The society organizes three kinds of competition during the season: championship, set subject and special. The closing dates for entries and the dates of the competitions are as shown in the syllabus.

THE CHAMPIONSHIP COMPETITIONS LEAGUE MEMBERSHIP

In the Championship Competitions there will be two leagues, A and B for both prints and projected images. Membership of these will be decided by the Internal Competition Secretary on the basis of previous performance. The new leagues will be posted at the beginning of each season. Members can request a review by the Classification Sub-Committee. New members can join in the competitions at any time, and their placing will be assessed by the Internal Competition Secretary.

There are four-championship competition evenings each season, each league holds separate print and digital projected image (DPI) competitions on these evenings. There are no set subjects so members are free to choose any subject at will. Within each league marks awarded are totalled in order to decide the winners of the Annual Championship Awards for prints and DPI.

SET SUBJECT COMPETITIONS

There are six set subject competitions as follows:

• Monochrome
• Portrait
• Landscape
• Documentary
• Natural History
• Chosen Subject

For these competitions there is no league structure and all members compete together. In each competition there are separate awards for prints and DPI (but see below for the maximum number of images which may be submitted). Points awarded in these competitions are totaled across the year and the member who achieves the highest total wins the "Best All-Round Photographer”

SPECIAL COMPETITIONS

There are three special competitions:

• Theme panel
• Creative
• Audio Visual

There is no league structure for these competitions and they do not count towards any annual award.

PREPARATION OF ENTRIES

General

The Society welcomes camera-originated images taken on any photographic medium in all of its competitions.

The photographer must personally have taken all images concerned and have the full copyright for all elements within them.

Manipulated images are welcome in competitions, provided the photographer personally carried the manipulation and took the original exposure(s).

Images employing so called Royalty Free and Copyright Free Images are not acceptable.

An individual image may be used once in the Championship Competitions, once in the Theme Panel Competition and once in one of the Set Subject Competitions. An image that is so similar as to be almost identical to one already used is considered to be the same image even if the medium is changed.

 If an image is considered offensive or unsuitable the Internal Competition Secretary may require the photographer to withdraw it. Images should be correctly and clearly titled.

In the Documentary and Natural History competitions titles must be accurate and specific to the subject matter.

Number Of Entries

The maximum number of entries which may be submitted for the competitions is as follows: • Championship: two prints and two DPI • Set subjects: two images (i.e. 2 prints, 2 DPI or 1 print + 1 dpi) • Theme panel: two sets of 3 prints • Creative dpi: two images • Audio Visual: three sequences.

Prints

Prints may be of any size in any photographic medium, but must be mounted on standard card, which may be of any colour. Mounts must not exceed the preferred size of 50cm X 40cm, If a smaller mount is used it must not be less than 38cm on the longest side. Overall thickness must not exceed 4mm. To avoid damage to other prints when packed, adhesive tape, Velcro, or similar materials, must not be exposed on the back of prints and the backing mount, if used, must be the same size as the front window mount.

Projected Images

 DPI should be presented in RGB mode as JPG files; they should preferably have an sRGB colour profile attached. Images in other formats are likely to be rejected automatically by the DiCentra software used and excluded from the competitions. The maximum pixel dimensions that can be accepted are 1400 horizontal and 1050 vertical. If an image is smaller than this the photographer may fill the non-image area with a background of his or her choice to bring the dimensions up to 1400 X 1050 pixels. Failing this DiCentra will add a black background.