Larry Gold, Competition Chair
Hi to all SSCC members. I’m very excited about the upcoming Competitions season. The competitions, held the second Thursday of each month, provide a great opportunity to share your images with fellow members and have them critiqued by professional photographers. Though their judgments about the images and their selection of winning photos are necessarily subjective, the judges invariably offer helpful insights and suggestions about the entered images, whether they’re yours or those of another member. In my year and a half as a SSCC member, I have yet to leave a competition without having picked up something useful that I can incorporate into my photography.
For the new Competitions season, we have what I believe will be a fun, stimulating and diverse array of competition topics. Our repeating mainstays – Open, Nature and Monochrome, will be joined by three new topics – Macro (not floral), Event, and Street photography. Please refer to the Members Handbook for the definition of each topic.
Here’s the schedule for the season:
- September – Open
- October – Nature Photography
- November – Open
- December – Street Photography
- January – Open
- February – Macro (not floral) Photography
- March – Open
- April – Event Photography
- May – Monochrome Photography
- June – End of Year Competition (special rules apply)
As indicated, the topic for the season’s first competition on September 8th is Open, which gives you full freedom to enter images on any topic (or no topic) that you choose. The only requirement is that original images must be created by a light sensitive device, like a camera or scanner. Any subsequent alterations or manipulations of the images are permissible, so have at it.
Please be mindful that electronic submissions for projected images must be received no later than 11:59 pm, September 1st. The images should be emailed to: SSCCphotography@yahoo.com. (One important detail – In order to participate in the September competition, you must pay the club’s annual dues before the start of the competition.)
To learn the nitty gritty about the competitions, please refer to the Competition Rules and the Members Handbook, both of which are accessible from the SSCC website.
Of course, if you have any questions about the competitions, please feel free to contact me at competition@ssccphotography.org
Finally, when (not if) I make mistakes as the newbie Competitions chair, it’s not because there’s been any difficulty with the passing of the baton by my predecessor, Doug Wolters. To the contrary, Doug has been extraordinarily helpful in bringing me up to speed and I am extremely grateful for his generous, continuing assistance. That said, I know that I’ve got a lot to learn to make the competitions run smoothly; so, in advance, I ask your indulgence for any errors or omissions I am bound to make during the hopefully short break-in period.