Contact details for the current Competition Secretary can be found in the 'Submission for Competitions' document in Dropbox > MemberShare > Competition Documents.

The purpose of the Club is to promote interest in the taking of photographs and to educate members in the art, science, appreciation and assessment of photography.

Assessment sessions may be led by outside speakers or by the members themselves in various ways. The aim of this process will be to draw attention to each picture's individual merits and discuss any areas in which it may be improved.

Competitions: general

1. There are four internal competitions a year.
2. Of the four internal competitions, two have specified themes and two are open. Themes will be announced at the AGM and posted on the website.
3. For each competition, there are two categories, (a) Colour/Monochrome Print, and (b) Projected Digital Image. Members may enter up to two pictures for each category, and may enter both categories.
4. As one aim of the Club is to encourage members to develop their photographic skills, it is hoped that, in general, members will show recent work.
5. Trade processed/printed and home processed/printed entries shall be allowed in all sections.
6. No work may be presented for more than one internal competition unless it has been substantially altered (though unaltered work may be re-submitted for external competitions – see ‘External Competitions' notes below).
7. All parts of images submitted must have been produced by the photographer or by means of a digital imaging device. Any modifications made to the original image must have been made by the photographer or under her/his supervision.
8. Guidelines are issued to judges, including aspects of impact, composition, light/colour management and workmanship that the judge should take into account – and a request that the judge reduces marks for images that have no apparent relevance to the theme (where the entry is for a themed competition). The judge is asked to nominate one print and one DPI as the 'best image' in that category. The Guidance for Judges document is available in the MemberShare folder in Dropbox.

Requirements

1. Prints.The maximum print size, including mount, is 50cm x 40cm: this is consistent with Welsh Photographic Federation standards – and ensures that prints will fit into the carrying box.
2. Digital projected images (DPIs).DPIs should be named with the title of the image, in normal form, that is with spaces, not underlines or hyphens, and with a mixture of upper- and lower-case characters.

The pixel dimension for digital images must be no greater than 1400 pixels in the horizontal plane or 1050 pixels in the vertical plane and you should resize them accordingly. Images must be in JPEG (.jpg) format and for optimum display should be saved at a resolution of 300 dpi Please see the Resizing for Digital Projection document if you need further help.

Submission procedure

Members will be advised of a forthcoming competition two meetings (i.e. four weeks) before it is due to take place and this will be backed up by an email in the week following.

1. Deadline summary:

Thursday 18 days before the date of the competition: Titles of prints and digital images to be emailed to the Competition Secretary.

Club meeting 14 days prior to the date of the competition: All prints(and digital images not previously uploaded to Dropbox) to be handed in to the Competition Secretary.

2. The titles of all images (both print and digital) you are entering into a competition, along with your name and membership number, should be emailed to the Competition Secretary by the end of the Thursday prior to the hand-in date (i.e. two-and-a half weeks before the judging date). (Email either to the address given at the head of this document or to compsec@abergavennycameraclub.org.uk - this will be automatically forwarded to the Competition Secretary's personal email address.) If you do not receive a reply saying that your emails have been received, assume they have not been received and contact the Competition Secretary.
3. Prints for competitions should physically be handed in to the Competition Secretary before or on the hand-in date (i.e. the meeting two weeks prior to the judging date). Prints can also be delivered to the home of the Competition Secretary prior to the hand-in date (phone the number above for directions). You must still advise the Competition Secretary of the titles of your submissions in advance, as per Item 2 above.

In exceptional circumstances, if you cannot use Dropbox for any reason, you can email your digital images (addresses as above) or hand them in to the Competition Secretary on a memory stick or CDR, on or before the hand-in date. (Please put your name on these so that the Competition Secretary can return them to you the following meeting.) If you use either of these methods please still advise the Competition Secretary of the titles in advance as per Item 2 above.

4. For administrative purposes, a checklist of competition entries will be pre-prepared and available on the hand-in date – you are requested to initial this list in order to record that your work has physically been handed in and your digital images received.

Inclusion on the club's website

All images that receive a score of 19 or 20, and any other images with a lower score judged as 'best image', will be included on the 'Inspiration' page of the club's website. Members with high-scoring prints will be asked to provide the Competition Secretary with DPI versions of their images. These images will also be included as entries for the ‘Photograph of the Year’ award (see below).

Other images may be included on the club website, for example in slide-shows of competition entries. If any member does not want an image displayed, they should contact the webmaster.

Annual awards

Three awards are made at the end of the year:

1. Certificates to the members with the top three highest cumulative scores in each of the Print and Projected Digital Image categories. Cumulative scores are based on the full number of points awarded for a member's highest-scoring entry in each competition, plus half the marks awarded for the other entry. So someone who gets 16 and 14 would get an overall score of 23 for that competition. As you can see, this means you get more marks this way than someone who puts in one image only and scores 20. The idea behind this is to encourage people to take and show a good number of pictures and to do it regularly, as this is one of the ways we improve as photographers. The annual winners of our print and projected digital image competitions are people who have entered every competition and put in two pictures each time.
2. An award for ‘Photograph of the Year’ chosen by members from the year’s top-scoring images, both Print and Projected Digital Image. This includes all images that scored 19 or 20 and, if necessary, any other 'best images' from each of the four competitions.
3. The Chair's Award for the most deserving member, solely at the Chairman's discretion.

If you require any further information about club competitions, please contact the Competition Secretary at a meeting or by email.

External Competitions

The club also participates in external competitions, both "battles" with other clubs and general competitions organised by members of the Welsh Photographic Federation.

In general, the high scoring print images (17 and higher) are retained by the Club for use in external competitions, rather than being handed back to members after each judging session. If you are not happy about this, then let us know.

In addition to using internal competition images, we also encourage members to submit images specifically for the external competitions. Members will be notified of the opportunities to do this prior to each external competition. Mounted prints for external competitions should be delivered to the Competition Secretary on or before the notified hand-in date. See the Requirements section above for instructions on size, labelling etc.

The club always aims to represent as many members as possible in external battles. For example, if a battle needs 10 pictures, we like to represent the work of 10 photographers, or as many as we can. However, we cannot guarantee that we will use any particular member's submitted work.

If you are interested in how we select images for external competitions, please tell us – and you may be invited to help!

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Revision Date: February 2014
(Reflecting changes to categories endorsed by club members in Jan 2010, and procedural changes notified to members in September 2010, January 2011, September/November 2013 and February 2014.)

Copyright 2004-2015 Abergavenny Camera Club. The copyright of images on this website belongs solely to the photographer. Images may not be copied, downloaded or used in any way without the specific written permission of the photographer.