Through the year we have a series of Monthly Competitions, Inter-club Battles, Portfolio Challenge, a Chairman’s Evening on the 2nd April and a Themed Competition, scheduled for the 26th February, which this year is titled as ‘Street Photography’.
These competitions allow us to present our prints and projected images for critical comment by invited judges and give us an idea of how good we really are……or not as the case may be. We hope that such competitions enable us to improve our work by giving us new ideas and pointers as to where we could be better.
Competition Rules
A downloadable copy of the Competition Rules for the season 2019-2020 is available on the Resources page.
Monthly Competitions
The monthly competitions are divided into three classes, General for those just starting in competitions, Intermediate and Advanced for those with an increasing degree of proficiency and skill. There are four rounds of prints and four rounds of projected images for each class and all entrants are judged in their respective class by the invited judge who awards 1st, 2nd and 3rd places and Highly Commended and Commended at his discretion. Points are awarded according to placing's and are used to formulate a league table. At the end of the year the member with the highest score in each section in each class, is awarded the trophy.
A copy of the information sheet, Preparing for Competition, general and detailed, is available to download from the Resources page. These are important documents for all those wishing to enter competitions so please do read these carefully and if you have any questions or are unclear on any matter, do contact the Competition Secretary for clarification.
Battles
We do battle with other local clubs where each club enters normally 10 or 15 prints and the same number of projected images, although other combinations may be used dependant on the agreement between the two, or more, Clubs participating. These are displayed before a judge who will give each image a score out of 20. The club which accumulates most points is declared the winner. It is a simple formula but is a good evenings entertainment.
Portfolio (Tryptych)
Entrants submit a panel of 3 PIs before a judge, with the best panel, in his opinion, being declared the winner. The images are linked together by a theme of the author's choice. Dependant on overall entries, Members can submit up to 3 PI panels.
Projected Image Knockout
When held, each entrant can submit a prescribed number of projected images, on any topic. The images are shown two at a time and by a simple process of elimination, the judge will declare the winner to be the image which, again in his opinion, is the best. These events are generally good fun and not taken too seriously.
Themed Competition
This is aimed at the production of never before seen work; the rules of which are available within the published Competition Rules. This season, the theme is ‘Street Photography and the competition will be held on 26th February.
Chairman's Challenge
This year’s event is being run as The Chairman’s Evening, on the 2nd April. The idea of the competition and the basic rules can be found on the Resources page.
Awards
The Monthly Competitions are running events, with the award winner being the photographer who has accumulated most points from the four rounds, in each category and in each Class. The other one-off competitions also attract awards and these are all presented at the end of the season at the Presentation Evening.
Once again this year, scores collected from all competitions apart from the Chairman’s Challenge, as stated in the published Rules, count towards the title of “Photographer of the Year” or more commonly know as POTY.