Competition Rules

NOTE: Our club competition is for club members only.

Download the competition rules

Competition rules for the Eurobodalla Photographic Club Inc

Effective August 2020

ELIGIBILITY

Members must be financial before they can enter the club competitions.

DIVISIONS

There are two main divisions of competition entries:

  • Projected Images – Set subjects or Open
  • Prints – Set subjects or Open

Each of these has a colour and a monochrome section.

All projected image entries must be submitted to the Competition Secretary no later than two weeks before the competition date. This is to allow time for the entries to be checked, numbered and sent out to the judge or to members if they are judging.

Members must ensure that their names do not appear on the actual photograph (this applies to both prints and projected images).

All entries must have the authors name and title in accordance with our file naming process – see Appendix 1. Authors name will not be revealed to the judge.

All print entries can be entered on the night of the competition. The name of the photographer and the number of his / her entries must be recorded in the competition register.

A photograph entered as a coloured image may not be concurrently entered as a monochrome image and vice versa.

NUMBER OF ENTRIES INTO MONTHLY COMPETITIONS.

Members may put up to three entries in each monthly competition.

The number of entries will be reviewed as the year progresses and changes may be necessary in order to make the competitions manageable.

Entries may be commercially processed or self-processed work, but the original photographs must have been taken by the member entering the photos. Photographs of images taken by others (e.g. from publications) are not permitted; neither are pictures which have been downloaded from the internet, whether modified or not.

The original photographs may have been taken with a film or a digital camera.

All prints must be mounted on a simple, single matt board.

Any editing / manipulation of entries using Photoshop or other software, must be the member’s own work.

SIZES

 Projected images:

When submitting projected images to the Competition Secretary, they must be sized       at 1920 pixels on the long side and at a file size of no more than 2 MB.

  • Prints:

Recommended size is approx. 8” x 12”  (A4)

Maximum 42 x 30 cm.  (17″ x 12″).

AGE

  • There is no age limit on entries in either the Set or Open divisions.

PHOTOGRAPHS WHICH HAVE ALREADY WON AN AWARD.

If a photograph has already won an award at the Club i.e. a Gold or a Silver award or an Image of the Night, it cannot be entered in any subsequent monthly competitions, except for the November awards night of that year.

Members may not enter a photo that is only marginally different from one which they have previously entered, that won an award, i.e. there must be a significant difference.

It is not permissible to enter a photograph in a monthly competition, which is simply a monochrome conversion of a previously award-winning coloured photograph or vice versa.                                                                                                                                  

PHOTOGRAPHS WHICH HAVE BEEN PREVIOUSLY ENTERED BUT HAVE NOT WON AN AWARD.

If a photograph has not won an award in a monthly competition, it may be re-entered in subsequent competitions. There is no limit to the number of times a photograph can be re-entered if it hasn’t won an award.

RESOLVING PHOTOGRAPH ELIGIBILITY

The Competition Secretary shall adjudicate on any questions of eligibility of any photograph for the Set Subject competition.  Any questions of eligibility are to be resolved prior to the judging of the competition and preferably before the photographs are displayed.

JUDGING

Judging of the monthly competitions will be by one of the following three methods:

  • If possible an external Guest Judge will be asked to do the judging – often this will be a visiting guest speaker. Alternatively, entries may be sent to a remote judge who will then      provide feedback and results which will be communicated at the club meeting by a      committee member.
  • A volunteer club member or two members will judge on the night, provided they have no entries in the particular group.  Sometimes two volunteer club members may do the judging for different groups.
  • When members act as judges for the night, they will do so in accordance with the

Procedure set out in Appendix 2.

  • The judges’ decisions are final.

GOLD AND SILVER AWARDS

The number of Gold and Silver awards will be dependent upon the number of entries in each section, in accordance with the following table:

  • 12 or more entries –  Up to 3 Gold and 5 Silver.
  • 6 – 11 entries       –   Up to 2 Gold and 2 Silver
  • 1 – 5 entries            Up to 1 Gold and 1 Silver

One “Image of the Night” awards will be given each month. Only those entries which have been awarded Gold awards on the night will be eligible for Images of the Night.

 POINT SCORES (for each monthly competition)

  • 1 point for each division entered.
  • 5 points for a Gold and 3 points for a Silver.
  • 5 points for the “Image of the Night”

ANNUAL AWARDS

Highest Point Scores. These will be awarded to the members with the three highest aggregate point scores across all divisions and sections during the past year’s competitions (January-October).

At the November meeting all entered photographs will be eligible for one of several awards.  The competition will be ‘open’ to any topic and up to two images may be entered. Any image can be entered in the November competition subject to the competition rules, except that any image that has won an award in the same year is also eligible. Photos that have not been entered in a club competition are also eligible.  Images that have won awards in any club competition in previous years are  NOT eligible. 

APPENDIX 1

All IMAGES and PRINTS entered into our monthly competition’s need to be titled, or have titles written on the back of the print, as per the file naming protocol set out below.

This will be required for all images entered by members.

All Set subject entries must be emailed to our NEW Competition email address

epc4comp at gmail.com

You are required to add a 1, 2 or 3 in the file name to indicate your ranking of your entries.

1 = the best

2 = the best

3 = good but can be removed

When your entries are organised for judging and there are more than 40 (approximately) entries, then all of those ranked 3 will be removed from judging.

The format for your entry title:

The format that you are required to use when submitting entries will be

[First Name and Initial of Surname] – [C or M (Colour or Mono)] – [1, 2 or 3] – [Title.jpg]

Example:
HeathB-C-1-Sunset.jpg

HeathB-M-2-Rocks.jpg

HeathB-C-3-Blue Wren.jpg

When you save this file for competition you need to confirm the pixel dimensions

e.g. 1920 pixels x _____ pixels.

The image file size should be no larger than 2 megabytes.

END

APPENDIX 2

Proposed method for judging photographs by member voting

Introduction

When we wish to assess photographs when no judge is available, it is proposed that we get members of the club to place votes for their preferred pictures.  The proposed mechanism is described here.

Method

 

  • Each present member of the club can vote for photographs presented on the day of the meeting. Each member is allowed ten votes to be allocated to pictures as they see fit.  A member may allocate all ten of their votes to one photograph, or (more likely) allocate them to several photographs as per the merit of each.  Members may not vote for their own photos.
  • Sheets of Butcher’s paper will be prepared before the meeting with numbered rows corresponding to the photos to be judged. This will be placed on a desk or fixed to the walls with Bluetack.
  • Photographs will be presented in the normal way: digital photographs by projector and printed photographs on display stands. The printed photos will be numbered using small Post-it notes.  The digital photographs will be displayed with numbers shown in the corner of the picture.
  • Members are encouraged to walk around and view the photographs and discuss them with other members. Following the discussion, each member marks their votes on the butcher’s paper with a vertical line for each vote.  After four votes, the fifth is designated by a diagonal line as below, thus grouping votes into bundles of five for easy counting.
  • On completion of voting the winning photographs are identified and awarded gold or silver as per the number of votes; the number of awards being governed by the club rules.

 END