Competitions

Competitions are a great way to improve your photography skills - you get valuable feedback from fellow club members and external judges, all of which can help hone your skills and improve your photography.

Competitions are just one of a number of events and activities that the club runs to help members improve their photography by providing critique and feedback - others include:

You are the Judge (YATJ)
Thee Image Appreciation Circle (IAC)
Critique Evenings, etc

Competitions are open to fully paid up Club Members only. The main benefit to people submitting their photos is to obtain an independent appraisal of their work and learn how to improve their photography. As such, a ‘competition’ does not need to be entered for competitive reasons: you can enter simply to obtain some useful feedback about your work. Photos are assessed by an external judge recommended by the Chiltern Association of Camera Clubs (CACC). Judges will be experienced photographers who have received specific training, organised by the CACC, to ensure that common criteria are used.

Over the years there has been a move to shift away from the more traditional approach of critically appraising photographs from a purely technical perspective, to one where they are evaluated more about impact and the story they tell, and judges are aiming to provide constructive feedback to help people improve their photographs.

These two short articles should help you understand the judging process better.

The club runs a number of internal competitions and participates in several external competitions:

Internal competitions

This season there will be the following internal competitions, as laid out in the program of events:

2 x No Set Subject (NSS) competitions
2 x Set Subject competitions (Reflections & Decay)
One annual Architecture / Travel & Portfolio competition
- Architecture this year - single print only
- The Portfolio is a single DPI comprising 4 images
One End of Year competition
- The only competition when you can resubmit an image, so it's a "best of" the year event

For the NSS competitions, you can enter any photograph on any theme you wish.

There are three classes in each competition:

Colour Prints
Monochrome Prints
Digital Projected Images (DPI)

You can submit a maximum of two entries for each of the three classes, up to a maximum of 5 entries in total.

Judges will award a score for each picture typically up to a maximum of 20. scores will accumulate throughout the season and count towards some of the end of season prizes.

DPIs

Digital images are more formally known as "Digital Projected Images" (DPIs). DPI files submitted must conform to the following:

Format: JPEG (JPEG 1 / ISO/IEC 10918)
Maximum file size: 5MB
Image ratio: Any
Image resolution: Any

The recommend image ratio is 16:9

The name of the file must be submitted in the following syntax: <your name>_<photo title>.jpg

e.g. John Smith_Reflections.jpg

Your DPI image must be emailed to: wpc.competitions@gmail.com by midnight on the Sunday preceding the competition. No late entries will be allowed unless by prior agreement.

Prints

Prints for competition submission must be mounted onto stiff card with a maximum dimension of 50cm x 40cm. The club is recommending that all prints be that resolution as it has very much become a standard amongst photographers.

You can buy mounts that are already pre-cut within aperture window, or by cutting your own aperture, then attaching the image using framing tape. Please refer to the Print Mounting Guide for information on how to do this. Or you can fix the image directly to the front of the card using glue or double-sided tape.

Your name and the title of the print must be shown clearly in the top left-hand corner on the back of the mount.

Prints must be brought to the club on the Thursday one week prior to the competition night. No late entries will be allowed unless by prior arrangement.

Submitting your pictures to the Image Bank

If you submit a print for any competition, and the print does well, then the club would like to have a digital copy of that print so they can add it to the image bank. Once in the image bank, with the owners permission, it can be displayed on the website and used in external competitions.

So, following a competition, any print that is awarded 20, 19 or 18, a digital version should be sent to the image bank email account: wpcimagebank@gmail.com using the following filename format:

Colour

Mono

E.g.

John Smith_Reflections-HC-CP-NSS1-2025

The resolution and size must match those for DPI entries.

These images, together with the DPI's with similar scores, form the pool from which images are chosen for external competitions with other local clubs.

Should any member not desire that their image be used in external competitions, they must advise the Committee when it is sent to the Image Bank.

The Use of AI in Competitions

AI is becoming common in photo editing software. For the purpose of our competition rules, the use of AI has been broken down into two distinct categories:

1) Editing tools that use AI/machine learning technologies to edit and transform photos.

The use of software for editing images, such as cloning, compositing, sky replacement, blurring, etc. are accepted forms of image post-processing, as these are methods that were originally used in the darkroom. The introduction of AI/machine learning-assisted editing tools is an extension of these techniques; therefore, the use of these tools will be permitted to edit and post-process competition images. It must be noted that this does not supersede the requirement that ALL assets used within an image should be the author’s own work and that all assets used in an image must have been captured by optical means by the author.

2) Software that creates computer-generated images or partial images from scratch.

The use of AI to create computer-generated image, often referred to as Generative AI, is not permitted. Images entered into club competition must be the author’s own work, created solely using assets captured by optical means, and the copyright is owned by the author.

The committee has the right to request a digital copy of an image, complete with the associated Metadata, before accepting an image for inclusion within a competition.

Ownership and Copyright

All elements of the work submitted for competitions or exhibitions must be the work of the Author. All assets used in an image must have been captured by optical means by the author, and the copyright of all elements of a picture must be owned by the Author. For the avoidance of doubt, use of images from any other source, including, but not limited to, websites, royalty-free image banks and clipart, are not permitted. By entry of an image for a competition, members are deemed to grant a licence to WPC to use the image on the website, social media and other forms of publicity relating to the club.

External competitions

The club participates in the following external competitions :

Chiltern Challenge
Intimate Landscapes
VIPC (with a Spanish club)