Download the form
The scope here is Department-wide. DD Form 1553 — DD Form 1553, Entry for a Photography Contest, August 1983. — exists to Entry for a Photography Contest, and it applies across the services rather than inside one. That is what the DD prefix encodes: joint issue, single edition, every branch and defense agency working from identical paper.
Requirement traces to not stated; the form belongs to not stated. Everything about schedule sits below that in local instruction, which is where to ask if a date matters.
Use not stated, status not stated. Older printings circulate widely and lose their currency Department-wide the moment a new edition issues.
The set is PDF. Size: 2 pages, about 27 fields.
Free download, every format. Do not fill the form in a browser tab — browser pdf viewers handle interactive fields inconsistently and discard entries on close.
What the form asks for
- Armed service. Press space bar to mark X in first box if Army, second box if Navy, third box if Air Force.
- Military address (organization, unit, installation, base, ship, state, country, P O, A P O, etc.) (include zip code).
- Area code of home telephone number.
- Remaining numbers of home telephone number.
- Duty phone: commercial area code.
- Remaining numbers of commercial duty phone number.
- Permanent home address (include zip code). (If release from service is anticipated before December 31 of the contest year, give approximate date and mailing address).
- Section 1, Contestant information and authorization. Title of entry.
- Name of contestant (last, first, middle initial).
- Rank (by name, for example, Staff Sergeant).
- Social security number.
- Duty phone: DSN.
- Categories of competition. a. Mark X if military life.
- b. Mark X if people.
- c. Mark X if scenic/nature.
- d. Mark X if creative effects.
- Type of entry (group). 1. Mark X if Monochrome print.
- Mark X if Group 2, color print.
- Mark X if group 3, color transparency.
- Signature of contestant.
- Date (year, month, day).
- Signature of model.
- Address (street, city, state and zip code). (or "NA" if not applicable).
- Date (year, month, day).
Edition check comes first, ahead of any entry. Compare the printed date to not stated and replace anything older. Department-level supersession is simultaneous across the services, so a superseded blank is not merely out of date locally; the office receiving it is already working from the new field structure whichever branch it belongs to.
For anything ambiguous in a specific field, the form's own instructions come first and not stated controls where the two differ.
Send it as not stated or local guidance specifies. Save a copy. Cross-service and cross-agency routing is normal for Department forms, and a lost original outside your own organization is harder to chase down.
Look up cross-referenced forms by series and number. DD numbering is unified across the Department, which removes the usual step of identifying which service issued the thing.
Prefix before number. A DA citation and a DD citation in the same instruction point at separate systems — one Army, administered by an Army proponent, one Department-wide under not stated — and there is no correspondence between them at any number.
Editions change when the prescribing directive is reissued, when the data collected changes, or when notice language is amended. None of that reaches you. Checking not stated at download is the entire defence, and it is cheaper than repeating a submission.
Limits of this page: it distributes a published Department of Defense document and describes it. No legal advice, no procedural ruling, no statement about whether any submission will be accepted. Applicability, eligibility and procedure belong to not stated, to a servicing personnel office, or to the office named in not stated.
Questions and answers
- What is DD Form 1553?
- DD Form 1553, Entry for a Photography Contest, August 1983.
- Which edition is current?
- Not stated by the publisher
- Who is responsible for this form?
- Not stated
- In which formats can it be downloaded?