Section 1 – Overview

The Club holds twelve monthly meetings with judged digital competition on both themed and open category entries. The Club conducts digital competitions year-round with the Photographer of the Year and group high point winners being recognized in a subsequent meeting.

Section 2 – Groups and Categories of Competition

1. Members are divided into two groups according to photographic achievement and skill. Group A consists of members demonstrating advanced photographic skills. Group B consists of novice and serious amateur members. New members choose which group is appropriate. At the end of the year, all members who tie the highest points in Group B will be moved up to Group A.

2. Photographs submitted by members shall consist of no more than one submission in the "Theme Category," and two submissions in the "Open Category." Thus, no more than three submissions total per competition month per member.

Section 3 - General Requirements

1. All competition entries for the Theme Category must have been exposed within one (1) year (honor system). Entries for the Open Category must have been within five (5) years.

2. Any winning entry (including second place, third place, and honorable mention) may not be re-entered for general competition in the club.

3. All processes such as montages, sandwiches, contemporary, panoramic, are eligible.

4. A non-winning entry may be resubmitted for competition 2 additional times.

Section 4 - Technical Requirements

There are guidelines for preparing images for submission.

1. The maximum allowable horizontal (width) dimension shall not exceed 1024 pixels.

2. The maximum allowable vertical (height/tall) dimension shall not exceed 768 pixels

3. All images files shall be in the JPEG format.

4. Images should be saved in the sRGB color space for best projection.

5. The maximum allowable file size shall be less that one (1) megabyte.

Section 5 - Marking of Entries

The following information fields must appear on the JPEG file name (although these fields will be automatically generated by using the digital submission system):

a) Group A or B

b) Category O (Open) or T (Theme)

c) Image Title (keep short)

d) Photographer’s club member number

The four fields (Group-Category-Image Title-Photographer’s number) are connected by a dash (-) and the multiple words of the Image Title are connected by underscores (_).

File name samples will thus appear as:

   A-T-Three_Blind_Mice-136

Where A indicates Group A, T indicates Theme Category, Three_Blind_Mice is the image

title, 136 is the member’s number

   B-O-Beach_Party_Fun-121

Where B indicates Group B, O indicates Open Category, Beach_Party_Fun is the image

title, 121 is the member’s number

Section 6 -Eligibility of Entries

The Vice President of Judging and the Club President shall be the ultimate authority concerning the eligibility of an entry for competition. Entries will be accepted for competition if the contributing member is current in his/her dues, and if the entries are submitted by the deadline for each competition. A member does not need to be present at the competitions.

Section 7 - Judging

At each competition, recognition will be given for First Place, Second Place, Third Place, and Honorable Mention, depending on the numbers of entries in each category.

 1 -  3 Entries 1st

 4 -  5 Entries 1st, 2nd

 6 -  7 Entries 1st, 2nd, 3rd,

 8 - 10 Entries 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 1HM

11 - 14 Entries 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 2HMs

15 + Entries 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 3HMs

Each entry is judged on its own merit or lack thereof. Entries are not judged by comparison. Should there be a tie, the judge, by any criteria he or she chooses, shall rank the pictures in descending order.

Section 8 - Judge Scoring

There is a maximum of 30 points allowed per entry. Judges will use their discretion to award points based upon the merits of technical achievement, impact, and composition.

Section 9 - Annual Awards

Recognition for photographic achievement will be given at year-end for the results of the previous year. These awards will be approved by the Board of Directors and will be determined by competition records maintained for each member's entries for the year.  Awards will acknowledge highest scores for Group A, Group B, and overall Photographer of the Year high score. Summaries will be posted on the web site at various times throughout the year.

The "Photographer of the Year" must be in the second year or more of membership and will be determined by the cumulative points earned for competition entries.