Competition
Rules - 2008
Contents
Submission of Competition Entries
Process for Print entries in monthly competitions
Re-entries to Monthly Competitions
Competition Format
Meetings
The Canberra Photographic Society holds competitions on the first Tuesday of each month from February to December in Room 1.06, Griffin Centre, Genge Street, Civic. Parking is available under the building. Visitors are welcome.
Judging begins at 8.00pm. However, you should arrive earlier than this or you will have to summon someone to let you in from an intercom outside the main doors. If you arrive at 7:30pm to help set up this would be greatly appreciated.
All competition entries are assessed by a Judge who is usually an accomplished photographer or artist from outside the Society. On one night a year there may also be voting by members on the entries.
Most competitions are for single images and include both print and projected image categories. Competitions held from March to October include a Set Subject competition in addition to an Open competition for each grade. February and November competitions are Open only.
There are also two portfolio competitions, the Hedda Morrison Competition for Prints and the Digital City Competition for digital images.
Submission of Competition Entries
All print entries must be submitted by 7.45pm on the competition night. Late entries may not be accepted. Also, as many people as possible should be present at 7:30pm to help set up.
All digital images for the projected image competition must be submitted by e-mail at least 7 days prior to the competition. See the section “Projected Image Competitions” for further details.
Guidelines to Judges
The Judge will also receive the following instructions:
- Please award ratings according to what you see as the merit of the image rather than scaling them to a pattern
- Please consider creativity, aesthetic merit and technical merit.
- Where there is a set subject competition, please consider whether entries meet the set subject. In doing so, please consider imaginative interpretations of the set subject.
- In addition, at the end of the night, you may award no images, one image or up to a few images as Images of Outstanding Excellence. (Images of the night)
The primary point of the competition is the evaluation of images, including the Judge’s comments.
Competitions
Categories
Prints:
A Grade Monochrome Prints
A Grade Colour Prints
B Grade Prints (Monochrome & Colour combined)
Projected Images:
A Grade Projected Images
B Grade Projected Images
B Grade may include beginners to photography and others of intermediate standard. A Grade entrants should show noteworthy technical and artistic accomplishment. Judges are instructed that all B Grade entries should receive encouragement whereas A Grade entries may receive adverse comments if appropriate.
Print Competitions
To facilitate display, prints must be mounted on thin board. Prints have a maximum size of 40.6 x 50.8 cm (16 x 20 ins) or equivalent area. This is the size of the prints themselves and excludes mount board. There is no minimum size.
Prints must have been printed within the last two years but the original exposure(s) may have been earlier.
In B Grade Prints, any combination of colour or monochrome is permitted.
Process for Print Entries in Monthly Competitions
Each competitor must affix a small piece of cardboard with the pin at the bottom right corner of the print.
- They must put their name on the back of the piece of cardboard.
- The Judge will mark a grade on the front of the piece of cardboard
- These pieces of cardboard will be provided in an envelope at the bottom of the Competition Board
- They will be colour-coded for each Competition
Each competitor must take responsibility for placing these pieces of cardboard in a provided box at the end of the night
- They must place the pieces of cardboard for all their entries there, irrespective of what the Judge awarded
- There is no recourse for a competitor if a name is not entered on the slip, the Judge has not recorded a number and this has been overlooked, or the slip is not in the box.
- If a person enters more than four entries over all competitions for a month, then their highest scoring entries will be disqualified. In the case of equally high-scoring entries, it will be at the discretion of the Competition Director to determine which entry is disqualified.
- Running totals for the Competitions will be provided every month and entrants may appeal for errors of calculation.
Projected Image Competitions
The Projected Image competition is open to digital images only (not slides).
Images are eligible where they have been taken within the previous two years or have been substantially manipulated within the previous two years.
All images must be e-mailed 7 days prior to the competition to: competitions@canberra-photographic.org.au. The following information must be included in each e-mail:
· Name of the photographer
· Contact Phone number
· E-mail address
· The following statement “The attached photographs were created by me. I grant the Canberra Photographic Society a licence under the Copyright Act 1968 to retain these images indefinitely, to use them in the monthly competition, on the Society’s Web Site or in Canberra Photographic Society publications such as the Cassette. I grant the National Library of Australia a licence under the Copyright Act 1968 to copy these images as part of the Canberra Photographic Society website into the PANDORA Archive. I understand that this licence permits the Library to retain and provide public online access to it in perpetuity and that the Library may make reproductions or communications of my images as are reasonably necessary to preserve the Canberra Photographic Society website and make it available to the public. ”
· Competition (A Grade or B Grade)
· Competition month (eg Feb, March etc) Note: if you are going to be away you can submit early but you must submit each month’s entry in a separate e-mail
· For each image included in the e-mail provide the following:
o Filename
o Title (optional)
o Competition (Open or Set)
All e-mails will be acknowledged by return e-mail within 48 hours of receipt. If you do not receive confirmation of receipt within 48 hours you need to contact the Projected Image Comp Coordinator (Steven Shaw Ph 0413 606 783) or the Competition Director (Murray Foote Ph 6257 1752) no later than 5 days prior to the competition.
Each digital image must comply with the following:
· JPEG format
· Max size – 1MB
· Maximum dimensions – 1024 horizontal x768 vertical pixels
· Colour space – sRGB
Failure to comply with these rules may result in disqualification of the entry.
Images of the Year
This is our annual competition for the best images of the year. There are three competitions for Monochrome Prints, Colour Prints and Projected Images. Subject topic is open and there is no A or B Grade. The competition is open to:
(1) Entries from the monthly CPS competitions of that year;
(2) Reworked entries from the monthly CPS competitions of that year;
(3) New entries that have not been entered as single entries in any previous CPS competition; and
(4) Only entries entered by financial members of the Society.
(5) Maximum of two entries per competition per person
(6) Maximum of four entries over all competitions
Conditions of Entry
Participation
Visitors may enter one competition prior to joining. Apart from that, entries are open to financial members only.
Number of Entries
For each monthly competition and also for the Images of the Year Competition, you may enter a maximum of four entries, irrespective of whether they are prints or projected entries. (There are no longer any restrictions for competition category or Open/ Set).
{Background to the paragraph above: The committee believes that recent changes to competition rules require that there should no longer be any restrictions for competition category or Open/ Set and foreshadows a motion to that effect at the March AGM. In these circumstances, the Competition Director will not enforce these restrictions in the February and March competitions pending the outcome of the AGM.}
For the Hedda Morrison Trophy, competitors may enter one portfolio, of from five to eight prints.
Similarly, for the Digital City Projected Image Competition, competitors may enter one portfolio, of from five to eight digital images.
Source of images
All work submitted for competition must be based on original images by the author.
Commercially processed entries are permitted in all grades and categories and judged equally among those that are author- processed. Processing by a non-commercial processor who is not the author of the work is also permitted. Credit for a photograph remains always with the author, not the processor, even if the processor is also a member of the Society.
Re-entries to Monthly Competitions
(a) Any print or projected image that has not been rated by the Judge at 4 or 5 in a previous monthly competition may be re-entered once without modification.
(b) Modified entries may be re-entered in a subsequent monthly competition only if modified to the extent they constitute an entirely different image.
(c) Portfolio competitions may include entries from monthly competitions and monthly entries may include images that were previously included in a portfolio.
Grading
(a) New entrants usually start in B Grade.
(b) New entrants or existing B Grade competitors may apply to the Grading Committee to compete in A Grade.
- This will normally involve presenting a portfolio
- The criterion for promotion in this way is that the entrant should clearly be of A Grade standard.
- That is they should be able to compete at the top of A Grade and it is not sufficient that some of their work may be of A Grade standard.
(c) At the end of each year, the Grading Committee may either invite or require competitors who have performed well in B Grade Competitions to compete in A Grade for the next year.
Awards
Monthly Competitions
The Judge must award each image in monthly competitions with a score from 1 to 5. They will be advised to assess entries on the following basis:
1 Does not reach A Grade standard (A Grade Only) (please state reasons)
2 Can improve this - Needs improvement for aesthetic or technical reasons (please briefly specify areas for improvement)
3 Good - A good standard of image. May have some room for improvement (please briefly analyse)
4 Merit – an image of a very high standard (please briefly state why)
5 Distinction – an image that stands out in any company
Aggregate Competitions
The awards of the Judge in monthly competitions will be the basis for allocating points in the two annual competitions for highest aggregate scores, one for A Grade and one for B Grade.
For this purpose, points will be allocated on the following basis: Rating 1 = 1 point; Rating 2 = 2 points; Rating 3 = 4 points; Rating 4 = 7 points; Rating 5 = 11 points. There will be 5 bonus points for entering a Set Subject competition (but you do not get additional points for multiple entries or entering more than one competition). There will also be 5 bonus points for each award as an Image of the Night.
Awards are presented for winners of these competitions at the end of the year.
Portfolio Competitions
There are awards during the year for winners of the Hedda Morrison and Digital City portfolio competitions.
Images of the Year
At the end of year, awards are presented for the Monochrome Print, Colour Print and Projected Image of the Year.
Photographer of the year
There is a special award for the Photographer of the Year. The recipient of this award is decided by sub-committee who may include in their consideration results of Society competitions, external competitions, external exhibitions, presentation of outstanding work at Society activity nights, organisational and other contributions to the Society. The sub-committee may also include consideration of other factors such as achievements and contributions to the Society from previous years.