The VBPC Online Competition provides an alternative means for members that are hesitant to bring actual prints to the membership meetings to still compete against other members of the VBPC. It also allows all members the opportunity to vote on their favorite photos. This competition is not considered to be "a part of" the VBPC, in that there will be no actual ribbons handed out, there will be no recognition at the membership meetings, and there will be no recognition at the annual banquet. This competition is just for fun!
Organization
Once a month there will be a competition with a theme to be announced. Members that wish to participate may upload photos that they wish to enter in one or more of the following categories: Color, Black and White, and Alternative. Following the uploading period, there will be a period of time where all members will be permitted to vote on their favorite photos. The winning photos will be determined using a scoring system describe below and annual totals will be maintained.
The uploading window will open each month on the Wednesday that is just under two weeks prior to the monthly membership meeting and will stay open until the following Tuesday (this is the Tuesday exactly one week prior to the membership meeting). The times that the windows open and close each month may vary. The Voting window will then open the next day, Wednesday, and will stay open until Sunday night before the membership meeting.
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The competition is open to all members in good standing, and you do not have to submit a photo in order to vote. The software assigns a random filename to uploaded photos and deletes the photos that were uploaded each month.
The competition will adapt the same regulation with respect to acceptability of photos into each category as the regular membership competition and are repeated here for convenience:
* Hand-colored prints will be accepted in the Color Print Category only.
* Sepia toned prints will be accepted in the B&W category.
* The following digital dark room techniques may be utilized: dodging, burning, cropping, straightening, key stoning correction, levels, curves, contrast, sharpening, and color adjustments to the photograph as a whole.
* The following digital dark room techniques are not allowed in this section, but are allowed in the Alternate Print section: adding or deleting any items in the displayed portion of the photograph; enhancing, blurring, color adjusting, etc. any item or portion of the photograph; masking; or sandwiching photographs.
* B&W digital photographs must be devoid of any additional colors. Some digital dark room techniques that convert a color picture to black and white often leave traces of other colors in the photograph. Purple, red, and blue hues are sometimes seen in the black portions of converted photographs. It is important to remove all traces of additional colors.
If you have questions about any other digital dark room techniques please address your queries to the online competition committee.
Additionally, it is on your (the submitter's) honor that the photos used in this competition have not been previously entered in any regular club competitions, nor should it ever be entered in any.
Uploading
Each month when the uploading window opens, you may upload a jpg image into each category (color, B&W, Alternative). You may also give your image a title. You may then review your uploaded image, and may even upload a different image in it's place if you change your mind. Once the uploading window closes, all votes are locked in and cannot be changed.
Voting
When the voting window opens, you will be presented with a page with thumbnails of all of the submitted images for that competition. At the top of the page, you may enter in up to three choices for your selections for the best photos in each category. It is important to note that every vote is a vote for first place. You are not voting "for" second place or third place, although it is very often phrased that way (even here in these rules). You do not have to enter in three choices, but you do have to enter the choices starting with 1st and may not skip any places. Also note that you MAY vote for your own photo.
Scoring
There is no such thing as a completely fair voting system (all you have to do is look at our own national voting system to see that). A lot of thought has gone into the system that we use, and as such, all votes received for each photo will be displayed when the voting is over (it's a great topic for discussion in the forums). That being said, each photo will receive six points for each "first place vote" (in quotes because of the language limitation--see the paragraph above on voting), three points for each second place vote, and two points for each third place vote. Ties will be broken by utilization of a weighted score formula that takes into account the percentage of votes received overall in that category for that photo. Specifically:
weight = num votes received photo / num votes received category * original score
Monthly Competition Topics
TBD