DSCC Local Competitions

Local Competition Information:

The DSCC holds one themed local competition each month from January through November and one open showcase competition in December.

Each member may submit two prints (judged at in-person meetings only) or two digital images for each regular monthly themed competition and up to five digital images only for the December showcase competition.

Digital images are submitted to the club through this website. The deadline for club competition digital entries is the Thursday before a regular meeting (or the third Tuesday in a month with no meeting). Digital entries may be submitted, removed or updated at any time before each monthly competition deadline.

Prints for club competitions can be any size, do not require any type of mounting and should be labeled with a title and the entrants name. Prints are only accepted for themed monthly competitions for the month of that theme and only during months that the club has in-person regular meetings. Prints for monthly themed local competitions are judged during the regular monthly club meeting. There are no print competitions during months that do not have a regular club meeting.

Both Digital and Print entries will be scored (values are 1 though 5) on three criteria:

Impact

Impact is the viewer’s initial response to a stimulating image. It’s the “Wow!” or “I like that!” factor of an image. The response might be to the photographer’s use of color or lines or shapes or contrast or texture or action, or even the subject itself. It is the immediate and most subjective of the three criteria.

Technique

Technique refers to how well the photographer uses any of the numerous photographic techniques (eg., focus, sharpness, detail, depth of field, color, selective focus, exposure, contrast, saturation, panning, etc.). Of course, photographers will not use all of these techniques in a photograph.

Composition

Composition is the art of placing subjects within a frame in a meaningful manner. Do you see the use of the Rule of Thirds (not an ironclad rule)? Vanishing point? A point of interest? Leading lines? The direction of light? Simplicity? Balance (symmetrical and asymmetrical)? Framing? Perspective? One main subject?

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An archive of past club competition presentations can be found here:

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Specifications for Submitting Digital Images

While not required, it is a best practice for digital images submitted to the club to follow the same specifications as N4C guidelines:

• JPEG (.jpg) file format only.
• 1920 pixels along the long side of the image.
• File size less than 750kb (0.5mb).
• sRGB color space.

Files should at least be named with a specific title. If possible, use the same file naming convention as N4C digital entries:

01,DJ000,DP,Title.jpg

• 01 – entry number (do not change).
• DJ000 – your assigned N4C ID number.
• DP – category (DA, DB, DJ, DN, DP or DT).
• Duluth’s Landmark – change to your custom title.
• .jpg – file extension denoting JPEG image file.

Specific N4C category codes are not necessary in the file naming for club competitions (can be left as DP). However, using the same naming convention makes it easier to submit entires to both the local and N4C competitions.