COMPETITION RULES  SEASON 2025-26

General

1.     The Club will hold four internal Club competitions during the season, all of the competitions will be 'Open'.

2.     Only fully subscribed members of the Club are eligible to enter Club competitions.

3.     All entries can be produced by any method and manipulation and composites are allowed, but all parts of an image must be the member's own work.  The use of clip art or wholly computer generated images (such as fractals) is not permitted. Software tools that replace or remove an image element or extend an image such as content-aware fill, healing, patching or object removal are only permitted where the reference for the inserted image data is wholly contained within the member’s base image(s). It is the member’s responsibility to ensure that the tools they use do not draw image content from outside the member’s own work. Image enhancement tools (e.g. AI De-noise, AI Scaling, AI Sharpening) are acceptable, so long as they do not introduce image elements that are not present in the member’s original image(s).

4.     Images which do not comply with the previous definition or might be deemed inappropriate may be excluded from a competition at the discretion of the Committee.

5.     There are two categories in each of the four Club competitions: (a) Print, and (b) Digitally Projected Image.  Prints or digital images can be either colour or monochrome. No image may be entered more than once in Club competitions, this also means that an image cannot be re-submitted at a later date, but in a different category.

6.     In each Club competition a member can submit up to a maximum of THREE entries in each category, i.e. three prints and three digital images.  It is entirely a member's choice whether to submit the full complement of six images, or a lesser number, and in whichever category they prefer.

However, the number of entries per member may be varied at the discretion of the Committee to ensure that the total number of images entered for a Club competition is not too large for judging in the time available.  If this is the case then it is only likely to affect one category (i.e. Prints, or Digitally Projected Images).  The Competition Secretary will then contact all those members who have submitted more than one entry in that affected category, requesting them to nominate one of their entries to be withdrawn from that category and not to go forward into the Club competition.

7.     The hand-in dates for entries will normally be two weeks prior to the Club competition - the competition and hand-in dates will be published in the Club Programme.

8.     During the season, each Club competition will be judged by a different external and independent judge.

9.     The judge will award a mark of between 1 and 20 to each entry.  However, the image placed 1st will receive 20, the one placed 2nd will receive 19, and the one placed 3rd will receive 18.  These 1st, 2nd, and 3rd placings are exclusive - that is, there can be only one image that receives a 20, a 19, or an 18.  Whereas the marks below 18 are not exclusive - there could be several entries that receive a 17.

10.  For each member their total marks for all entries, in each separate category, across all four Club competitions will be cumulative and constitute each members’ final score at the end of the season for each category.

11.  Members entering Club competitions do so on the understanding that their entry may be used in any of the Club's approved external competitions, and may also be displayed on the Club website and/or Facebook page, unless the member indicates otherwise at the time of entering.

12.  Whilst every care will be taken when handling prints, the Club cannot be held responsible for loss or damage to members’ entries.

13.  The Club's Rules empower the Committee to change or vary the competition rules and to arbitrate in any disputes. The Committee's decision shall be final in all respects.  Amendments to the rules will be notified at the appropriate time to all members.

Prints

1.     The maximum mount size is 50 cm x 40 cm (or its imperial equivalent, 20in x 16in), but the actual print size may be chosen by the photographer.  Whilst this is not mandatory, the mount size of 50cm x 40cm is also the preferred mount size since smaller sizes can damage other prints in transit, and 50cm x 40cm is also the size required for external competitions.

2.     No mount should be used that can cause damage to another member’s print. All Velcro or any other exposed adhesive which could damage other prints must be removed or covered prior to submission.

3.     In addition to the print a digital version is also required - this is required for DiCentra and only as a record of the print - the digital version must conform to the naming convention for a normal Digital Projected Image. There should be NO information written on the reverse of the print - the author and title will be taken from the digital version.

4.     There must be no identifying mark or title on the FACE of the print or mount.

5.     Framed or glass mounted submissions cannot be accepted.

6. Following each Club competition print submissions will be made available for members to collect.

Digitally Projected Images

1.     Entries should preferably be submitted by data transfer but can instead be submitted on either a CD, DVD, or memory stick which must be clearly marked with the member's name and membership number and will in due course be available for collection by the member.

2.     Images should be submitted in JPEG file format (use 'maximum quality' option if this is available).

3.     For colour consistency, images should preferably be saved using the sRGB colour space.  Images are projected as sRGB files and entries received in other (or no) colour space are converted by the competition software (DiCentra).

4.     Images must be resized so that they are no larger than 1600 pixels wide by 1200 pixels high (including any borders).  Note that the maximum height for an image in portrait format cannot exceed 1200 pixels.  Smaller images are acceptable, but will appear smaller on the screen and the competition software will fill the height or width dimension with a black background to make it the correct proportion.

5.     Files must be carefully named to include the chosen title (max 30 characters), this is followed by an underscore character (_), followed by the photographer's name.

Example filenames:

      Beautiful Whippet_Michael Wells

      Brasenose College_David Reid

      The hills are alive with the s_Cyril Chudley (here the title bit is max 30 characters) 

      Note that the title itself should not include any punctuation characters.

For pre-judging and during the competition itself, the competition software will remove the photographer's name, and the images will be judged and critiqued anonymously.