Washington Apple Pi Photo Contest 2009 Information

These instructions are also available as a downloadable PDF file (1.6 MB)

The Pi Photo Contest is intended to be fun, for those with the desire to create photographic images (using their Macs) as well as for those who want to sit back and enjoy seeing the fruits of other people’s labors.

Contest Subjects

Each image you submit must be assigned to one and only one subject. It is your decision.

Grouped People

Intent is to show homogeneous groups. Subject includes ethnic or religious groups, family members or a family portrait, family “life events” – like granddad holding new born grandchild for first time, dressed alike twins, a string quartet, or a barbershop, sports team members possibly in action, people in the military services, Rolling Thunder motorcycle “gang”. And more…

Nature

It is most everything around you that is not another man and not man made. This includes plants and flowers, animals and insects, large and small, seen life-size or through a microscope, most anything that lives at sea and along the seashore, landscapes, seascapes, and nightscapes, oftentimes panoramas, as well as the best and the worst of Mother Nature. And more…

Buildings and Structures

Buildings large and small, inside and out, ancient and under construction, almost buried underground or scraping the heavens. Industrial factories are included, active or abandoned. Subject includes highway and railroad bridges as well as draw, covered, and suspension bridges. Religious places of all shares and sizes. Houses of each architectural period or of multiple periods. And more…

Travel

Tourist sights and sites, persons in native costumes or in their native habitat, tourists in action, and all the trappings of the tourism industry. And more…

Identified flying objects

This is the fun and imaginative subject. The subject includes recognizable things that fly or appear to fly. Subject includes birds, planes, Superman, kites, Frisbees, hot air balloons, pilots with or without their aircraft, paratroopers (in the air), parasailing enthusiasts, flying fish, flying squirrels, and, perhaps, flying pigs. And more…

Using Software To Improve Images

You may improve your best images with image edit software with the goal of returning the image to what the photographer saw in the viewfinder before pressing shutter button.

For the Grouped People, Nature, Buildings, and Travel subjects, edits are limited to:

• Cropping
• Burning and dodging
• Sharpening and unsharpening
• Red-eye correction
• Correcting to natural colors, e.g., removing green cast caused by fluorescent lighting
• Stitching photographs together to create a panorama
• Fixing perspective (skewing)
• Refining brightness, saturation, and contrast
• Converting a color image to sepia or black-and-white.
  

Lesa Snider King showed how to do these edits using Adobe’s Photoshop Elements 6 during the March 28 General Meeting.

There are no limits on software image edits for Identified Flying Objects images. You may change your image to what you wanted to see in viewfinder before you pressed the shutter button. This might include removing things from the photo, changing an object’s color, as well as adding stuff not in the original image.

Contest rules

A contestant is the same person as the photographer and the submitter.

• Contest is for paid, current, active Washington Apple Pi members;
• Each contestant chooses their peer group: novice or advanced skill level;
• Each image submitted has not been in another photo contest;
• 2009 Pi Photo Contest accepts only digital image files in JPEG or TIFF format;
• A contestant may enter a total of ten (10) images;
• No more than five (5) images will be accepted in a single subject;
• A photographer may submit up to ten images throughout the entry period;
• Images of all ages are allowed. They may be new (created this year) or old (before this year and possibly from before there were digital cameras). If old, you may scan an image to create the digital image file for the contest;
• Contestant selects the single subject in which image is to compete;
• Submitter certifies the image as submitted is their own work – for both creating and for editing the image;
• By submitting a contest entry, photographer grants Washington Apple Pi use of image on its Web site, in the Washington Apple Pi Journal, in the Pi newsletter, and to make a print of the image;
• Photographers are encouraged to submit 300 dpi image files as they make better prints
• Submit images via piphotocontest@wap.org with photographer identification and file information or the same on CD-ROM or DVD to the Washington Apple Pi office before May 1 deadline;
• Entrants using email are urged to compress/archive the image into a .zip file before attaching it to email. The image file as received will be provided to judges;
• Decision of judges is final;
• It is the contestant’s responsibility to deliver images before May 1, 6 p.m. EDT.

Choose Your Peer Group

A contestant belongs to one peer group for all his/her images submitted to 2009 Pi Photo Contest. Peer groups reflect the photographer’s skill level, allowing novices to compete against each other, and the more advanced photographers to compete among themselves. Peer groups have nothing to do with cost of photographic equipment.

Test: Want to compete with Lawrence Charters, Ed Miller, Gene Haddon and Travis Good? Join the Advanced Photographers peer group.

Don’t know Lawrence, Ed, Gene or Travis? Consider your skill level. Have you sold images? Are you almost good enough to sell your images? Have you considered posting your images on iStockphoto.com or one of its competitors? If you said yes to any of these, you are an advanced photographer for the Pi Photo Contest. In other contexts, you may be a novice.

Not sure? Choose Advanced.

Contest schedule

• March 28: Launch contest with members – March General Meeting
• Entry acceptance period – March 28 to May 1, 6 p.m. EDT May 2, 11:59 PM EDT.
• May 30: Recognition Ceremony – May General Meeting

Submissions to Contest

Submit all your images on same day? This is not necessary unless today is May 1.

Preferred Submission Method – Email

Email has been known to alter image attachments. Some email clients reduce image density to 72 dpi; others simply “mangle” the image received so it is unlike the original sent. A solution is to archive/compress your image into a zip file. Leopard and Apple Mail 3.x in addition to Entourage deliver accurate images when image file is zipped.

Your email vendor or ISP may have limits on how big email attachments may be. If this is a problem, send your image file from your Washington Apple Pi email box. It has the same username and password as you use for downloading the eJournal.

How to submit via email – first image

Address your email to piphotocontest@wap.org
Decide if you want to cc yourself.
Set Subject to “Pi Photo Contest – Entry 01”
In body of email, provide on separate lines the following photographer information:

1. Photographer Name
2. Pi Member Number – part of address label on Pi Journal
3. Peer Group – Novice Photographer or Advanced Photographer
4. Email address, where contest volunteer should send acknowledgement of receipt
5. Preferred phone number
6. Alternate phone number, if any
7. Include “I certify this image and edits, if any, are my own work.”

In body of email, provide image file information:

1. Subject image file belongs in – One of these: People In Groups, Nature, Buildings and Structures, Travel, Identified Flying Objects (IFO)
2. File format: JPEG or TIFF
3. File name including extension

Caption for your image when published on Apple Pi web site, the Pi Journal, or Pi News.

Attach your zipped image file. In Apple Mail, attach the image file using paperclip icon.

Sample email of Jane Member’s first entry to 2009 Pi Photo Contest:

How to submit by email – after first image

There are minor instruction changes to email content after first entry has been submitted.

1. Change number in subject to number of this entry, that is, use 02 for your second, 03 for third, etc.
2. Photographer information is identical to first email – copy and paste into new email body
3. Supply file information and write the caption that goes with this entry
4. Attach the zipped image file
   

Sample email for Jane Member’s second entry – in Identified Flying Objects subject.

Alternate Method – on CDROM or DVD

1. Create a burn folder
2. Inside the burn folder, create a folder for each image, naming the folder with your name, entry number, and subject
3. Copy and paste image file to appropriate folder in burn folder. On CDROM and DVD the image file does not need to be zipped
4. Put Text Edit (or MS Word) document containing photographer, file and caption info into folder with matching image file. (Same info for you and your file as shown above for Jane’s submissions.)
5. Send or deliver to Washington Apple Pi, Ltd., 12022 Parklawn Drive, Rockville, MD 20852 USA

Questions?

Send email to piphotocontest@wap.org -or- come to the Pi Clubhouse Saturday, April 4.

Revised May 06, 2009
Washington Apple Pi is an international user group, with a history spanning three decades to the dawn of personal computing. The “Pi” continues to serve users of the very first personal computers as well as users of the most modern, advanced systems through its meetings, magazine, computer bulletin board and Internet services.
URL: http://www.wap.org /events/photocontest2009/photocontest2009instructions.html