Competition information for our 2008 Exhibition
Our Annual Exhibition will run from Wednesday 13th February to Friday 15th February, 2008. On Friday evening we will have musical entertainment. All the activities take place in the Poynton Civic Hall, surrounded by more than 140 prints from members of the society. Here are details of the competitions (now known as the "North Cheshire Challenges") held on the Wednesday and Thursday.
Inter-Club Digital Print Competition
For the Alan Adshead Trophy, on Wednesday 13th February 2008 at 20:00.
Judge: Keith Suddaby FRPS MPAGB EFIAP ABPE.
Our Digital Print Competition took place for the first time in 1999 and is now a regular part of our Exhibition with more than 20 Clubs entering from as far away as Dumfries and Sheffield.
(A "digital print" is simply any print that used a digital image anywhere in its production, in contrast to a wet-darkroom print from out-of-the-camera film. When this competition began in 1999, such prints were unusual. Now they are mainstream, but we retain the original title for continuity!)
Competing clubs must enter 5 digital prints from 5 workers. Images must be different from those in the Digital Image Knockout Competition (below), and from any prints or slides entered in competitions in our previous Annual Exhibitions.
Prints must be mounted on boards no greater than 20 inches by 16 inches. There is a single "open" category, colour and monochrome are both welcome, and there are no restrictions on print size (or shape) other than the board size.
Prints must be delivered to the venue before 19:30 on the evening of the competition.
Inter-Club Digital Image Knockout Competition
For the North Cheshire Challenge Trophy, on Thursday 14th February 2008 at 20:00.
Judge: Jack Bamford DPAGB APAGB AFIAP.
Our Digital Image Knockout Competition is new this year. It replaces the Slide Knockout Competition that we operated continuously since 1984 which regularly attracted an entry of 20-25 clubs from the L&CPU and beyond. Recently, the only way we could maintain a high quality entry was to allow slides to be provided by just 3 workers. Furthermore, a significant proportion of slides in the last year or two were digitally-mastered. These well-recognised trends have eroded our original aims of a club-oriented slide competition. It is time to move on!
We have invested in a state-of-the-art 1400x1050 (SXGA+) resolution projector (Canon XEED SX60), and will be using this in combination with unique software which tracks progress during the competition and prints results at the end of the evening. We expect our new competition to be at least as popular as the one it replaces.
Competing clubs must enter 5 digital images from 5 workers. Images must be different from those in the Digital Print Competition (above), and from any prints or slides entered in competitions in our previous Annual Exhibitions.
File format:
Each image must be a JPEG, exactly 1400 pixels wide and 1050 pixels high, and if the picture itself is smaller than 1400x1050 pixels, the remaining area must be a chosen background, for example black. It should be converted (if necessary) to sRGB colour space, and ideally the colour profile should be embedded.
(Parameters such as "DPI" or "PPI" will be ignored).
File names:
The filenames should be "clubname01.jpg" (and "...02..." to "...05..."). "clubname" should have no spaces, but otherwise all that matters is that it is unique within the UK. (For example, NCPS01.jpg).
(Details of the method of submission will be supplied in late January or early February. We expect to accept at least CDs/DVDs. We hope to make available test-images that we believe project well. Our experience so far with this projector is that it is "revealing", showing good work well, but rather unforgiving of poorly-prepared images. It is best not to exaggerate contrast, saturation, or sharpness, in the way that is sometimes done for prints).