Competitions: Season 2023-24

Changes made ad hoc during the 2022-23 season have been consolidated into this year’s competition rules and we have added an extra PDI Competition Evening. Below, you will find guidance to entering all the competitions this year.

Projected Digital Images (PDI) Open & PDI Annual Competition Evenings

There will be three PDI evenings this season: two ‘Open’ & one ‘Annual’.

• For each one every member is allowed three entries.
• Monochrome and colour images are judged together.
• You may have any mixture of monochrome or colour up to a total of three.
• There are no entry forms!

PDI Image Size

We have adopted the PAGE approved format of maximum dimensions of 1600 pixels by 1200 pixels. This should be obvious for landscape oriented images but it forces vertical (portrait) images into having a longest, vertical side of 1200 pixels, so an example would be 1000 pixels horizontal by 1200 pixels vertical.

Submitting your entry

Your entry is made by sending your images to the receiving email address of enen11four@btinternet.com. Your images should be transported as email attachments or, for ‘Mac’ users, embedded in the email. You may use ‘Dropbox‘ or ‘We Transfer' if you wish.

Your entries should be entitled with your name and a title in the format: “TITLE by Author” (no quotes, hyphens or underscores). Your entry will usually be acknowledged within 48 hours or less.

Unless special instructions are given earlier the deadline is always midnight on the Friday evening before the competition date! The gap between the deadline and the competition is to allow time for the author part of the title to be stripped away for projection & a spreadsheet & folders to be made up for the evening.

Image sequence on the night

Images are projected to the judge in the alphabetical order of their titles.

‘Open’ Print Competitions (Not the Annuals) Evenings

• For these competitions there is an entry form which can be downloaded here. Print 2 forms to an A4 sheet.
• You can have three entries, however as the monochrome and the colour are judged separately, your choice must be all one category or a 2:1 split if you are making three entries.
• There is no limit on the sizes of your prints but they should be mounted. Mounts should have maximum dimensions of 500mm by 400mm but can be smaller.
• Provide a digital image of your entry (see below).

Ideally you should hand in your mounted prints, with the entry form, to Roger Solesbury on the Monday evening the week before the competition judging date.

If you cannot manage this hand-in date, just hand in the entry form to Roger. Then ensure that you deliver your mounted prints to the Lecture Theatre early on the judging evening, before 7:15 pm.

The competition on the night

The entry forms are used to create the two spreadsheets for the judging evening. We project an image of your print onto the screen alongside the print stand during these competitions to give the audience a better view. So, it is part of the print entry that you supply an image to the enen11four@btinternet.com email address for this purpose. The dimensions of this image is as the PDI entries at 1600 x 1200 pixels maximums and the image should have the same title as your print plus your name.

‘Annual’ Print Competition Evenings

For the ‘Annual’ Print Competitions, you have two entries into the monochrome and two entries into the colour sections. You cannot do four into one or a 3:1 split. There is room on the print entry form for you to do the two and two entry. Otherwise, the evening is run in the same way as the ‘Open Print’ evenings with the same hand-in rules and the accompanying PDI images.

Themed’ Print Competition Evenings

These evenings are usually held to respect a deceased member & there is also usually a trophy of some format for the winner. There can be more than one of these ‘Set-Subject’ competitions in the same evening. For each evening you are allowed three prints & you can split them between themes as you wish. Again, the entry form & hand-in date is the Monday before the competition evening. Again, an accompanying PDI image should be sent for each print. These are due by midnight on the Friday night preceding the competition.

Entries

An image can be entered into Open PDI Competitions, Open & Annual Print Competitions & Themed Print Competitions as many times as you wish! It becomes ineligible once it has achieved a First, a Second or a Third place in any club competition. Once achieved the image cannot be entered again: as it is or if altered in some way. The exception is that you can enter an ineligible print or PDI into the relevant Annual Competition later in the same season as it gained its award.

Please ensure that your entries are consistently named. Especially between prints and their accompanying PDI.

Refusing Entry

If the entry date & time are missed, it might still be possible to enter your image/print but, please, understand that this causes extra work & takes extra time which sometimes makes it is impossible for the smooth organisation of the competition.

If your sizing is wrong, Chris will try to correct it but it sometimes is not possible if it needs correction which sizes it upwards. Often your entry will be returned to you for you to make the correction & resubmit.

Late prints cause a lot of problems with hanging so ensure you make the effort to be early on the competition night & stay on good terms with Andy!

Contacting Chris

The enen11four@btinternet.com email address is monitored each day in the week before the competition. However, outside these times it is only monitored weekly. If you wish assistance or information on competitions Chris is available daily at his highmount@btinternet.com address.