For the club monthly competitions each member may submit up to two prints and two digital images. The formats and labelling required for these entries are described below. Sometimes additional images are requested for external competitions. Unless noted otherwise when those requests are sent out, the information below can also be used when submitting those images.

Digital entries whether for the DPI or the Print section are to be submitted to the Competition Secretary via email to intcompsec@bridgendcameraclub.co.uk prior to the notified closing date and time (usually 6pm on the closing date). Prints can be delivered to the Competition Secretary at any club meeting up to and including the closing date.

Competition Codes

A competition code is issued to each member when they join the club. This is in the form of a three-digit number.

All entries to club competitions MUST include the member’s competition code as detailed in the Print and Digital sections below.

Image checker

The notes below describe the requirements for digital image files for club competitions. An "image checker" is available to allow you to independently check your files before submitting them for a competition.

The checker supports files for all internal club competitions - monthly, Mike Stokes Landscape, mono and Three On A Theme. You can find it here.

Prints for Monthly Competitions

Prints must be mounted. The preferred size for mounts is 40cmx50cm. Mounts measuring 16"x20" will also be accepted for internal competitions but note that most external competitions require mounts to be 40cmx50cm.

There is no restriction on the image size within the mount.

Any tape on the rear of the mount should be firmly adhered to the mount to prevent damage to other prints.

The rear of each print must be labelled with:

  1. A title.
  2. The member's three-digit club competition code.
  3. A preference indicator (1 or 2).

See the Total Club Entry section below for more information on the preference indicator.

When a digital version of the print is required it should follow the guidelines for digital image naming with _print added. The title on the digital file should be the same as the title of the print. This gives a filename in the format:

title_code_preference_print.jpg

For example:

My best photo_986_1_print.jpg
A great image_986_2_print.jpg

Digital Images for Monthly Competitions

For all internal club competitions digital images should be sized to a maximum of 1600x1200 pixels. The exception is the "Three on a theme" competition for which images may be sized up to 1920x1200.

A "maximum of 1600x1200 pixels" means that images should be no wider than 1600 pixels and no taller than 1200 pixels but do not have to fit both these dimensions exactly. For example, a 16x9 aspect ratio image would be sized to 1600x900 while 1200x1200 would be used for a square image.

Notes on how to re-size images can be found here.

Images should be saved using the JPEG format with file extension .jpg.

The filename MUST be made up of three pieces of information with an underscore between them:

  1. The image title.
  2. The member's three-digit club competition code.
  3. A preference indicator (1 or 2).

See the Total Club Entry section below for more information on the preference indicator.

This gives a filename in the format:

title_code_preference.jpg

For example, the member whose competition code is 986 has two digital entries with titles “My best photo” and “A great image”. If images have to be removed due to the total quota being exceeded (see Total Club Entry section below), the member wants “My best photo” to be retained so this is given a preference number of 1. The files would be named as follows:

My best photo_986_1.jpg
A great image_986_2.jpg

An underscore must not be used within the title, only to separate the title from the membership number and preference number. Also, please try to avoid using multiple consecutive spaces and leading or trailing spaces anywhere in the filename. Ideally the title should not contain these characters (e.g. use a dash instead of a comma):

. , ! ' [full stop, comma, exclamation, apostrophe]

Finally, please remember to check you have the correct membership number in your filename and that there are no typos and spelling mistakes before submitting the image 🙂.

Image resolution

External competitions sometimes specify a setting for "ppi" (pixels per inch).

For digital images and their projection the pixels per inch setting (sometimes called the resolution) is irrelevant. So there is no requirement that a particular resolution setting be used when preparing images for club competitions.

However, it is sometimes stipulated in external competitions if a printed catalogue is going to be published. In such cases it is usually requested that the image be set to 300ppi. Members may therefore wish to get into the habit of using this value when saving their final images.

Image colour space

External competitions sometimes specify a setting for image colour space.

The colour space defines the way that colours are described within an image. The most common colour spaces in digital photography are sRGB, Adobe RGB and ProPhoto RGB. Projectors usually work in the sRGB colour space so images in a different colour space will be converted during the projection process and may not appear exactly as intended. This is why external competitions nearly always stipulate that images should be in the sRGB colour space.

To retain full control of the way your images will appear on projection it is recommended that you save the image in the sRGB colour space (i.e. that you control the conversion process with your image editting software). Images submitted in other colour spaces will not be modified before being sent to judges or for external competitions. Images projected during a club judging evening will be converted to the sRGB colour space, if required, prior to projection (by the DiCentra scoring software).

Total Club Entry for Monthly Competitions

The total number of print and digital entries from all members will usually not be allowed to exceed 90 in any given month. If more than 90 entries are received, or the judge indicates they are unwiling to accept the total number of entries, the Competition Secretary will need to remove some entries from the total. To allow for this possibility, each print and digital entry MUST include a preference indicator 1 or 2. If it is necessary to remove entries then digital entries marked 2 will be removed first.

Rejection of Prints or Digital Images

The Competition Secretary may refuse to accept prints or digital images that do not meet the criteria specified above.

Prints or digital images received after the advertised submission date may also be rejected.