1.1     Introduction

The TPS season includes internal club competitions for monochrome prints, colour prints, and projected digital images.

If you are new to club competition arrangements and need some help, do please ask.  These rules and requirements can seem daunting at first, but our competitions are intended to be fun to enter, and help us all to improve our photography, so we want to encourage even our less experienced members to join in.

Each competition event is adjudicated by an external judge, and points (out of 10) are awarded within each category. Some of our competitions (those where scores are accumulated over several rounds through the season) take place in three separate classes. 

The three classes for our multi-round competitions are:

• Club Class – general class open to all members, especially new members at the start of their photographic journey

• Intermediate Class – for members who have won the respective competition in Club Class in a prior year or who have made strong progress beyond the Club Class level and wish to compete with photographers at a similar level

• Advanced Class – for members who have won the respective competition in Intermediate Class in a prior year, or who hold a photographic qualification or distinction such as those awarded by the Royal Photographic Society or the Photographic Alliance of Great Britain, or who have demonstrated a high quality of submissions (possibly at another club) as assessed by the TPS Committee.

In addition, we aim to host several one-off competitions each year which are open to members in all classes.  These are based on specific set themes or subjects.

At the end of each season, competition winners are presented with a trophy which they hold for the following season.

Any winning print or PDI image, and those awarded 9 or more points in any competition may NOT be entered, in any format, in any other internal competition. The exceptions being they may be entered in the Alex Braid Competitions, Shirley Daniel Shield & Ursula Spicer Trophy.

The society also competes in friendly, external competitions with other local clubs and in the Surrey Photographic Association’s Inter-Club Competitions. For additional details or to find out how to get involved, please contact the External Competition Secretary.

1.2     Copyright and liability conditions

The copyright of all entries and submitted work, including full control of use, shall remain with the member.  

All images contributing to the final image must be the work of the member - clip art and other imagery derived from a commercial source is unacceptable, even if free of copyright, except when used in the creation of an entry in the Tandridge Creative Competition.

Tandridge Photographic Society accepts no liability for any breach of this rule by a member.

TPS reserves the right to reproduce, without payment, any image accepted for a competition or exhibition for publicity and promotion purposes, including use on TPS’s web site and social media sites.

TPS will take all reasonable care to protect competition and exhibition entries whilst they are in our possession.  However, the Society will not accept liability for the misappropriation, loss or misuse of exhibition or competition entries.

1.3     Competition submission guidelines

While we may invite up to two photographs to be submitted by each member for each competition round, many of our competitions are now limited to one entry per round to keep the number of entries manageable.  More specific rules on entry numbers can be found in this document in the rules for each competition.

Where two entries are permitted, should competition entries reach an unmanageable number, the competition organisers reserve the right (after the closing date for each competition) to accept only one of the two entries made by each TPS member in PhotoEntry.

Should numbers of entries have to be cut, members will be informed by e-mail very soon after the closing date (and as soon as possible before the competition evening). To this end, please ensure that your favoured entry is always loaded as your No 1 in PhotoEntry; entry No 2 is the one that may be discounted. Obviously, any discounted entry can be used in a future competition.

The Internal Competition Secretary is responsible for running the competition events, monitoring the submission criteria, and recording and maintaining the scoresheets. In addition, where PDI’s are involved, he/she manages the PhotoEntry submission system and operates the display and scoring software during the competition.

The Committee reserves the right to vary the rules and guidance for any competition, either temporarily or permanently, where circumstances make this necessary.

1.3.1    Projected Digital Images (PDIs)

TPS runs several competitions for Projected Digital Images (PDIs) which are images submitted as digital files for display on a projection screen using a computer and digital projector. Digital images can come from digital cameras, but also scans of slides, negatives or prints are acceptable. The guidelines below should be followed when preparing your images for submission.

All image files should be in JPEG (.jpg) format – this format is supported by all major imaging software applications, on all platforms (e.g. PC, Mac, Linux). Note the file extension must be .jpg, NOT .jpeg.

Image files must fit a1600×1200 pixel canvas – i.e. they should be a maximum of either 1600 pixels wide and/or 1200 pixels high. Since images produced by a digital camera, or a scanner will typically be much larger than this, members must produce a copy of the original file, resampled to the appropriate size, depending on the aspect ratio of the image, and saved as a jpg.  All image editing software packages will have options to perform this conversion. 

Our projector assumes that images are in the sRGB colour space. Ideally, if you use a different colour space for working, such as AdobeRGB, your images will project closer to your expectations if you convert them to sRGB during the resampling process. Do not worry if you don’t understand colour management – most images will not be affected significantly by this, so ignore it if you’re not sure. The PhotoEntry site will confirm if you have used the correct colour space and can convert it to sRGB is required.

If you are unsure about how to set file format, colour space and image size, please ask a member of the Committee for guidance.  Once you have your images correctly resized and named, you should login to the PhotoEntry system to upload your images. Guidance on how to do this is included at the end of this document.

The deadline for uploading images for all competitions is midnight on the Sunday prior to the competition to allow time for the files to be processed, and the running order generated. Late entries will not be accepted. If you are entering a print competition, please do not bring late images to the club.

1.3.2    Prints

For print competitions, we also require a PDI version of the printed image to be submitted to PhotoEntry, using the same specification and process as described above.

Members should then bring their prints to the club on the night of the competition (at least 15 minutes before the published start time). If you cannot attend in person please leave prints with the Competitions Secretary or Club Secretary at an earlier date, or pass them to another TPS member to bring along on the competition night. Prints cannot be accepted unless the required digital entry has been uploaded to PhotoEntry by the Sunday deadline.

There are no size specifications for prints but they should be comfortably visible for the judge to assess at arm’s length. Choose a print size that shows your photograph in the best way, keeping in mind the mounting guidance that follows.

Prints will be judged by placing them, standing free, on our custom print display stand. For this reason, you should mount each print to rigid board, to allow it to stand under its own weight.

Prints are most commonly mounted onto mountboard, with a bevelled reveal cut into the board, but this is not a requirement. You might also consider gluing your print directly to a piece of card or foam board.

While the size and colour of mounting are purely cosmetic considerations, the standard finished size we recommend is 40x50cm. This is also a requirement for prints entered into external competitions so we strongly recommend the use of this standard size.  Whatever form of mounting you choose, the final print including mount must not exceed 50×50cm, or it will not fit on our print display stand!

If you are unsure about how to mount and present a print, please ask a member of the Committee for guidance. 

Prints must always be labelled on the back with the Name of the member, and the Title of the image clearly and legibly written – ideally use a large label, positioned to make clear the orientation of the image. Please bear in mind that during the competition, the title of your print will be read out so it needs to be large and clear to avoid errors! The official club labels can be printed at home using this PDF Label file. This can be printed onto plain A4 paper and cut and glued, or onto a standard A4 page of adhesive labels – the labels are 8 per page at 99.1mm x 67.7mm. The Avery codes for suitable labels are: J8165 and L7165.

Don’t forget: when entering prints for any competition (except Print Panels in the Alec Braid), it is now a mandatory requirement to upload a PDI of the printed image(s) to the PhotoEntry system – this enable the advance production of the scoresheet, and reduces the admin time required on the night. Your .jpg files uploaded to PhotoEntry should be formatted exactly as for the PDI competitions, as described above, and submitted by the normal deadline of Sunday night before the Competition.