NDPS Competition Information
You will now find in the Members Area of the NDPS website all the information you need to regarding the photographic competitions that are available to members to fully participate in.
Internal competitions
These competitions can be summarised as follows:
Digital League (5 rounds)
Print League (3 rounds)
Annual Print Panel Award
Image of the Year (both digital and print).
In ‘useful documents’ you will find all the rules, terms and conditions of entry for all these competitions which are effective from 1st September 2023. In addition, there is also a schedule of all the competitions dates in chronological order for you to view online or if you prefer download.
The Digital and Print Leagues replace the Photographer of the Year (POTY) competition that has not altered in format for many years. In future the ‘photographer of the year’ will be the member who has gained the highest aggregate score throughout the competition season in ALL the above competitions. The Rules for each competition explain how participation in each competition contributes to a members aggregate POTY score.
However, members do not have to compete in every competition if they prefer not to. For example, a member who does not print their images might choose not to enter the Print League – it is entirely down to each member to decide what competitions they wish to enter and whilst there will be a trophy for the winner of each individual competition not participating in all the available competitions will adversely affect their chance of becoming Photographer of the Year’.
It is recommended that all members take the time to read through the documents and acquaint themselves with all the changes before submitting their first images during the new season of competitions. Please do not assume you know the rules because the change from previous years is significant...!
You will also see that the Image Submission page of the website has been revised to reflect the above changes to the competitions. It also contains confirmation of the deadline date by which PDIs must be entered for all competitions including print competitions.
It is important that when entering images that the image is correctly formatted (size, colour space1 and metadata2) and that the file is correctly named.
The correct colour space is sRGB which is standardised as IEC 61966-2-1. Adobe RGB, and ProPhoto RGB is not the same and should not be used.
With the emergence of AI it seems likely that making sure metadata is correctly recorded will become increasingly important to confirm copyright.
Taking the time to make sure images are correctly formatted and named before submission makes it so much easier to load the competition software ahead of each round of the competition. For example, each error takes about 5 minutes to correct which is not a major issue, but 12 errors could result in more than an hour of non-productive work..!
Inter-Club Battles & External competitions
Besides our own internal competitions each year NDPS participates in two Inter-Club Battles:
Three-way Battle with Ipswich & District Photographic Society and Lowestoft Photographic Club
International Three-way Battle with Foto-Club Koblenz (Germany) and Ciné Photo Club Nivernais (France)
In both these competitions each member is restricted to having a maximum of 2 images being selected. Total images from all clubs in both battles is 21.
In addition, NDPS participates in four external competitions:
Cambridge Camera Club Inter-Club Digital Competition
St. Ives Interprint Competition
EAF Championship (PDI)
EAF Championship (Print)
In the Cambridge competition the total number of images is 6 with each member being restricted to 1 image. St. Ives is 8 images in total and again NDPS tries to select a maximum of 1 image from any one member.
The EAF Championships require a larger number of images with 15 in the first round and 10 in the second round (only the top 10 clubs go through to the second round). NDPS has a policy of selecting at present at least 12 members work for the EAF Championships.
To be able to select the strongest images to represent NDPS in these competitions we have added on the submission page additional links so that members can submit images that they would like to be considered for external competitions.
We look forward to seeing all your images during the forthcoming competitions. The quality of work in the past few years has improved significantly and our increased strength in-depth is no doubt a major contributor to our successes in both the external battles and external competitions.
The documents above can also be downloaded using the appropriate link(s) below{
General Competition Rules that apply to all NDPS competitions effective from 1st September 2023
Rules for the Digital and Print Leagues
Rules for the Annual Print Panel Awad
Rules for Image of the Year (both Digital and Print)
In addition, the following link provides a schedule of all internal competitions that members may wish to download for future reference. This schedule also contains the deadline date by which submissions mst be made via the NDPS website using the correct ‘UPLOAD’ option.