This page contains the competition rules for internal competitions at the club, together with guidelines for submitting prints and digital files. Please read these guidelines carefully before submitting your photos.
External competitions, such as the Rose Bowl, have their own rules. Please see the CACC web site for information about the Rose Bowl competition. If you need any clarification of these rules, please ask any member of the committee, who will be pleased to help.
WPC organises competitions for its members on a monthly basis, as well as special annual competitions held at the end of the season. Competitions are open to club members only.
The main benefit to people submitting their photos is to obtain an independent appraisal of their work and learn how to improve their photography. As such, a ‘competition’ does not need to be entered for competitive reasons: you can enter simply to obtain some useful feedback about your work.
Photos are assessed by an external judge recommended by the Chilterns Association of Camera Clubs (CACC). Judges will be experienced photographers who have received specific training, organised by the CACC, to ensure that common criteria are used.
In monthly competitions, marks are awarded out of 20 for each photograph; for annual competitions the judge simply chooses the ‘best’ photo or portfolio.
Each monthly competition will either have a nominated theme, or be classified as ‘no set subject’ meaning that you can enter any photograph you wish.
Marks awarded at monthly competitions are accumulated during the season and the person with the most marks in each section at the end of the season is awarded a trophy. Individual trophies for the annual competitions are also awarded.
WPC monthly competitions – summary of rules
There are three sections in each monthly competition. They are:
- Colour prints;
- Black and White prints (including tinted monochrome);
- Projected digital images.
You can submit up to five photos, with a maximum of two in any two sections and only one in the remaining section.
Photos submitted must not have been used in any previous competition (monthly or annual).
Guidelines for each section are as follows:
Prints
These must be separately mounted, on mount board or stiff card, with the overall size of the mount not exceeding 20” by 16”. You do not have to use an aperture mount: the photo can simply be stuck onto the board. The standard of presentation is sometimes, but not always, taken into consideration by the judge, so effort in this area can pay dividends.
Prints must have your name, and the title of the image, written on the back of the mount.
Prints must be supplied to the print competition organiser no later than the previous club meeting (i.e. one week before the actual competition), so that the entries can be collated and listed for marking purposes.
Digital files
These must be in jpg format (these files must have a ‘.jpg’ file name extension on Windows PCs). If a file has the ‘jpeg’ extension, then please rename (e.g. in Windows Explorer) it so that it has the ‘jpg’ extension, before submitting it.
If producing these files yourself, for example using Adobe Photoshop, choose a ‘quality’ level in your photo software, when saving the images in jpg format, so that the resulting file is no larger than 500 kilobytes (KB). On Windows, you can find the size of the file using Windows Explorer, for example by right-clicking on the file and selecting ‘Properties...’ from the context menu. The reason for this requirement is that the person organising the competition might have a slow Internet connection, and they will need to download all the images from the competition email account.
The name of each file should be in the following format: YourName.PhotoTitle.jpg
We are gradually introducing the use of specialised competition software into the club, and the software requires the file names to be in this format: please help the person who is preparing the competition, by naming files in this way.
The image resolution required for digital image competitions is 1400 horizontal pixels by 1050 vertical pixels. If you can, please re-size your photo, using a photo editing program, to fit within these limits, remembering to adjust the sharpness of the image if necessary while/after re-sizing. If you cannot do this yourself, the software used on the club laptop can re-size the image in-situ to fit the projector resolution: this is usually satisfactory, but of course the process is then outside your control.
Advanced digital users should check this page for further information on colour spaces.
Submitting digital files by email
Digital images should be emailed to the competition entry address wpc.comp@yahoo.co.uk to arrive by midnight on the Monday before the competition. Please make sure that you clearly indicate, in the subject line of the email, which competition the images are intended for (i.e. which monthly competition, or annual competition, or other event) as well as your name if this is not clear from your email address.
Be aware that most email accounts have limits on the total size of attachments sent with an individual email, so if you have to send large files (i.e. you cannot reduce them to fit 1400x1050 pixels) it might be necessary to send each file in a separate email.
WPC annual competitions – summary of rules
The annual competitions are as follows
- Colour print of the year;
- Black and White print of the year;
- Colour print portfolio;
- Black and White print portfolio;
- Projected digital image of the year;
- Projected digital portfolio.
The general guidelines for prints are the same as for the monthly competitions, with up to two prints in each section.
You can submit prints which have been entered earlier in monthly competitions, but not in earlier annual competitions.
The judge will choose the ‘best’ print or portfolio rather than awarding marks out of 20.
For the print portfolio, four prints (no more, no less) on a common theme must be entered, the theme having been chosen by the committee in advance (usually announced in the programme). The prints can be mounted separately or on one board, as the author sees fit. Thought should be given to the order of the photos in a portfolio, to maximise its impact, and/or tell a story, if that is what you are intending to do.
For the digital portfolio, similar rules apply, except that you are submitting exactly four digital files instead of four prints. When sending these images to the organiser (at the same email address as for monthly competitions), please indicate if the images need to be shown in a particular order.