General
Each winter season (typically between the months of September to April) the Society will hold six competitions ( Typically one per month). See the Events Programme to see exact dates they are being held.
Images entered by members MUST be submitted via email to the competition secretary Tim Ramsay (timnramsay@gmail.com) as an image attachment by no later than MIDNIGHT on the SUNDAY before the date of the competition.
Three are designated DIGITAL competitions where the image is projected digitally and three are designated as PRINTS where the image is printed and mounted and judged as a print.
Three of the six competitions will be designated a set subject or theme. For more information on themes and this seasons topics click here.
The dates when each competition is held and whether it’s an Open or Themed subject matter is outlined on the the Events Programme section of the web site. The dates are also circulated via the Society’s Facebook page and reminders given to members at our regular weekly meetings.
link to previous competition are located in our Image Archives section.
Image Content
For the purposes of our competitions, a photographic image is defined “as being a captured image on a light-sensitive device/surface (e.g. photogram technique, film camera, digital camera, smartphone, tablet, etc…) and recorded on paper, film or in a digital format.”
Any image submitted must be the authors own work. Any creative images that use composite images, all the elements of the composite image must be the owners own work.
Artificial Intelligence is a comparatively new and developing aspect of producing images. An artificial intelligence (AI) generated image, or element, is not deemed to be a photographic image because it was created from scratch by the AI system and contains no image captured by the author. Therefore, this type of image will not be accepted into our competitions.
All elements of any of our internal and external competition entries must be captured by the author on camera, AI images contravene that basic rule and as such AI generated images are not in the spirit of competition. We trust members to not enter AI images and logistically we cannot ask for proof that every image is the authors own work. However, if necessary, we reserve the right to ask the member to provide original images, complete with metadata, if required by the Competitions Secretary.
Use of AI features contained within a post processing application (e.g. masking, sharpening, de-noise, enlarging, etc…) are permitted in our competitions provided they comply with a competition’s editing criteria and do not contain any elements which were not captured by the entrant (e.g. texture, sky, etc…). Potential winning images may be required to have supporting images (sky, texture, etc…which must have been captured by the submitting photographer) submitted on request by the Competitions Secretary.
Additional Competitions.
From time to time during the season additional competitions are held based on events or workshops held during the season where members are invited to submit images for criqiue and feedback.
The results of these competition are not included in the cumulative scores for the six normal competitions and do not count towards the “PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR” awards. However separate awards may be given for these events. These events will be added to the Events Programme section of the website.
Scoring & Awards
To ensure a fair and unbiased assessment, competition judges are externally appointed.
The judge will critique each image and assign a score between 0 and 20. (Typically between the range 12-20). The judge will determine 1st, 2nd and 3rd placings . Any entries not in the top 3 placings that have a score 18 or above are awarded “Highly Commended” and entries that score 17 are given a “Commended” award.
At the end of the season, certificates will be awarded to any member that has achieved a placing or highly commended or merit in any of the season’s competitions. Also, the members scores from each of the season’s competitions will be summated to give an overall score for the season. This overall score will determine photographer of the year awards as follows:-
The member with the highest accumulated score for their Digital entries will be the Digital Photographer of the year.
The member with the highest accumulated score for their Print entries will be the Print Photographer of the year.
The member with the highest accumulated score for both the digital and print entries will be awarded the title of Overall Photographer of the year and awarded the Memorial Trophy to retain until end of the following season.
Themes
Some of the competitions will be either given a set subject or theme to follow. In this case, the submitted image should be the member’s visual interpretation of the subject. This interpretation will be taken into consideration by the judge as well as the compositional and technical qualities of the picture.
Interpretation as to the whether the image fits the set subject or theme will be at Judges discretion. If, in the opinion of the Judge, the image does not meet the set subject or theme criteria it is likely the image will be marked down.
If the competition has no set subject or theme it will be defined as an OPEN competition. In this case the member has total discretion on genre, subject matter, colour, toned or monochrome.
For this seasons set themes, goto the Themes page on the web site.
Submission Criteria
For specific information and details on image submission requirements relaing to file naming, format, sizing, image colour space, etc for both Print and Digital submissions, goto the Image Submission Criteria page of the web site.