NJFCC Competitions’ Rules

Rules Common for all NJFCC Competitions

  1. All contests are only open to members of NJFCC member club.
  2. Images must have been made by the declared individual photographer. Submitting someone else’s work is not permitted.
  3. Images of someone else’s art are not allowed unless the photographer has obviously manipulated or in some way changed the presentation.
  4. Individuals having multiple club memberships are permitted to enter only under one club name for any given competition.
  5. A club member can submit a maximum of two (2) entries per individual in each NJFCC competition for a given date That is two (2) per competition, not per category within a competition.  A club can have unlimited entries in each competition.
  6. Image sizing
    1. Image files must have a JPEG file format.
    2. Images must be saved in sRGB color space.
    3. Images must be sized for 1050 pixels along the longest edge.
    4. The maximum file size is 1.5 megabytes.
    5. The photographer’s name, trademarks and/or copyright notices may not appear in an image.
  7. Entries that did not receive an award in any competition are permitted to be re-submitted in a subsequent competition only one time.
  8. Images are submitted using our usual procedure with www.photocontestpro.com.
  9. All images will be judged on impact and technical perfection. Where all other things are judged to be equal between images, then the Storytelling aspect of the image will be considered. Color, Monochrome and Infrared images are acceptable in All Projected Contests.
    1. Impact— Having a strong effect on the viewer. It can be beautiful, strong, unusual, dramatic and leaving the viewer with a feeling of something special. The image may or may not include storytelling.
    2. Storytelling–An image that shows an action or an occurrence of things, involving weather, events, people or animals.
  10. Award Descriptions: The following table describes the awards given in NJFCC competitions.
    Award Award Description
    Medal This award is given to the best image as determined by the judges.
    Merit Award This award is given to all the other images in a competition that received the same combined score as the image receiving a medal award. If no entries receive the same score as the medal award winner, then merit awards are given to images receiving the next lower combined score.
    Honorable Mention The total number of awards given in a competition is about 20% of the
    total images entered. This award is given to all those images that have
    achieved combined scores in the top 20% that did not receive a medal or
    merit

    Pictorial Competition Rules

    Pictorial competitions are divided into two (2) separate categories.  The two categories are, with their definitions:

    1. Pictorial-Creative: Images presented in a manner that post-processing or in-camera manipulation is obvious to the average viewer
    2. Pictorial-Open: Images where the subject matter precludes it from being included in any other NJFCC contest.*.

      * Regardless of the category, if an image is eligible for entry into NJFCC Nature, it is NOT eligible in Pictorial, and if entered into Pictorial, will be disqualified.


  1. Images may not be created from scratch by drawing or any other non-photographic means.

Nature Competition Rules

  1. All Nature competitions are divided into 4 individual categories: General Nature, Botany, Zoology (includes insects), and Ornithology.
    1. General Nature: This category includes landscapes, seascapes, rock formations and anything else that does not fall into Botanical, Ornithological or Zoological.
    2. Botanical: This category includes plants and fungi.
    3. Ornithological: This category consists of birds as the main subject.
    4. Zoological: This category includes all animals except for birds. Basically, if it walks, crawls, flies or swims, it is an animal and must be entered in the Zoological category.
  2. The presence of scientific bands on wild animals is acceptable.
  3. Human elements, or hand-of-man, shall not be present except on the rare occasion where those elements enhance the nature story. Hand-of-man is anything that is manmade or the result of human action. Fences, posts, wires, cut grass, roads, cut wood, walks are examples of manmade. People are manmade
  4. Photographs of domesticated animals, mounted specimens and obviously set arrangements are not acceptable. Farm animals are considered to be domesticated. If an animal is an exotic pet or a zoo animal, it must be taken in a natural setting – no bars, fences or man-made objects. Examples of exotic pets are chimpanzees, alligators, alpacas, etc.
  5. Any form of image manipulation that misrepresents the true situation or that alters the content of the image is not permitted. Minor cloning to remove small incidental distractions in the image are permitted if the cloning operation is undetectable by the judge. A judge may disqualify any image in which he or she detects evidence of cloning or pasting.
  6. The member must designate which of the 4 categories apply for each image.

 

For complete rules go: njfcc.org