RULES AND PROCEDURES OF
TAPC PHOTOGRAPHY COMPETITION
Competition within Trinity Arts Photo Club is a means to encourage members to strive continually for improvement in photography.
1. Competitions are conducted only via digital submission only as of January 2008, either monochrome, black & white, or color.
a) By submitting a digital image for judging, the photographer agrees to have the image posted on TAPC’s website for judging in a password-protected folder. If the image is awarded a ribbon, the image will be placed in the public area of TAPC’s website for viewing.
b) Further, the photographer agrees not to hold TAPC or any of its officers or committee chairmen responsible in the event an image is pirated.
2. Submitted images must be equal to or less than 1024 pixels in width and 768 pixels in height at 72 pixel resolution.
3. Prints, negatives or slides may be scanned in and sized appropriately as above.
4. A maximum of two (2) entries may be submitted by each member: two color, or two black & white, or one color and one black and white
5. The current months’ submissions may be handed in at the meeting on a CD or emailed to the committee chairperson no later than 12 noon the Thursday following the Monday meeting.
6. Each competition will be divided into two levels: “A” (experienced) and “B” (less experienced).
7. Open competitions and Assignment competitions are conducted.
8. Photographs must have been made within 2 yrs of the competition.
9. An entry cannot have won a ribbon in any previous Trinity Arts Photo Club competition.
10. A person submitting an entry must be a member in good standing.
11. Visitors may submit an entry for evaluation by the judges in a competition, but are not eligible for any awards.
12. Entries are submitted one month, placed on line, judged & results presented at the following months’ meeting. The winning photographs will be placed on our website.
13. Each entry must have a title and be identified with the member’s number and A or B.
Competition Committee Responsibilities
The competition committee will conduct all competitions, ensuring that each entry satisfies the competition requirements. It shall maintain a record of all placed entries of each club competition in each media. The results of each competition will be announced at the following month’s meeting and posted on our website.
Open Competition
There is no restriction as to techniques used to produce derivations or alterations to the image during the making of the photograph. There is no restriction as to the amount ofdigital manipulation done to make the final entry. Members should be guided by their own sense of values when emotional or controversial subjects are attempted, however, the competition committee chairman reserves the right to withdraw an inappropriate image.
Assignment Competition
Entrants must satisfy the requirements of specific, pre-announced assignments. The competition committee determines that each entry satisfies these requirements. All subject competitions are considered assignment competitions unless specified as OPEN. The only digital manipulation permitted is cropping, brightness, contrast, color balance, saturation, burning (localized darkening), dodging (localized lightening) and masking (overall dodging). Retouching on a limited basis is permitted (removing of small imperfections).
Rules for the Levels of Competition
All club members have the initial option to enter either level of competition (A or B). When a “B” level individual exceeds 30 or more accumulated competition points they will automatically advance to the “A” level for future competitions. Once you achieve level “A,” you cannot submit in level “B.”
Competition Point System
First Place: 5 points
Second Place: 4 points
Third Place: 3 points
Honorable Mention: 2 points
Entry 1 points
Points will be recorded by the competition committee chairman. The person with the highest number of points Jan.-Nov. in each level will be awarded “Photographer of the Year” at our final meeting of the year. Points accumulated during the calendar year, from Jan 1 to Nov 30 will be zeroed out and each member will start on January 1st with zero points.
Judging
It will be the responsibility of the competition committee head or a designee to determine, the proper category (color or monochrome) for each competing item. Judges will assume each entry to be properly categorized and eligible for competition. The judge for a competition is selected by the competition chairperson or committee. Entries will be judged during the month following the meeting. The judge will post results to the competition committee head or a designee. The judge will assign a score of 1-5 in the following six categories:
• Impact
• Creativity
• Composition
• Lighting
• Subject Matter/Assignment Relevance
• Technical Excellence
for a maximum score of 30 points. Any ties among the potentially placing entries will be resolved by the judge.
Awards
For both Open and Assigned Competitions, any category having seven or more entries will be awarded 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and Honorable Mention ribbons. If fewer than seven entries are received in any one category, the places will be reduced to 50% of the number of entries.
7 or more entries: all four ribbons
5 or 6 entries: top three ribbons
3 or four entries: top two ribbons
1 or two entries: first place ribbon only
SUBMITTING DIGITAL IMAGES
(Examples based on Photoshop CS3)
The source for images may be a digital camera image or scanned original image. All images will be referred to as 'digital images' regardless of source. The general requirements for digital images are:
1. Image width must be less than 1024 pixels and height less than 768 pixels.
2. JPEG format with file size of 1.5MB or less.
3. File name format is: member number A or B, the image title.jpg – ex. 200A redsunset.jpg
4. The email text or CD label must contain the member number + A or B, titles of images, contest month and contest assignment
TO SUBMIT IMAGES
There are two ways to submit images: by email or on a CD at the monthly meeting.
1. E-mail images to competition_entry@trinityartsphotoclub.org – one image per email! Attach image file to email or place into body of email depending upon your browser.
• The subject line of the submission email must read “TAPC Contest Submission – month, year”
• Include your member number, A or B category, names of images, contest month and contest assignment in body of e-mail with images attached.
• Sample email text:
200A
Water Wonders
January – Open
• E-mails must be received by noon Thursday following the Monday meeting. If you cannot attend the meeting, you can still send images for the competition.
• The Competition Chairperson will confirm receipt/rejection of e-mail images. If the image or file size is too large, or it is not received by the deadline, the image will be ineligible for judging. Rejected images may be re-sent, if they’re received before the deadline.
2. Submitting on CD:
• Burn images to CD.
• Label CD with your member number, A or B category, names of images and contest month and competition assignment.
Sample CD label :
200A
1. Water Wonders
2. Bird in Flight
January - Open
• Turn in your CD to the Competition Chairperson during the TAPC meeting on the fourth Monday of the month. If the image or file size is too large, the image will be ineligible for judging. CDs will not be returned unless requested.
If there is a need for additional guidance in preparing an image, members will be available at the TAPC meeting or you may request help via e-mail to support@trinityartsphotoclub.org.
FORMATING DIGITAL IMAGES FOR SUBMISSION
To prepare a digital image for submission, follow these steps.
1. Open: Open image in any image editing program (Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Painter, Seashore, etc.). To save original image, go to File, Save As, & rename to use for resizing and submittal. (Instructions are for Photoshop, but other image editing programs provide similar commands.)
2. Flatten: If image has multiple layers, flatten at this time. ( In the Layer drop-down menu, choose Flatten Image. )
3. Resize: Resize image so that pixel dimensions do not to exceed 1024 pixels in width or 768 pixels in height.
a. Under the Image drop-down menu, choose Image Size.
b. Check Resample Image and Constrain Proportions boxes. Then change Pixel
Dimensions to meet size requirments above. Click OK.
c. NOTES:
- Vertical images must still not exceed 768 pixels in height. Their width will be much less than 1024 pixels.
- Images that exceed the 1024 X 768 pixel requirements will not fit our presentation format and will not be entered.
4. Set Color Space: Most unmanaged color systems assume sRGB color space. Since we do not know what system our judges will use to view your images, it is recommended (not required) that you change the color space, if different, to sRGB.
a. Under the Edit drop-down menu, choose Convert to Profile and pick sRGB IEC61966-2.1 from the Profile drop-down list.
5. Save: Save your image in JPEG format. Under the File drop-down menu, choose Save As ( never save to the original image! ) and select JPEG from the drop-down list. Check the ICC Profile box.
a. Enter the file name for the image as follows: Photographer’s member number plus A or B, followed by title of image in lower case and jpg extension. Example – 200A redsunset.jpg. It is important to include the member number along with the photo title to help us accurately manage the images during judging and presentation.
b. Hit Save which takes you the next dialog box. Under Format Options choose Baseline. Choose the highest Image Quality setting (probably 10 to 12) that yields a file size less than 1.5MB.
c. It’s probably better not to Save for Web because it strips out the color profile information embedded in the image.