APA San Diego - Untitled 2025 Call for Entries

2024 Best of Show, Image by Sally Montana

About Untitled

Untitled is an annual competition and exhibition designed to showcase the best work of APA members and beyond – images that show your unique vision, creative passion, and individualistic style, titled or untitled. This contest is open to all photographers at any level. All entries will be curated by our jurors and the top 20 images will be selected to display for exhibition; the top three (3) images will be awarded prizes to those photographers living in the U.S.

Entry fees help support programming and events for APA San Diego and Outside the Lens, donating 10% of all entry proceeds to support their mission and programming.

While an APA membership is not required to enter, members receive discounts on annual call for entries, portfolio reviews, APA events as well as sponsor benefits and discounted pricing on gear and services throughout the year.

Thank you for supporting our creative community!

Please visit our Untitled contest site for past winners, latest prizes, news, and sponsors.

Meet the 2025 Jurors

Shana Lopes

Shana Lopes, PhD, is an Assistant Curator of Photography at SFMOMA. Born and raised in San Francisco, she earned her doctorate in art history from Rutgers University, specializing in the history of photography. Over the past sixteen years, she has gained curatorial experience at the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. She has recently curated or co-curated exhibitions, including:

Around Group f.64, Constellations: Photographs in Dialogue, Sightlines: Photographs from the Collection, Sea Change, A Living for Us All: Artists and the WPA, 2024 SECA Art Award, and Zanele Muholi: Eye Me. She is currently working on the upcoming exhibition Alejandro Cartagena: Ground Rules, which will be accompanied by a book from Aperture. Her writing has appeared in History of Photography, Art Journal, and 1000 Words.

Alyssa Ortega Coppelman

Alyssa Ortega Coppelman is an independent photo and photobook editor, writer, picture researcher, and consultant based in Austin, Texas. She loves helping photographers craft powerful, cohesive edits of their work and work with them editing and sequencing zines and photobooks for publication. She is also Art Editor at the Oxford American magazine.

For 20+ years, Alyssa worked with Harper’s Magazine—most recently as Deputy Art Director—and continues to freelance for them. She has worked as a senior photo editor for National Geographic; picture researcher for publishing companies, sourcing images for publication on ficBon and non-ficBon book covers; and was the Archival Producer for PBS NewsHour’s Emmy-nominated interview series, Brief But Spectacular, sourcing creative and sensitive visual accompaniment for segments featuring a wide variety of guests. Several artists she pitched as guests on the show were featured in episodes.

She has interviewed artists for feature articles published in print and online by Oxford American. Alyssa loves speaking to undergraduate and graduate photography students about their potential career paths; and enjoys the intensity of teaching day-long photo editing workshops.

Entry Fees

• $15: APA members
• $30: Non-members

DEADLINE FOR ENTRIES IS 11:59 PM PST on October 13, 2025

Not a member? You can still enter or Join Now! Annual Memberships start at only $50.

Prizes

Please visit http://untitledshow.org/prizes for the latest news on prizes.

Submission Guidelines

Please read contest terms, and then follow these guidelines carefully to ensure proper submission of your entries.

• APA members can log in using their APA credentials.
• Non-members can enter the contest by creating a guest account with a business name, email address, and password.
• A single image entry is one image.
• You can upload as many images as you would like during the process.
• All files must be JPG, no smaller than 1200 pixels on the longest side, and at most 1800 pixels, 72 ppi, sRGB color profile, with no visible identifying text/symbols.
• Image files need no unique title by the entrant; they are assigned an arbitrary ID for "blind" judging.
• You'll see a preview of your image(s).
• We have only one (1) category "Untitled."
• Preview your submission.
• Pay Fees, Receive Confirmation
• Once you have paid, your submission is final and you will not be able to edit your images.
• You can return to your account to enter more images.
• No AI Generative works will be accepted at this time.

Please send any questions to director@apasd.org

Image Submission Guidelines

Follow these guidelines and image requirements carefully to ensure the proper submission of your entries.

• Be sure to read through the Competition Rules and timeline before participating.
• Click the "Register Button" on this page to begin
• APA Members log in to their APA Profile to automatically receive the appropriate discounted entry fee. Not a member? There is a prompt to join before submitting which will save you on your submission fees.
• Non-APA members can enter by creating a guest account with a business name, email address, and password.
• You can upload as many images as you want (no more than ten at a time).
• The system will automatically charge you based on your membership level.
• Once your transaction is complete, your submission is final, and you cannot edit your images.
• You can return to your APA account anytime to review your entries. You may submit additional images until the final deadline.
• You will receive an email confirmation upon entering.
• If you do not receive a confirmation email, please check your spam, then contact: director@apasf.com

Image Requirements

• All files must be .jpg format
• File size limit: 2MB
• Image size: no smaller than 1200 pixels and no longer than 1800 pixels
• Color profile is sRGB, image resolution : 72 ppi
• Do not include disallowed characters (©, ®, •, $, #) in file names which can corrupt the file
• Images should not contain any text that is not part of the image
• Judging is blind: image file names are not visible to the judges
• Each entry fee is for a single image.
• You can enter more than once, in batches of 10 photos at a time or less.
• No AI Generative works will be accepted at this time.

About APA

APA is a 501(c)(6) not-for-profit volunteer organization dedicated to the success of professional photographers. Our organizations foundation is built upon creating a diverse and inclusive photographic community that supports all photographers at every level in their careers and champions image-makers rights worldwide. To achieve our mission, we aim to establish, endorse, and promote professional practices, standards, and ethics in the photographic community; to mentor, motivate, educate, and inspire to pursue excellence. APA strives to provide photographers with the tools and connections to run a successful business.

APA San Diego is the Southwest regional chapter of American Photographic Artists (APA), including Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma. Our local board strives to positively impact the industry for all photographers of all genres, providing inspiration, education, networking opportunities and community for photographers.

Categories

• Untitled