Exhibitions

The Channel City Camera Club holds monthly Exhibitions to showcase member images and to provide meaningful feedback from judges. The goal for each Exhibition is to have 2 professional judges and 1 club judge although that may vary based upon conditions beyond the club’s control.

An Exhibition is held on the first Tuesday of each month that the club meets, i.e., all months other than January, August, and December. Meetings start at 7:30pm and are held in Farrand Hall of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. Participation in the Exhibition is open to all Active and Honorary club members.  Note: dues must be paid to be an Active member.

There are two type of media allowed for exhibition: print and digital file. The specific requirements for each media type are detailed in a document available here. There is no photographic slide exhibition.

During each exhibition, there will always be a print and a digital pictorial exhibition. Of the remaining 3 digital categories, only 2 of these categories are selected each month. In addition, there will be an occasional additional category for digital images that may be submitted for review but not for a judged evaluation; this category will be announced when it is made available.

The Special Assignments for this year are defined as follows.

• Nature – Bird Photography. An image of one or more birds with the usual Nature category restrictions.
• Creative – Collage. An image produced by the combination of multiple images. The goal is to represent the juxtaposition of the individual images in an artistic statement and is not to make the viewer believe that the final image represents a realistic situation. Examples: multiple images of the same person; a multi-layered collection of image.
• People – People in Motion. An image representing the motion of a person(s). One such technique is to use a slow shutter speed while panning the subject to produce a blurring of the background while keeping the main subject relatively sharp. Another technique would be to use a slow shutter speed to produce a blur of the subject implying motion. Examples: a child on a merry-go-round; a man running.
• Pictorial – Night Photography. An image taken at night without the photographer using conventional photographic lighting such as a strobe. A small amount of light in the sky is acceptable as is lighting from objects within the scene. Examples: downtown Santa Barbara at night; a forest at night showing the star trails; painting with a light source (e.g., flashlight or spotlight) technique.

Important: All Special Assignment Images Must be Taken This Year!

Channel City Camera Club Requirements for Exhibition

This document details the requirements for accepting print and digital images for exhibition by the Channel City Camera Club.

General Requirements

The following requirements apply to both print and digital entry.

• Each entered image shall be solely the product of the entering member. No commercially produced elements e.g. stock photographs, may be used to produce the image.
• An image that has been given an Acceptance award in a club Exhibition cannot be submitted again for exhibition.

Print Requirements

A print entered into the Exhibition must adhere to the following requirements.

• Subject: there is no restriction on the subject material or the technique used in creating the image.
• Quantity: print submission is limited to one print each Exhibition.
• Color: there is no color restriction; prints may be black and white, toned, or in color.
• Material: prints can be printed on materials other than paper provided they can be handled as a light weight flat surface less than 1” thick and stand on the exhibition easel.
• Process: prints may be chemically or computer processed by the submitter or by a commercial provider. The photographer must have performed all image capture, adjustments, and preparation.
• Score Sheet: the photographer’s name and the print’s title shall be submitted by e-mail to the club’s competition e-mail address, competition@cccameraclub.com, before midnight on the Friday evening prior to the exhibition. A confirmation notice will be returned when this e-mail is processed.
• Digital Copy: a digital copy of the print should be attached to the e-mail mentioned above for possible use in the Angle and the club’s web site. This file should be in the same format as for the digital file categories with a file name of CatTitleArtist.jpg, where Cat is the Category abbreviation Pri for Print. Do not include spaces in the file name.
• Example: the print “Before the Storm” submitted by John Smith would have the digital copy file name, PriBeforeTheStormSmith.jpg.
• Size: the size of the print shall not be smaller than 5” x 7” or larger than 13” x 19”, horizontal or vertical.
• Mounting: all prints shall be mounted on a suitable backing board such as foam core board and mounted by dry mounting, adhesive spray, tape, or mounting tabs. If a window cutout mat is used to frame the image, the backing and framing mat should be attached to each other to provide secure handling during exhibition. Do not use a wall frame or cover the photograph with glass or acrylic. The maximum size of the backing board and mat is 20” x 24", horizontal or vertical.
• Identification: the photographer’s name and the image title shall be placed at the upper-left corner on the back of the backing board. This information must be printed clearly so it can be read in low light during the exhibition.
• Print Submission: the print shall be brought to Farrand Hall by 7:15pm on Exhibition night to allow time for review by the judges. The print shall be removed after the Exhibition is over.
• Suitability: if there are questions about whether a print is suitable for exhibition, please contact the Director of Print Competition. A decision by the Director of Prints that a print submission does not meet the requirements stated above is final and the print will not be included in that night’s exhibition. Any appeal to this decision should be made to the President of the club.

Digital File Requirements

There are 5 categories of digital exhibition.

• Creative: an image that is imaginative, inventive, original, fanciful, or ingenious. The image may be manipulated.
• Nature: the nature photography category is restricted to the use of the photographic process to depict observations from all branches of natural history, except anthropology and archeology, in such a fashion that a well informed person will be able to identify the subject material and to certify as to its honest presentation.
• All adjustments must appear natural.
• The story telling value of a photograph must be weighed more than the pictorial quality while maintaining a high technical quality. 
• Human elements shall not be present, except where those human elements enhance the nature story *.  The presence of scientific bands, scientific tags or radio collars on wild animals is permissible.
• Photographs of artificially produced hybrid plants or animals, mounted specimens, or obviously set arrangements, are ineligible, as is any form of manipulation that alters the truth of the photographic statement. 
• No techniques that add to, relocate, replace, or remove pictorial elements except by cropping are permitted. Techniques that enhance the presentation of the photograph without changing the nature story or the pictorial content are permitted. 
• People: any depiction of human beings. Formal or casual portraiture, documentary, and photo-journalistic images are all appropriate as is an image of one or multiple people. Expressive images of specific body parts such as the eyes, hands or face are all allowed.
• Pictorial: an open-ended category that includes images of any subject created using any technique.
• Non-Judged: this category is not available during every exhibition; please refer to the Angle to determine when this category is being held. The non-judged category has the following specific rules.
• Subject: there is no restriction on the subject material or the technique used in creating the image.
• Quantity: non-judged digital file submission is limited to one digital file for each Exhibition and there shall be no other submissions in the other print or digital categories.

A digital file entered into the Exhibition must adhere to the following requirements.

• Subject: the subject material must adhere to the requirements of the specific category that the digital file is submitted into as further limited by the Special Assignment if appropriate.
• Quantity: digital file submission to be judged is limited to one digital file for each category at each Exhibition. Since 3 judged categories occur during each Exhibition, digital file submission is limited to a total of 3 digital files for each exhibition.
• Color: there is no color restriction; images may be black and white, tinted, or in color.
• Process: the photographer must have performed all image capture, adjustments, and preparation.
• Digital File Format: all images shall be submitted in the JPEG (.jpg) file format. It is suggested that you use the highest quality setting when creating the digital file. Save file in Baseline Standard or Baseline Optimized (not Progressive). Guidance on File Saving appears in the Technical Detail section at the end of this document.
• Image Size: the display size for the club’s projector is 1400 pixels horizontal by 1050 pixels vertical. Images should fit within this boundary and the horizontal and vertical dimensions cannot be interchanged. Images that are not properly sized will be resized by the projector and may show a slight decrease in image quality. The value of image resolution is not used by the projector and may be ignored. Guidance on Image Resizing appears in the Technical Detail section at the end of this document.
• File Naming: digital files shall be named without spaces using the following filename format, CatTitleArtist.jpg, where
• Cat is the Category abbreviation: Cre for Creative, Nat for Nature, Peo for People, Pic for Pictorial, Pri for Print and Uns for UnScored.
• Title is your title for the image; capitalize the first letter of each word but do not put a space between words
• Artist is your last name or if needed, your first initial followed by your last name.
• Do not include spaces in the file name.
• Example: the Nature image “Before the Storm” submitted by Betty Smith (a second member with the last name, Smith) would have the file name, NatBeforeTheStormBSmith.jpg.
• Color Space: The recommended color space is sRGB. If you are not familiar with color spaces, ignore this requirement but please understand that a slight color shift may occur when the image is projected. Guidance on Color Space Conversion appears in the Technical Detail section at the end of this document.
• Macintosh Submission: The suggested gamma for a Mac computer is 2.2. If you are not familiar with gamma settings or if you choose to use a different gamma value, please understand that your image when projected may appear slightly dark; you may want to add brightness to compensate for this situation. Guidance on gamma selection for a Mac appears in the Technical Detail section at the end of this document.
• Digital File Submission: digital files are to be submitted by attachment to an e-mail sent to the club’s competition e-mail address, competition@cccameraclub.com. Submit multiple images as individual attachments to a single e-mail if possible. Do not place multiple images into a .zip or similar compressed file. The e-mails must be submitted before midnight on the Friday evening prior to the exhibition. A confirmation notice will be returned when the entry is processed.
• Digital Projector: please understand that even with the club’s excellent digital projector, there can be a variation in color and tonality between the image you see on your home monitor and the image that is projected by the club.
• Suitability: if there are questions about whether a digital file is suitable for exhibition, please contact the Director of Projected Image. A decision by the Director of Projected Image that a digital file submission does not meet the requirements stated above is final and that image will not be included in that night’s exhibition. Any appeal to this decision should be made to the President of the club.

Judging

Judging will be performed by three judges selected by the Director of Judges.

• Performance: the judges shall verbally evaluate all prints and digital files. The judges shall also provide a score for all submissions other than the non-judged digital images.
• Scoring: the prints and digital files shall be judged on a scoring scale of 5 through 9 with the following criteria,
• Score of 5: this is a below-average image.
• Score of 6: this is an average image that has some good and some bad aspects.
• Score of 7: this is a very good image that should be considered for an award within the camera club.
• Score of 8: this is a very high-quality image that has a minor defect.
• Score of 9: this is a very high-quality image of great artistic and technical skill.
• Acceptance: an image that reaches a score of 21 by summing the score of the 3 judges is said to achieve Acceptance and will be eligible for the Image-of-the-Year Award.
• If less that 30% of the entries in a given category achieve Acceptance, the criterion of reaching a score of 21 is reduced to a value at which 30% of the entries in a given category do achieve Acceptance.
• Acceptance Variation: there are several variations to the Acceptance scoring to compensate for not having 3 judgments of the image,
• If the club judge evaluates their own image, they will disqualify themselves by scoring a 5 and the cumulative score will reflect that one judge was not available for that image.
• If only 2 judges are available, the total score is increased by 50% (e.g., 2 scores of 7 = 14, increased by 50% gives a cumulative score of 14+7=21).
• If only 1 judge is available, the score is increased by 200% (e.g., 1 scores of 7 increased by 200% gives a cumulative score of 7+14=21).
• Posting of Scores: the scores from the judging will be posted in the Scores section of the club’s web site, www.cccameraclub.com.
• Posting of Images: the digital images submitted for exhibition will be posted on the club’s picture web site, picasaweb.google.com/CCCameraClub1.
• Criteria: all decisions by the judges are final.

Awards

All prints and digital images that achieve Acceptance are shown at the club’s Annual Awards Banquet. In addition, two sets of awards are given at the Annual Awards Banquet for photographic excellence.

• Cumulative Awards: recognition is given for the photographers with the 3 highest cumulative scores over the year for each category: print, creative, nature, people, and pictorial. In each case, the photographer’s lowest score for the year will not be counted in the cumulative calculation. The current cumulative value for each photographer is available in the Scores section of the club’s web site, www.cccameraclub.com.
• Image-of-the-Year Awards: recognition is given for the photographers whose work is judged the best for each category: print, creative, nature, people, and pictorial. All prints and digital files that have reached the level of Acceptance are eligible for this award. This judging is performed during a special closed judging session in December with non-member judges and the results are not announced until the Annual Awards Banquet.

Technical Detail

This section provides guidance in performing the technical requirements for digital file submission. Specific steps are referenced to the current version of Adobe Photoshop but similar procedures are available in other image editing software.

File Saving
1. File > Save As
2. Set File Name in the format, CatTitleArtist, where Cat denotes the category and is either Cre for Creative, Nat for Nature, Peo for People, Pic for Pictorial, Non for non-judged, and Pri for Print.
3. Set Format = JPEG
4. Check the ICC Profile box
5. Click on SAVE
6. Set Quality = 12 (maximum)
7. Set Format Options = Baseline (Standard); note: Baseline (Optimized) is acceptable but Progressive is not
8. Click on OK

Image Resizing: Method #1 – Image Resize command
1. Image > Image Size
2. Check the Resample Image box and choose an interpolation method (normally Bicubic)
3. Check the Constrain Proportions box
4. Set Pixel Dimensions to adjust the size of your image to match the club’s digital projector.

• For a landscape mode/horizontal image, set the width to 1400 pixels and the height will be automatically adjusted.
• For a portrait mode/vertical image, set the height to 1050 pixels and the width will be automatically adjusted.

5. Click on OK

Image Resizing: Method #2 – Fit Image command
1. File > Automate > Fit Image
2. Set Width = 1400 pixels and Height = 1050 pixels

• The image will be automatically resized to fit within these constraints

3. Click on OK

Color Space Conversion
1. Edit > Convert to Profile (for Elements, this is Image > Convert Color Profile)
2. If Source Space = sRGB IEC…, stop here as image is already in the correct Color Space
3. Set Destination Space = sRGB IEC…
4. Unless you have a specific reason, set Engine = Adobe (ACE), Intent = Relative Colorimetric, and check the 3 boxes (ignore this step for Elements)
5. Click on OK
6. Save this version of your file for exhibition with a unique name

Gamma Selection for a Mac Computer
1. Preferences > Display > Calibrate > Display Calibration
2. Select 1.8 or 2.2