Competition categories

Competitions are divided into the following categories:

• Print competitions held on Tuesdays
• Projected Image competitions held on Tuesdays
• Speciality (print or projected) competitions held on Tuesdays
• Entry group competitions held on Thursdays

All Tuesday night competitions are open to all members.

Entry group competitions are informal and are outside the scope of these rules.  Therefore the following rules apply only to Tuesday night competitions.

Tuesday Night Print Competitions

Number of entries allowed per member in main group print competitions

There will be five print competitions in the 2011–2012 season. Each member will be allowed to submit one print per competition. If a member misses a competition then they will be allowed to enter an extra catch-up print in a future competition.  No member may enter more than 2 prints in any one competition.

A single print entry consists of one of the following:

• One print
• Panels of between 2 and 6 prints. The panel must include a hanging plan.

Preparing Entries

• Entries may be in colour or monochrome, silver or digital, home or trade processed
• Entries should be mounted on 40 x 50 cm card

All prints must have a label on the back with the following information in block capitals:

• Membership number
• Member's name
• Print title

In exceptional circumstances, where it is not feasible to mount the image on a 40 x 50 cm mount, mounts other than 40 x 50 cm may be accepted, but this must be by prior arrangement with the competition conveners and may not always be possible, depending on the number of entries for a given competition.

The title registered with the system, and any system-assigned suffix, must be written, in capitals, on a label on the back of the print. For example "UNTITLED (004)". Any old labels on the mount must be removed or crossed through to ensure that only the registered title is visible on each print.

If the information on the label and the information registered in the system do not match, then the competition conveners can accept no liability if the results are recorded incorrectly or the photographer is announced incorrectly at the competition.

The deadline for web submissions is midnight on the Sunday before the competition. No entries will be accepted after this deadline for any reason.

The procedure for submission of entries is described in the"Submitting entries" section below.

Tuesday Night Projected Image Competitions

There will be six projected image competitions during the season.  Members are allowed to submit one entry per competition.

If a member misses a competition then they will be allowed to enter an extra catch-up image in a future competition.  No member may enter more than 2 images in any one competition. 

A single projected image competition entry consists of one of the following:

• one digital image or
• a sequence of not more than six related images.

Submissions on slides are not accepted for entry into competitions. The procedure for submission of projected image competition entries is described in "Submitting entries" below.

The deadline for submissions is midnight on the Sunday before the competition.

Tuesday Night Speciality Competitions

There are two print competitions and one projected competition, with two speciality subjects in each competition.

Members are allowed to submit one entry on each subject per competition.  In other words up to two entries per member.

Speciality Competitions for 2011–2012:

Preparing Entries

Speciality competition entries must conform to the conditions listed under "Preparing entries" for the print or projected competition and in addition must include a reference to the speciality name.

The deadline for web submissions is midnight on the Sunday before the competition. No entries will be accepted after this deadline for any reason.

The procedure for submission of speciality category entries is described in the "Submitting entries" section below.

Missed Entries

Missed submissions cannot be entered in a different speciality. An exception is made for commentators, see the "Rules for commentators" section below.

Submitting entries

The Print Competitions

Prints are submitted using the Club's website online submission system (click the "Competition entries" link above). You will need your membership number to hand and the title of your print. Type in these details, and follow the instructions on the web page. Write down the suffix number that the system will automatically assign to your print title if the title is a duplicate in that competition.

The title registered with the system, and any system-assigned suffix, must be written, in capitals, on a label on the back of the print. For example "UNTITLED (004)".

If the information on the label and the information registered in the system do not match, then the competition conveners can accept no liability if the results are recorded incorrectly or the photographer is announced incorrectly at the competition.

Prints can be submitted up to one week in advance.

The deadline for web submissions is midnight on the Sunday before the competition. No entries will be accepted after this deadline for any reason.

Those without web access may submit the same information as above to one of the competition conveners, who will then do the web submission on their behalf. The deadline in this case is the previous Tuesday Club meeting. Note: when submitting prints in this way, any suffix number supplied by the system will need to be added to the back of the print. For this reason, it is advised not to submit untitled prints in this way.

Altering Submissions

Once a print is submitted, no changes to the entry, including the title, are allowed. However, a member may delete the old entry and then re-submit a new entry.

The projected image competitions

Entries for the projected image competitions are uploaded using the Club's website online submission system (click the "Competition entries" link above). This should be done by midnight on the Sunday prior to the competition. Exceptionally, and by prior arrangement, entries may be passed by hand on a CD or a USB memory stick to the competition conveners.

These are the specifications to be used when preparing your images for projection.

Currently we can only deal with JPG images. So no TIFFs, BMPs or RAW files please. We will not be able to project them.

The club's projector has been set up to a 4:3 ratio screen size of 1344x1008 pixels. Allowing for borders added at projection time, images should not exceed 1300 pixels horizontal by 900 pixels vertical (Note: Not 1300 pixels vertical). If you provide images larger than this, they will be dynamically sized down at projection time.

If using Adobe Photoshop, use the IMAGE menu, then IMAGE SIZE - make sure RESAMPLE IMAGE checkbox is on and BICUBIC SHARPER is selected if you are reducing in size or BICUBIC SMOOTHER if you are increasing in size.
Enter either 1300 into width (typically for landscape images) or 900 into height (typically for portrait images) in pixels so that one of the dimensions is EXACTLY 1300 wide or 900 high, but so the overall size does not exceed 1300x900 pixels
To convert to sRGB choose EDIT - CONVERT TO PROFILE - sRGB IEC61966-2.1

Images should be save as 8 bit. Choose IMAGE - MODE - 8 bit.
SAVE AS - JPEG - (Check the embedded profile is sRGB - it is shown underneath the filename) and use QUALITY 12 or in newer versions of Photoshop use SAVE FOR WEB & DEVICES.

Please try to avoid the use of spaces in the filename. Instead use the underscore character. Filenames should be no longer that 25 characters and should include the suffix ".jpg".

The Award System

The aim of our competitions is to help members improve their photography through a spirit of friendly competition and a striving to meet personal targets without the process being intimidating.

The competition critic – an experienced photographer from inside or outside the Club – will give an entry a gold (5 points), silver (3 points) or bronze (2 points) award or no award (1 point).

Pictures should all be judged in the ‘pictorial’ category unless the title specifically places it in another category. For example a natural history shot titled with a Latin name should be judged as natural history, but if the image has a more general title, it should be judged as pictorial.

Points are awarded considering both the technical quality and artistic merit of a photograph, and each entry is critiqued in isolation, without comparison to other photographs in the competition. So, any number of gold, silver and bronze awards are given by the critic during a competition. The critic will assess all entries objectively – personal preferences and biases play no part in the process.

The following criteria are used:-

• GOLD – High artistic and creative content AND technically perfect
• SILVER – Good artistic and creative content
• BRONZE – Some artistic and creative content
• PASS – Little artistic and creative content OR major technical faults OR does not meet speciality criteria
  

Publishing of Results

The results of each competition will normally be posted on the Club website within one week of completion of a competition on this page. It is the responsibility of each member to check that the published results match what they received on the night and to bring any discrepancies to the attention of the competition conveners in a timely manner. Whilst every effort is made to avoid mistakes, it may not be possible to rectify them if they are brought up too long after the competition.

A league table is maintained for each of the member competitions. Members are only eligible for the league in a particular competition category if they have joined the Member category prior to the first competition of that category.

Rules for commentators

A commentator cannot submit an entry to the competition of which they are the commentator. Because of this, the commentators in a given season are allowed extra "catch-up" prints which they can submit to a previous or later competition of the same category. The commentators of speciality competitions will be allowed extra entries in another speciality competition of the same season.

If for any reason a commentator is not able to enter extra images in another competition, due to late notice for example, then they will be awarded a "silver" award for each entry that they could have made into their own competition.

General Rules

An image is only eligible for entry once into all club competitions. In other words the same image can not be entered into multiple print competitions or a projected competition and a print competition. It is up to the member’s own conscience as to whether an image has been sufficiently altered from a previous version to qualify as a new image but, in general, all images should be noticeably distinct from previous entries by the same member.

In general images that have been shown in an entry group competition should not be entered into a Tuesday night competition, but this may be overridden by the entry group officials.

Entries should be as anonymous as possible.

No withdrawal or entry of images will be allowed once judging has commenced.

The decision of the competition conveners is final in all matters not covered by these rules.