Rules

Lakeshore Camera Club Competitions
Members may enter any or all competitions in any special interest group. A maximum of three images may be entered in any competition. All images entered must have been exposed by the member, though various aspects of the processing may be done by other parties depending on the type of competition. (For further details see below.) Once an image has won an award in any competition, it is no longer eligible for entry in any other competition.

NOVICE OR NON NOVICE

A novice is a photographer who's pictures never placed in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th (honorable mention) rank in any of the Club's competition, for as long as the photographer has been a member of the Club.

All the pictures are submitted in one common pool, and will be judged within a single process by the judges in an anonymous way. However, for each competition, two sets of winning images will be announced: novices and non novices.

RULES PER AREA OF INTEREST

A new set of rules is currently being defined following the changes in the areas of interest and will be posted shortly...

REQUIREMENTS FOR DIGITAL ENTRIES

Submitted images must be in the digital format. The following summarizes specific rules regarding image format, size and naming.

Image Resolution and Size
Please resize your images to fit the maximum display resolution of the projector. All images must be resized to make the largest side 1050 pixels (no wider than 1050 pixels on a landscape format and no higher than 1050 pixels on a portrait format). There is no minimum on the narrowest side.

File Format and Size
Images can be captured in any file format but need to be converted to a jpeg because of file size considerations. A high quality jpeg should not exceed approximately 350 Kb.

File Identification
Please include your last name and image number in the file name. Example: Smith_01.jpg.

Slides are no longer accepted for projected competitions. If you have a slide that you would like to enter into a competition, it will first need to be scanned and submitted through the on-line submission process.

JUDGING AND SCORING

Judging will be done by three judges, and their decisions are final. For the spring and fall competitions two of these judges are normally from outside the club. Judging conditions and standards match those set by CPAC and NAPA closely. Before scoring starts, all the images are shown to the judges so that they may estimate the overall quality of the entries. Scores are not read out so that judges are not aware of how their fellow judges are scoring

Each image will be scored twice out of 100 points. The first score is awarded for the application of image making skills such as: appropriate exposure, focus, sharpness, depth-of-field, and composition. The second score addresses the actual content or value of the image; some may prefer to think of this simply as impact. There are three cases: for theme competitions this score measures how well the judges think that the image interprets the theme; for nature competitions, which may be thought of as special cases of theme competitions, this score measures the nature value of the image, i.e., that which imparts to the viewer information about the subject which is characteristic of the species such as its ecology or life cycle; for the remaining competitions this score measures the pictorial value of the image, i.e., its aesthetic, artistic, or journalistic value; it may also be thought of as visual impact.

Common judging practices
The following are practices in general use for judging photographic competitions.
Regarding the choice of judges:

• there should be an odd number of judges, usually three but sometimes five;
• they should be selected from among photographers who have demonstrated competence in photography, either by having a record of award winning images or prints, or by having images published in a reputable publications; in the case of nature competitions. the judges should also have a reasonable knowledge of nature;
• they may include members of the club holding the competition, members of other clubs, professional photographers, artists, photography teachers and, in the case of nature competitions, naturalists Judges should not have entries in the competition nor be involved in preparing entries for the events;
• titles are displayed only for Nature images;
• at the end of a judging session the judges should be asked for specific comments on the winning slides and on the entries as a whole. If the sliimagesdes are shown to a club at some time other than the judging session a judge should be present to make comments. This judge should not be subjected to rudeness or verbal abuse; neither, of course, should the image maker.

The projector should be placed and aimed as follows:

• the axis of the projector beam should touch the centre of the screen;
• to avoid 'keystoning', the axis of the projector beam should be at most 10 degrees from being perpendicular to the screen;
• the illumination of the screen should give a reading of 1±0.5 second at f16 for ISO 25 film when read with a reflected light meter 12 inches from the screen.

The judges should be placed as follows:

• the distance from them to the screen should be at least ten feet, and at most six times the larger dimension of the image;
• their line-of-sight to the centre of the screen should: be at most 10 degrees above the horizontal plane at their eye level, to avoid neck strain; form an angle with the axis of the projector beam of at most 10 degrees for beaded screens, and at most 30 degrees for other types of screen. Illumination of the screen by stray light in the room should be at most 1% of that provided by the projector. A practical test for this is to place a page of pica type 30 inches from the screen - with the projector lens capped, this page should not be visible. The room should be in darkness for 3 minutes before starting to view, to let the judges' eyes adapt.

AWARDS & TROPHIES

Each special interest group of the Lakeshore Camera Club presents a number of awards during the club year. An award may be given for either a high-scoring single image in some competition, or for an accumulation of scores on all images within a certain category.
The majority of the awards are given at one of two awards ceremonies. The first one is during the last meeting before the Christmas break, usually in December; the second is during the last meeting of the club year, usually in June. An award not usually given at one of the awards ceremonies is the prize of a roll of film for the best image in a theme competition. Instead this is given at the end of the competition itself, at the discretion of the group chair. At least three members must have participated for this award to be given.

Awards for Fall and Spring competitions
In each special interest group, and for each fall and spring competition, the entries with the three highest scores receive the following awards:

• a certificate for first place
• a certificate for second place
• a certificate for third place

The judges will break any ties for these places, by consensus if possible, or by majority if necessary.
Honourable mentions (forth places) may be declared in either of these competitions at the discretion of the group char; tie breaking by judges is not used. Each honourable mention receives a certificate.

The awards for the fall competition are given at the first awards ceremony in December; the awards for the spring competition are given at the second awards ceremony in June.

Trophies
Several trophies are awarded at the last meeting of each club year. Each trophy is awarded to the person with the highest total score of all the images submitted to a particular category. If more than one person has the same total score the trophy will be shared among them.

The trophy structure is currently under revision due to the changes in the groups and will be posted here shortly.

The following structure represents the trophies as they were awarded until June 2011.