Who can enter

The Photo Show is open to all professional and amateur photographers residing in the Eastern Ontario catchment area:

• North: Ottawa River;
• East: Ontario-Québec border;
• South: St Lawrence, Lake Ontario north shore;
• West: nominally Bowmanville to Petawawa, but this excludes the important catchment area comprising the Kawarthas and this is not our intention. Consider Hwy 35 running north of Bowmanville, then the line of Hwy 35 north to Minden, thereby including Peterborough, Lindsay and the Kawartha Highlands. Then and only then might the line bend eastwards to Petawawa. This is a fuzzy line and we don’t, for example, want to exclude anyone living on wrong side of the road.

 

Anyone who owns or rents property within the Show’s catchment area is eligible. Students living elsewhere but attending high school, college or university or any other institution of higher learning within the catchment area are eligible.

How to enter

• Entries must be submitted using the electronic entry form available on the Entries tab of this website, step #4. Note:
  Each photographer may enter a total of three images;
• Each entry must be an original photograph taken by the entrant;
• All entries must be marked with a sale price, minimum $100. Entries marked Not for Sale will not be accepted.

 

All images shall be submitted as JPEG files; other formats will not be accepted. The following file format is suggested as striking the optimum between file size and image quality:

• Reduce longest dimension to 1280 pixels;
• Save as a JPG file with the image quality reduced so as to result in a file size of no greater then 1 Megabyte.  An image of this size and quality is good enough to project onto a large screen in a darkened room, and certainly good enough for first-stage judges to view on a monitor;
• Second-stage judging is completed on finished prints.

 

There is an entry fee of $30 for Adult or Emerging Photographer entrants. Payment is to be made on the electronic entry form; applications must be accompanied by electronic payment in order to be accepted. New for 2015: students enter free.

Prints for display in the Show must meet the following criteria:

• Either traditional matting and framing; or metal or canvas wrap-around prints are acceptable
• If framed and matted, a print title and signature is customary but not essential. Prints will be adequately identified by adjacent labels.
• Wire hangers only. Saw-tooth hangers pose problems when hanging and compromises are not always either safe or elegant.
• Minimum print size 8” by 10”. There is no maximum size. The entry form will prompt you for an estimate of final matted framed print size, principally so that we can gauge wall space.
• Finished work should be labelled on the back with your name, the print title, your address, e-mail address and telephone number.

 

We have traditionally asked photographers to submit a one-page bio for inclusion in a 3-ring binder on a desk in the Show. As a new departure this year, we are asking photographers additionally and optionally to supply us with a half-page text to accompany each photograph. This text will be printed on card and mounted on the wall next to your photographs.

Note that this is optional but we suspect that both visitors and potential purchasers will be interested in the genesis of your image, and anything you can tell us about it. This information need not (and probably should not) duplicate information in the one-page bio.

Pricing and sale

It is understood that all submitted photographs are for sale; no Not for Sale images will be accepted. CLIC will take a commission of 25% on sales.

Volunteers at the Show will call or otherwise notify all photographers if a print sells, and mark the adjacent label with a red dot to notify a sale. Purchasers will pick up the image at the end of the Show. Further sales are possible, given the consent of the photographer – again, Show volunteers will contact the photographer for consent.

Granted a minimum price of $100, be sure when setting your sale price to cover your costs in printing, framing, the CLIC commission, any other costs and your margin. Be aware that lower-priced prints may sell more readily, but by all means be sure to cover your costs.

Prizes are awarded in each category either as cash or vouchers valued as follows:

• 1st prize – $100
• 2nd prize – $75
• 3rd prize – $50

 

There are two additional awards:

• People’s Choice award – $100
• Best in Show and Doug Boult trophy – $200

 

By submitting photographs to this contest, you are declaring your understanding of these rules.

CLiC 2015 – Divisions and Categories

The CLiC 2015 Show is organized into two Divisions and three Categories. The two divisions differ slightly from previous years – the Adult division is unchanged, but its 2015 companion, the Emerging Photographers division, differs from the Student division of previous years in that it invites entries not only from students but from all photographers of any age with four years’ experience or less in photography. Definitions:

• Student: aged 21 or under, in full- or part-time study, either resident or studying in the geographical area.
• Emerging Photographer: no age limitations, but with four years’ experience or less in photography.
• Adult: anyone else, no age limits. Nothing prevents anyone, Student or Emerging Photographer, from entering in the Adult section.

 

The Adult division is subdivided into three Categories:

• Visible World, colour or polychrome.
• Altered Reality.
• Visible World, monochrome.

 

The Emerging Photographer division is not subdivided into categories. In summary:

Categories

Of the three categories, two require careful differentiation and some discussion. If all this is self-evident to you, read no further. Otherwise, Visible World (hereafter VW) encompasses the classical subject matter of photography, including but not exclusively:

• Photojournalism
• Social commentary and activism, street photography
• Portraiture
• Still life
• Nature and wildlife
• Landscape, Cityscape
• Sports and action.

 

It is accepted that some degree of post-processing will have been carried out in order to make the image show at its best. Photojournalists will follow higher standards; many argue that photojournalism permits no post-processing at all, lest the image become what the Globe & Mail (for example) call a photo illustration. Other practitioners, however, may resort to many levels of complexity; landscape photographers will argue that if Ansel Adams could do it, so can they. But digital photography has moved beyond the darkroom – consider for example double processing and HDR (high dynamic range) processing.

The HDR question seems fraught with perplexity. The matter is further aggravated by a feeling amongst the photographic public at large and by extension amongst judges and that there is such a thing as an “HDR effect”; suffice it to say by way of context that some judges feel the same way about excessive sharpening. We could say of HDR that, much as with any other form of post-processing, it can be done well or badly, but an HDR image is not excluded from VW merely by virtue of an extended tonal range.

Finally and for want of a better if conservative definition we might take safety in the Darkroom (or perhaps the Ansel Adams) Rule: that if it could have been done in a darkroom it will raise no eyebrows in the Visible World category. It is the hard cases and novel extensions that make bad law.

A poly-chrome image is a monochrome image containing a colour field. Monochrome is self-explanatory; a tinted (eg sepia) image is still monochrome.

The Altered Reality category (hereafter AR) encompasses works in which the photographer, beginning with a natural, real-world subject, applies skilled levels of post-processing to create an effect unavailable to simple photography and above and beyond what was evident to or registered by the naked eye. At risk of limitation and reduction, we might generalize that if elements within the photograph are copied, cloned, rotated, recoloured, liquefied, textured or reshaped; if the work contains evident montages, depends significantly (note the emphasis) on the use of post-processing art filters; if the world of nature is significantly and noticeably modified by addition or removal; or if multiple images are self-evidently combined into one, then the work belongs in the AR category.

This category, new last year, has caused some confusion. AR is a new view of the world around us, often spherical, often mapped onto another plane, often curved and lapped. Simple use of HDR to put detail into shadows and highlights – and yes, this point caused confusion last year – does not automatically generate an AR image. Neither necessarily does abstraction – think of Freeman Patterson and his fields of flowers. AR takes the real world as a starting point and walks us through a C S Lewis-like wardrobe into another. And just in case you still think this matter is simple, remember that darkroom techniques such as solarization and field techniques such as the deliberate use of camera motion (think again of Freeman Patterson, not of panning a moving subject as in sports photography) long predate digital.

Ultimately, a judge has to be convinced. Ask yourself, How do I want this image to be judged? Put yourself in their shoes: will they find themselves asking, Why is this image entered in Altered Reality?

The AR category is not subdivided.

Judging and Timeline

Judging will be carried out in two stages by two separate panels of judges. The first panel will review all entries as electronic images and select those to be hung in the Show. CLiC will then notify everyone as to the status of their submissions, and invite successful entrants to prepare framed and matted prints for the Show. In the week before the Show opens, a second panel of judges will review the curated, hung prints and assess prizewinners and honorable mentions in all divisions and categories. One print will be selected as Best in Show for the Doug Boult Award for Excellence in Photography.

Awards will be presented on Opening Night (q.v.). During the course of the Show a ballot will be conducted amongst visitors for a People’s Choice award.

 

Timescale

• Entry form open as soon as the CLiC 2015 website goes active.
• Entry deadline midnight Thursday May 21, 2015.

 

Please, help both us and yourself: software glitches and Internet downtime are not unknown and if you leave your submission until the last minute of the last hour of the last day, you may lose control of events.

• Notification of acceptance or otherwise ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­by e-mail mid-June.
• Acceptance of framed prints Saturday and Sunday July 18-19.

 

Framed prints for the exhibition are to be delivered Saturday and Sunday July 18-19 to the second-floor Gallery at Books & Company, 289 Main Street, Picton, between 10 am and 4 pm. Team CLiC will do its utmost to accommodate delivery problems and conflicts – please however do your best to deliver your prints either yourselves or through a proxy.

• Curating Monday July 20;
• Hanging Tuesday July 21;
• Second-stage judging complete Wednesday July 22;
• Opening Night & Reception Friday July 24;
• Show opens to the public Saturday July 25;
• CLiC in the Evening Friday July 31;
  • CLiC in the Evening is a talk by a prominent local photographer, judge or teacher with a bias towards the controversial. New last year, very interactive and very well attended – don’t miss!
• Show closes Sunday August 9, 2:00 pm;
• Announcement of People’s Choice Award, 2:00 to 2:30 pm;
• Print pickup Sunday August 9, 2:30 to 5:00 pm.

 

Unsold prints must be picked up from Books & Company either by photographers or their proxies on the day in question. Neither CLiC nor PECAC can accept responsibility for loss of or damage to prints not picked up at the end of the Show.

Opening Night & Reception

Award winners will be announced at the Opening Night, July 24, 2015.  All entrants whose work has been accepted for hanging are invited, together with one guest, to Opening Night.  Show visitors will have the opportunity to vote on the People’s Choice Award winner; this prize will be announced at the Show closing, August 9.

 

Other

All reasonable care will be taken with works submitted. Insurance for artwork while on show premises is the sole responsibility of the artist. CLiC may retain copies of images submitted, particularly exhibited and prizewinning images, for use as promotional material eg on the CLiC website. Copyright resides with the photographer and all usages will be credited. Images will be deleted from CLiC files at the request of the photographer.

By submitting photographs to this contest, you are declaring your understanding of these rules.

On-line Registration form