Meow! Adobe is hosting a cat-themed photo contest in Japan

To coincide with National Cat Day, Adobe Japan has launched a creative social media photo contest on the theme of cats: the Adobe Nyan Contest 2023 ("nyan" being Japanese for "meow"). This covers both photography and videography, and doesn't discriminate on how the content is captured, whether through a professional camera or your basic smartphone camera. BUT - there is a small catch.

When editing your submission, it must have been processed using some form of Adobe Creative Cloud software, including but not limited to Photoshop, Lightroom, Premiere Rush, Premier Pro, and Adobe Express to name just a few. Entries not utilizing Adobe software are at risk of being excluded.

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Adobe Japan has launched a pretty niche photography competition beginning today through social media, and the theme is strictly feline. "We are looking for cat-themed photos and videos, such as your beloved cat at home or a cat you have taken yourself," says the announcement. This translation might be a little off, but you get the idea; any image with a cat as the subject is allowed. 

Despite being launched by Adobe Japan, the competition terms and conditions do not state anywhere that entrants must be from a certain area or region to enter the contest – but the prizes up for grabs are all in Japanese yen.

To enter, you must be following the official Adobe Japan Creative Cloud Twitter or Instagram accounts, and post your image with the hashtag #アドビにゃん (#Adobe Nyan) which must also be accompanied by one of the following hashtags: #写真部門 (#Photo Division), #動画部門 (#Video Division) or #猫大喜利部門 (#Cat Ogiri Division) depending on which you enter. 

This year, in addition to the usual Photo and Video categories, the company has added a new Cat Ogiri category. "Ogiri" was a pretty tough word to translate into English context, with most search results suggesting that it is some type of Locust bean used for soup recipes, with no relevance to either cats or photography. 

After digging a little deeper, I found that Ogiri can also refer to a type of storytelling that uses humor, so in the context of cats in a photo competition, it's safe to assume that funny cat memes will be the acceptable format to enter. The deadline for submitting to the competition is Tuesday, March 21, 2023.

A long-airing Japanese TV program called Shōten seems to be responsible for what is commonly known as The Ogiri Style, whereby contestants and 'rakugo' storytellers must give a witty reply, or comical response, to a question asked by the show's host and get some laughs from audience members in return. 

Ogiri can also in other contexts refer to the last item of the show in classical Japanese popular performing arts, and Rakugo is known as a traditional Japanese verbal performance art and method of storytelling. I could of course be completely wrong about all of this, but as a monolingual journalist, this is the best I can do.

The  #Adobe Nyan Photo/Movie/Cat Ogiri Contest 2023 should entice plenty of pet photographers to enter, but if the fun of editing cat photos alone isn't enough to convince you, then the contest rewards just might. The photo and video divisions are the ones that have the highest award, also including what the competition refers to as an Excellence Award. 

The grand prize for the photo division is an Amazon gift card worth ¥100,000 (equivalent to $745 / £614 / AU$1,088 approximately), and two people will also be selected for the Excellence Award and receive an Amazon gift card worth ¥50,000  (equivalent to $371 / £307 / AU$545 approximately). These will be exactly the same prizes and amounts for the Video division winners. 

The new Cat Ogiri division however only has an excellence award, but will select 5 winners as opposed to two to receive an Amazon gift card worth ¥30,000 (equivalent to $223 / £185 / AU$325 approximately). There is also a Petio Award prize this year for one person to win an assortment of kitty goods from Petio, a Japanese pet company, equivalent to ¥20,000 ( around $150 / £123 / AU$220). 

Just remember that, while the T&Cs don't explicitly prohibit foreign entries, it's unlikely that prizes (including Amazon vouchers) will be redeemable outside Japan. As with everything, the real fun is in taking part! 

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