CAPA alters the terms of their competitions without notice to Clubs or Members. VCC Members entering a CAPA competition should go to the CAPA pages for that competition. Here is a link for the 2026 Nature/Wildlife competition: 2026 Nature/Wildlife Competition.
Definition
CAPA bases their definition and editing criteria on FIAP criteria for nature and wildlife salons. Note that the rules change slightly from theme to theme.
Provenance Guide
Members must be prepared to provide a record of their images' origins. This includes preserving the original RAW or JPEG image un-cropped and un-retouched. ALL potential winners will be subjected to CAPA's "authentication" process. Failure to provide files requested by CAPA will result in disqualification of the image. This means that your failure will affect all Club images selected in a Club entry. Here is a direct link to the CAPA Provenance Guide: Protecting Your Competition Images (Provenance Guide). You should also refer to CAPA's Pitfall guide for whatever editing software you use. Here is a link to the Pitfall Guide menu: AI Pitfalls .
Themes
There are five themes within this category.
Botanical - Only wild plants, including fungi and algae, in their natural environment are allowed. Hybrids and cultivated plants are not permitted. Wild plants grown in a botanical garden are allowed. In cases where a plant species is known to occur in the wild and has been cultivated by humans, the judging panel will give the image the “benefit-of-the-doubt” and accept the image as meeting the definition of this theme.
Insects, reptiles and amphibians.
Landscape - including weather phenomena, geological formations, landscapes, seascapes, planets, stars and astronomical events.
Nature - including living birds, animals, anthropods (invertebrates with an exoskeleton, differentiated segments, and paired, jointed appendages, such as spiders and crustaceans) and marine subjects. They may be under the care and feeding of humans (in zoos, game farms or aquariums) provided the human element is not obvious. No feral or domesticated birds or animals are permitted.
Wildlife - only living and untamed mammals, birds and marine subjects. No traditional zoos, open-range zoos, game farms or areas where animals are restrained or confined. Animals in nature parks are allowed where animals are living free, as are scientific bands, tags and radio collars, but no tethers or harness attachments.
Please refer to the "Nature Ethics" provisions on the CAPA Nature/Wildlife Competition web page. (The link is above.)
Editing
No techniques that add, relocate, replace, or remove pictorial elements (except by cropping) are allowed. Enhancing techniques such as HDR, long exposure, focus stacking and dodging/burning are allowed, provided they do not change the nature of the story or alter the content of the original scene. All allowed adjustments must appear natural. Filters that change the mood of an image are not allowed.
Alterations or additions generated AI, whether by text prompt or non-text technique, may NOT be used either in whole or in part.
“Hand-of-man” is allowed in the “Botanical” and “Insects, reptiles and amphibian” and "Nature" themes, but only where it is an integral part of the nature story, and even then it must be less than 10% of the total area.
No hand-of-man (except scientific bands, tags and collars) is permitted in the Wildlife or Landscape themes. No tethers or harness are permitted in Wildlife.
Removal of elements added by a camera, such as dust spots, digital noise and film scratches, are permitted. Infrared images are not allowed, nor are stitched images or borders or digital frames.
Submissions
VCC members may enter two images as Club images. The Club may enter only 6 images from 6 different photographers. The Club must enter images in at least two different themes to be eligible for medals.
The DEADLINE for submission of up to 2 images to VCC in the Club category is September 15, 2026, midnight PDT.
Individual CAPA members may enter a maximum of 3 images. They too must enter into at least 2 themes to be eligible for overall CAPA medals. The CAPA deadline for individual submissions is October 15 at midnight, Ontario Time.
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