Any club member whose dues are paid up for the current club year (September to May) may enter photographs into one of our competitions. Want to check out what a competition looks like? Our meetings are open to the public so you can check out a competition for yourself! Check out our calendar to find out when our next competition is.

We hold SEVEN competitions each club season on the 3rd Thursday of the month. Photos are entered by uploading images to an online photo contest manager. Judging is done on Zoom by qualified club members two days prior to the image commentary night. Check the calendar for details. In December we host a Christmas party on the first Thursday in December and have no second meeting or competition that month. The meeting and competition schedule will return to normal in January.

1. Photos must be taken by the member. If the member can't attend, his or her photos may be submitted by another member.2. Competition Topics: Photos for each competition will be entered in one of four categories: 2.1 Color Open or an assigned topic - Open is any subject matter in good taste. Three competitions per year will have assigned color topics. Digital manipulation and optimization are allowed. 2.2 Monochrome/Black & White Open - Any subject matter in good taste. Digital manipulation and optimization are allowed. 2.3 Color Nature - Any subject in the natural world. Images submitted for nature must NOT show anything manmade. Digital manipulation is not allowed. Digital optimization is OK as long as it looks natural. 2.4 Commentary only - Images submitted for commentary only will not be judged or scored. They can be either color or B&W and can be of any subject matter. Check the calendar for this years subjects.3. Photos of pictures (paintings, lithographs, photographs, etc.) that represent the entire or predominant subject of the composition are not eligible .4. Entrants are encouraged to submit photographs taken recently (within the past two years), but since great images are truly timeless, any period is OK.5. Photographs may not be entered for intraclub competition more than once. Different compositions of the exact same subject are discouraged, but not expressly forbidden.6. No text, title, photographer's name, or information of any sort may be added to the front of an image. Images containing a sign or carving that are part of the actual subject, not added by the photographer, are the only exception.Members can find full competition details in the Member's Area.

Check the club calendar for topic information.

All images submitted must have the following properties: Color space set to SRGB, not Adobe RGB. If you shot the photo in Adobe RGB, you should convert it to SRGB. This applies to both color and B&W images. Size set to 1920 pixels on the long side. All photos submitted must be in JPEG format (.jpg file extension). You should save them at a high quality level of 8 or 9. The file name can be anything you want. However, it is suggested that you include your first and last names and the image title in the file name. Do not use any punctuation marks, other than dashes (-) or under scores (_) in the file name. Members can find tutorials on how to size an image in the Member's Area of the website.

Enter your photo information and images no later than midnight on the Monday night before the competition. We use a third party program, Photo Contest Pro (PCP,) for all photo entry, presentation and judging. Click here to access the program. Only current members will be able to log into this software. Members can find instructions on the Member's Area of the website.

1. All members may participate as judges once they have completed a short course in “How To Score” given by the recording secretary or another of the senior members. The Tuesday before the meeting photos are judged on zoom. 2. Judging will be based on the Kodak method of assigning a score from 3 through 9. The idea of this method is to score 1 to 3 points for impact, 1 to 3 points for composition and 1 to 3 points for technical aspects. The score for a “good” or “average” image would be 6. 3. Bear in mind, also, the emphasis of the photo to fit the assigned topic of the month. If the photo is judged to not fit the assigned topic, it will be given a score of DNQ (Does Not Qualify), but may be entered in another competition at a later date. 5. Scores will be recorded for each competition. The winners of the entire competition season will be determined from the cumulative totals of these monthly scores. Overall winners for the year will be awarded ribbons in these individual categories: color, black and white, highest scoring photo of the year, most im­proved, and photographer of the year. 6. At the scheduled Thursday meeting the images will be shown and critiqued. Critiquing photos in our club is designed to be positive. Sharing with what works in the photo with ideas for improvement. Example 'Straightening the horizon might give more balance. Members can find more details on judging in the Member's Area of the website.

You will need to upload your images to Photo Contest Pro by the Monday before the competition the following Thursday. The following link should get you to the website: http://www.photocontestpro.com/Default.aspx.aspx What follows are the instructions for uploading images for the competition for members entering for the first time: 1. Click Log In in the upper right corner of the window. 2. Click on the “Forgot your password?” link below the Login button. 3. Fill in your email address and select Eastern Maine Camera Club from the Organization drop-down list. Click “Proceed.” The website will send you an email with your password to login with on the login page. After you login, you can change your password if you wish. The next time, you can just login normally. 4. Submit photos. After logging into the website, click on the “Submit Pictures” link. You will then see a page with two choices: (I recommend method 2, to keep it simple.) a. Submit Pictures Method 1 – Takes you to a page where you can download and install a small program that allows you to upload your photos without logging in to the website. This is only available to Windows computer users. This is the program author’s recommended method, but frankly, the only benefit I see to it is that you can drag and drop your photos into it for upload, rather than browsing to the files on your computer to select them for upload. b. Submit Pictures Method 2 – Takes you to a page on the website where you can upload your pictures directly to it. This works very similarly to what we were all used to with uploading photos on our website with Kevin’s program. Just click on “Select” next to the contest you are uploading to in the upper left corner, browse to your photo file, enter a title, and click on Upload Picture. After the file uploads, the information will appear under “Your Uploaded Pictures.” The contest list shows the date of the contest, and the last date for entering photos. Please make your image size 1900 pixels on the horizontal axis and 1080 pixels on the vertical axis. Filename MUST include title, maker's name, and category (open or nature). These can be in any order,