SDCC Internal Competitions Information & Rules for 2011 -  2012

 

Tom Dickson Trophy

Entry is up to 3 Prints and/or Digital images.

The top image, digital or print wins the trophy

The Club League Competition

This competition consists of three separate but identical competitions held over the current season.

Entry for each of the 3 competitions is up to 3 Prints and/or Digital images.

The Club League Print Trophy is awarded to the member with the highest total score from six out of the possible maximum of nine prints entered in the 3 League competitions.

The Club League Digital Trophy is awarded to the member with the highest total score from six out of the possible maximum of nine digital images entered in the 3 League competitions.

The Club League Mono Print Cup    Introduced to encourage members to enter mono prints in the club league print competitions and provide more mono prints for external competitions.

As part of the three league competitions this trophy will be awarded to the member with the highest score from three mono prints out of the maximum of nine prints entered in the 3 League competitions.

The Annual competition

Annual Print Cup entry is up to 3 Prints. The top print will receive the trophy

Annual Digital Cup entry is up to 3 Digital images. The top digital image will receive the trophy

 

The following general rules apply to the above competitions.

 

Entries may be on any subject, but any image considered offensive would be excluded.

There is only one grade of entry, which will operate for both Print and Digital Entries.

All images, including substantially similar cannot have been used previously in any of the above competitions.

The exception to this rule is the Annual competition where one previously entered print can be re-entered in the Annual print competition and one previously entered digital image can be re-entered in the Annual Digital competition.

Should the number of entries in any competition significantly exceed a combined total of 100 images it may be necessary to drop your 3rd entry so always make sure it is your weakest.

All entries and forms must be handed in or emailed to the competition secretary 2 weeks prior to the competition

Prints can be of any size up to the metric size of 40cm x 50cm and preferably mounted with the title and membership number only on the back.  For gallery hanging, print mounts must be 40cm x 50cm to fit in the club frames.

Digital images should be JPEG/JPG files no larger than 1MB. With dimensions of 1400 horizontal pixels max. and 1050 vertical pixels max. and sRGB colour space. Further information on resizing your images for competitions is on the club web site and remember that images the wrong size or format may suffer from loss of quality or even fail to project at all.

The file name must contain the title and authors membership number and can be on CD or Emailed. Please do not use compression packages like WinZip.

An entry form should be completed with your photo titles and name as you want to see them appear on the score sheets and emailed to the competition secretary.

Score Sheets are sorted alphabetically so think about the first letter of your image title and make sure the image title and file name are the same. Titles that are larger than 25 characters may get truncated in the score sheets.

Rule Enforcement: problems or infringement of the rules should be brought to the competition secretary’s attention as soon as possible for guidance and solution. His decision and action will be final.

Damage: all care will be taken but S&DCC cannot be responsible for any loss or damage to member’s entries.

On competition nights the external judge will be requested whenever possible to follow S&DCC’s preferred evening plan with prints being judged first followed by the Digital images allowing time for print viewing during our coffee break.

The judge will provide constructive comments on all the entries and award score points out of 20.

He will generally be requested to provide a clear winner plus 2nd and 3rd  places that will be held back and viewed as the final 3 images. The winning 3 prints plus a further 5 will be selected making a total of 8 prints, which will be eligible for hanging in the gallery.

Judges are volunteers who are experienced amateur or professional photographers and are often members of other camera clubs in the area. They are familiar with the rules for entries, undergo training as judges and do their best to provide an informative and constructive assessment of the pros and cons of each entry. Like all of us, their assessments are to a certain extent subjective, and this may explain why good entries that meet all the rules may receive different assessments and awards. Some judges are more adept at discussing the artistic merits and weaknesses of an image, while others are fussy about seemingly minor technical 'flaws'. It is important to remember that the opinion presented by the judge is a single opinion. Different judges can and do have varying opinions on the same image. We are very fortunate that these individuals take the time to travel here and spend an evening at the club, helping us all improve our photographic skills.

Use of Images: We ask that members who enter internal S&DCC competitions will allow S&DCC to use their digital images and prints for the web site, external competitions, or other activities that S&DCC may be involved in. Copyright of photographs will always remain with the photographer. We will assume that you are agreeable to this unless you advise us otherwise.

Help and information on any of the above will be available on club nights, the club syllabus and web site.

 

 

Tom Forrest

Competition Secretary