Competition Rules 2010

Monthly Competition Rules

There are three categories for the monthly competitions:

• Colour Print
• Monochrome Print
• Projected Image

Members may enter two images per category. Should more be submitted, the competition secretary will randomly remove images until the maximum number is reached and return the excess to the member.

An image may only be entered once for a monthly competition.  Only paid-up members are eligible to enter competitions.

Presentation of Prints

34 My Photo (Mono)

Presentation of Projected Images

Digital Images

Digital images may be submitted on CD-R media (which must be closed - no further writing possible) or club-supplied memory sticks. Other memory sticks will be accepted if the club stick is not available. CD-Rs will not be returned, memory sticks will be returned to the next club meeting following submission. All entries must be virus scanned.

Digital images are to be submitted in the following file format –

• Image size – maximum of 1400 pixels horizontal, 1050 pixels vertical
• File Format – JPEG. We recommend that you use the minimum compression/smoothing your software permits. In Photoshop, this is quality 12 (best), for others you may need to set smoothing to 0% and quality to 100%
• Colour space – sRGB IEC61966-2.1. If you do not have colour space control in your software, do not be concerned as this is the standard default for the majority of systems.
• Mode – RGB Colour 8 bit or Greyscale 8 bit. These may be described in your package as 16.7m colours, RGB colour or simply Greyscale.
• Resolution – this setting is not used for projected images. However 72dpi is a commonly used setting for projected images if you wish to set this.

These settings should result in a file of about 1.4Mb although this size will vary depending on the complexity of the image.

For clarity, if you submit portrait format images the longest side (the vertical) must be 1050 pixels maximum – so portrait images will often contain fewer pixels than landscape ones (e.g. a 4:3 landscape image would be 1400x1050, a portrait image in the same ratio would be 1050x788).

The filename of your image must be of the form:

AA_NNNNNNN.JPEG

Where:

• AA is your member number (on your membership card or receipt) as two digits.
• _ is an UNDERSCORE character (shift and hyphen on most modern keyboards)
• NNNNN is the title without spaces, with the start of words indicated by capitals.
• JPEG is the identifying file extension; your system may not display this part.

For example, if I were member 34, submitting 2 images, one called “A Night at the Opera”, and the other “A Day at the Races”, the filenames would be:

 34_ANightAtTheOpera.JPEG

 34_ADayAtTheRaces.JPEG

Marking and Other Provisions

The judge will be asked to award marks out of 20 to each image. They will also comment on each entry. 

The competition secretary may, at their discretion, mark images with a B (indicating that a member is new to competition) to enable the judge to give "fair and constructive criticism".

A monthly trophy (to be held for one month) will be awarded to the member having the highest score in each category.

For the purpose of the league table, the highest mark awarded to a member in each category will be totalled and the member having the highest points will receive the annual trophy for that category, which is retained.

Member's images may be selected by the selection committee to go forward to inter-club battles. Members may refuse to allow their images to be entered, but must let the competition secretary know this before submission. Images will be returned to members as soon as possible.

Competitions with not-for-credit judging may be arranged if sufficient interest exists; the Three-on-a-theme contest annually falls into this category.

Annual Competition & Exhibition

 Overall Trophies