoological or botanical organisms free and unrestrained in a natural or adopted habitat.
  
  
• Landscapes, geologic formations, photographs of zoo or game farm animals, or of any extant zoological or botanical species taken under controlled conditions are ineligible in Nature Wildlife sections.
  
  
• Nature Wildlife is not limited to animals, birds and insects. Marine subjects and botanical subjects (including fungi and algae) taken in the wild are suitable wildlife subjects, as are carcasses of extant species.
  
  
• Nature Wildlife images may be entered in Nature General/Open sections.

See Special Note regarding Alterations and Limitations on Borders