Following feedback from a number of our members, our competition rules will change slightly from next season, starting September 2020. These changes hope to address a number of concerns raised about combining nature and open competitions in the league as well as the impact of members receiving a 'rogue score' that has a detriment on their league scores and external competitions.
The general format of a competition will remain unchanged, with three sections run over PDI and Print as follows:
C Section (Beginners): 1 Competition, which will be an Open Category
B Section (Intermediate): 2 Competitions, Open and Nature
A Section (Advanced): 2 Competitions, Open and Nature
Members will be able to enter 3 images into each competition, so an A section member may enter 3 open and 3 nature images into each competition night. However, due to the potential to have too many images on a competition night, we reserve the right to reduce the entry to 2 images. In this situation, we will remove the third image uploaded to the system. This image will not be judged and may be used again in another competition.
The scores from each competition will then contribute to separate Open and Nature leagues, rather than be combined into a single league. To remove the impact of a 'rogue score', the lowest 2 scores for each photographer, in each league, will not be counted toward the overall league calculation.
Due to the increased number of potential entries, there will be 4 competition nights for print and PDI next season, reducing from the current 5 PDI league competitions.
Finally, the rules governing external competitions and the increased checking of entries from organisations such as the PAGB and L&CPU continue to tighten, which has led to a number of high profile disqualifications over recent years. Many of these disqualification are due to photographers being members of different clubs and the same image being used by different clubs in competitions. We have been very fortunate not to fall foul of these rules in external competitions and the task of image selection for external competitions continues to grow in complexity. All the images we use in external competitions are selected from entries to our internal competitions, so having certainty in our image bank is critical to our adherence with external competition rules. With this in mind, we would like to remind members that they are only able to enter Chorley PS competitions where:
Chorley PS are the only club using a members images in a season and
the images entered into our competitions have not been used previously in any other club.
These changes are a result of our members feedback and the committee have considered several options to satisfy the wishes of all our members. We will review the impact of these changes over the next season and listen to our members for their continued guidance.