It is time once again for our friendly competition with the Fort Worth Camera Club! This year DCC is hosting the event, and it will either prove to be our 16th consecutive loss OR OUR FIRST VICTORY SINCE 2006!

We can't win without YOU! We need your "best of the best" images! We have access to your monthly entries already, no need to send them in again, but we want to see what else you have that might help bring the Bird home! We'd also like to see for ourselves what you might have to offer. In addition to sending in up to 5 images through the club's competition system (details below) we'd also love it if you would share with us a link to where we can see your work. A lot of club members showcase their work on personal websites, social media, and on sites like SmugMug, 500px, Flickr, and more. If you have your images online somewhere, send us a link! Sometimes we don't recognize the competitiveness of some of our own work, and giving us a peak at the work you're proud enough to share online might prove to be just the edge we need to reverse our current long streak of bad luck!

Some important details:

  • The Bird Competition is an open-themed contest (not just a competition of bird photos)
  • The Bird will be held in Dallas at our normal club meeting on October 24th at our normal meeting location and replaces our normal "Speaker Presentation" meeting.
  • Each club enters a total of 30 images. 15 projected and 15 prints. Any single member in good standing may have a total of two entries; one projected and one print.
  • Participation is open to any member in good standing, and participation in monthly club competitions is not required.
  • Entries will be selected by Steven and Erin Reeves (DCC Bird Competition Coordinators) and a select group of other DCC members.
  • Images selected for the print division will need to be produced by the maker or under their supervision by another entity as permitted under the rules.
  • When submitting your entries please let us know your image is available as a print by including the word "print" in the title.
  • If you have a portfolio of your work available online and you'd like to share that with us, reply to this email and include the link.
  • A few pointers on what we look for in an entry:
    • Strong technical achievement - Entries need to be sharp where they're supposed to be sharp, well exposed, and free from obvious processing errors.
    • Thoughtful Composition - Images need to be free of clutter and distracting elements. Great composition makes it obvious what the image is about. Anything in an image that doesn't help it, hurts it. Judges view and score images within a few seconds. The "story" of an image needs to be told *instantly* through its composition.
    • Impact - As others have said in the past, the three most important parts of a photo are: Impact, Impact, and Impact. Due to the nature of this type of competition, subtle, beautifully made contemplative photos don't get the chance to succeed that one would hope for. Vibrant, dynamic, SIMPLE images that can pack a punch in a very short period of time typically do better. A special note for print entries. Prints, even at the maximum 20x24 size, are viewed from a distance and are postage-stamp-sized to the judges compared to the 100" projection screen where the digital entries are viewed. The need for vibrant, exciting and SIMPLE images is even greater for prints as a result.

Please submit your entries through our club competition system. You can find the Bird contest listed among the monthly entries. It's currently showing along with the December contests. (It also shows an erroneous deadline of December 31st. This is not the case. Please send in your submissions by Sept 15th.

PRINTS - If you have prints ready and waiting and would like to submit them for consideration, please bring to the 8/22 meeting and give them to Erin Reeves. If that's not possible, email me and we can make arrangements otherwise

Please let me know if you have any questions. You can reply to this message or email me directly at: steve@makeshiftphoto.com.

Thanks!

-Steve Reeves



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