Photography News issue 17

Competitions

25

This salon is unique in the fact that it is the first ever salon to have an international triptych section. Why have you decided to include it? It offers an added opportunity for creativity. The triptych category allows one to be creative without necessarily resorting to highly manipulated and composite images. Triptychs allow photographers to tell a story and that creativity expands the scope for understanding the relationships between traditional single images and compositions. We know they are enjoyable and stimulating from our experience of running other triptych competitions. Your judges are all very well decorated with photographic awards and titles. Is that what is most important when selecting judges? Their qualifications are evidence of their suitability to judge at an international level. Our particular group of judges has specialist expertise in the sections they will judge and their frequent participation in salon events means they bring consistency to the process. You need to know a judge’s work and specialty so having that familiarity is important. How will the whole judging process work? The key to the successful administration of a salon is the entry and reporting process. We are using the user-friendly K-Salon software from www. kenebec.com. It includes facilities for building your own online data-entry system, collecting and checking submissions, scoring the images and producing an online gallery of acceptances for uploading to your web space. It also includes facilities for emailing the report cards back to the entrants. The judging process is run and controlled by the K-Salon software programme. An entrant’s images are distributed randomly within a category for judging. Each category is judged in turn, with three judges simultaneously viewing each image projected on a screen using a calibrated projector in a dark room. Each judge uses a keypad to score the image with a number from two to five and the K-Salon programme controlling the process automatically logs the total score for each image. On completing each category the judges select award winners from the high-scoring images. After all categories have been judged, a threshold score is agreed for images accepted in the salon: for example, images with a score of 11 and above. We have chosen as eclectic a range of categories as we can, to give photographers maximum opportunity for acceptance and winning prizes. If you are passionate about your photography we urge you to enter and we are open to all genres, from landscape to fine art. It is unfortunate that there is an increasing trend for photographs to be unacceptably manipulated, specifically images entered in Nature sections, where strict rules exist relating to what post-production alterations are allowed. These alterations are often difficult to detect and take up time for verification, acceptance or disqualification. So we decided not to include a true Nature section but rather to invite all wildlife and nature photographers to enter one of our other sections. Can you tell us about the categories you’ve chosen and why you settled on those?

and originality. The other issues the judges will then consider are strength of composition, control of focus, colour balance, use of light, effective crop, absence of distractions and presentation. Where will the public be able to see the accepted images? A public showing of all the accepted images will be held soon after the results are announced, at a venue and time to be decided. All awarded and accepted entries will be shown in an online gallery on our website. The exhibition is open internationally. Do you have any ambitions in that respect? We would like to reach as large an international audience as possible, as that gives entrants the chance to compete against the very best worldwide. It also exposes judges to a wider range of cultures, interests and styles. There are a whopping 75 medals up for grabs. Is it exceptional to have this amount of awards? We decided to offer a wide range of awards to open the opportunity for as many as possible to taste

Entries into the salon will be accepted until 1 March 2015, so time to get your skates on if you fancy your chances. There are five sections to choose from: Open Colour, Open Monochrome, Open Creative, Travel and a Triptych section. To enter just one section, it’ll cost £10, for two the charge is £12, for three it’s £14 and for four sections it’ll cost just £16. If you’re already planning on entering a section, you can submit a panel of three images into the Triptych section for free. Award winners will be notified at the end of March and the accepted images will be available to view on the salon’s website in May, with public exhibitions to follow in June or July. Getyourentryin! Our primary aim is to establish a first-class competition for photographers, evidenced by the quality and diversity of their submissions. Our salon is organised through the Avon Valley Photographic Society, which is a learning society whose members are committed to the improvement of their photography through a system of mentoring and mutual support. The salon is an important first step: it signifies the commitment of our society to photographic excellence in any genre, so we hope for a substantial entry for all who support our ambition. π To find out more, go to www.avonvalley. photography/salon.html What do you hope to achieve with the first ever Avon Valley salon? success. Acceptances gain credit, of course, for FIAP and PSA qualifications. Even if entrants aren’t aiming for an FIAP or a PSA recognition, winning an RPS medal or ribbon is a real achievement in an international salon and something we know photographers really cherish. Do you have any advice to give to people thinking of entering? Take every opportunity to take images of the subjects you feel most passionate about. Ask others for feedback on your images and get a variety of views. Be brave and enter.

IMAGES Both shots are taken from ‘Jokulsa’, another of Andy Beel’s triptychs.

What is it about an image that gets it accepted? Three criteria are very important: impact, narrative

www.absolutephoto.com

Issue 17 | Photography News

Powered by