Special thanks to Margaret Kebble and Roberta Edwards for organising the 2021 competition year on the website. I have just put up my January entries as usual.
Note that the new creative category is now also available for anyone interested in this type of photography.
Aggregate Competition
Our club runs several image competitions each year. The Aggregate Competition is held monthly on the second Tuesday of each month at our Club Meeting. Here submitted prints and projected digital images from our members are commented on and scored by a judge. Images are awarded:
| Awards | Aggregate Points |
| Honour | 6 |
| Merit | 4 |
| Highly Commended | 3 |
| Commended | 2 |
| Out of Category | 0 |
As part of the Society’s Aggregate Competition, members are divided into B Grade, A Grade and Salon Grade:
- B Grade is for those members who wish their entries to be judged and scored. Points are accumulated towards an Aggregate score.
- A Grade is for those members who have achieved a higher standard of photography. Their images are also judged and scored, with points accumulated towards an Aggregate score. To be eligible for consideration for re-grading to “A” grade, a “B” grade member must receive a certain percentage of competition points in one competition year. Currently this is 55%
Members eligible for re-grading are advised prior to December, the start of the new competition year. The management committee makes the final decision on re-grading.
- Salon Grade is for those members who have attained the highest possible standard of photography within our club – an A Grade member must attain 60% of competition points in a competition year to move to Salon Grade.
At the end of the Competition year (December), awards are made to those members with the most points in the various categories for each Salon, A and B Grade. Members may enter images in the ‘Set’, ‘Open”, ‘Creative” and/or ‘Field Day’ subject categories in any or all of the following formats:
- Prints (all grades – colour or monochrome)
- Projected images (all grades – colour or monochrome
The definitions for each section category are:
- Open subject: photograph can be an image of anything
- Set subject: the topic and definition is specified in the TPS Calendar on our website.
- Creative subject:
Creative Photography
Definition: Creative photography is the altering of reality
Explanation and Guidelines:
It is an extension of conventional photography into creative art, and its purpose is to take the image beyond the literal through the use of imaginative skill or originality of thought.
There should be a significant photographic content, and inclusion of mixed media of any kind (paint, transfer, digital etc) is welcome. It can be a collage or a montage. The final result must be all the photographer’s own work. This includes any tools used to alter the image that are not native to the software used, such as
- Extra brushes that add photographic elements such as snowflakes, raindrops, leaves etc
- Replacement pre-sets such as skies, sunsets, scenery
- Expansion packs
If you use image manipulation software you can
- Combine two images then experiment with different blending modes and opacity
- Experiment with the inbuilt tools such as colour replacement, invert, free transform, perspective warp, puppet warp, liquefy
- Create your own backgrounds by photographing interesting textures, skies, sunsets and scenery
If you are not using image manipulation software there are many other ways of being creative, such as
- Using in camera effects such as zoom pull, multiple exposures, intentional camera movement
- Cutting and pasting of printed images to make collages and montages
- Painting on prints or hand colouring
- Field Day: any outing, activity, function or event listed by TPS as an opportunity for members or members to take images and enter them in this category.
Only THREE entries can be entered in any monthly competition. The images can be shared amongst any of the categories / formats or they may all be entered in one category / format. Any one image may only be ever entered FOUR times in one year by choosing 4 of the 5 possibilities – either in ‘Open’ subject, in ‘Set’ subject, in ‘Field Day’, in ‘Creative’ or in the End of Year competition.
Note: Where images have content that may be regarded as disturbing or offensive to the majority of our membership or the public in general, TPS may exercise its right to not display such images.
Alice Black Memorial Trophy
To perpetuate the memory of our late member Alice Black, the club has introduced the ‘Alice Black Memorial Trophy’ to be contested each year on a perpetual basis.
At each month’s Aggregate Competition the judge will select an image from the highest level awards of those entered as the monthly Alice Black Image – they will use their own criteria to select the image. Where Honour awards have been given for a competition, the Alice Black will be an Honour winning image, or if no Honour awards have been given, the next highest level of award (Merit, etc).
All images submitted in the Aggregate Competition have the potential to become a possible winner of the Trophy as there is no restriction on the grade of the entrant or the medium in which the image is presented. The Alice Black image chosen each month receives an additional 2 points to the points already awarded.
As part of the “End of the Year” competition, the judge will choose the winning image from the eleven images chosen by the monthly judges. There are no points awarded for the overall winner, in common with other EOY awards.
