Image Competition Opportunity for Serious Competitors

One of the barriers to print competition is expense. By the time you pay for printing, mounting, laminating, matting, etc, you’ve got quite a wad of cash invested. The last time I ordered a straight 16×20 mounted laminated print, it was in the region of $50. And that’s cheap. Times that by 4 images in your case and that’s $200. Inside, I’m chuckling, though, and I’m sure some of you are, too. Rarely do all 4 of my prints satisfy me on the first run-through. The first time I competed, I ran through 11 prints to get to my final 4. So, my costs for that competition were quite high.

By the time you’re ready to ship your prints, you’ve got at least $200 dollars invested in prints. And then there’s that “approved shipping case” that’s at least another hundred, and the $90 entry fee and the rush overnight UPS shipping, because a lot of … ahem … us… wait until pretty close to the deadline to send those babies off … well, let’s just say that each step in competition can be quite costly.

So, with competition opportunities as limited and as expensive as they are, it’s rare to come across a decent competition like the one I’m about to clue you in on.

Photo Pro Network (also known as the Kentucky Professional Photographers Association, Inc.) has an annual membership fee of $49. They have several image competitions per year.  One is called the Hot Shots Summer Image Competition, which is coming up shortly.

The Hot Shots competition allows 10 digital entries with an entry fee of $5 per image. Each image is not only judged, but they are critiqued and BONUS of BONUSES (BONUSI?) the image competition/critique is broadcast live for FREE on the internet. Yeah, you don’t gotta drive NOwhere.

And the other bonus is this. You don’t have to be a member to enter and have your image judged and critiqued. You won’t be eligible for prizes and awards, though.

I’d like ya’ll to go ahead and join, though. I think these people are running this all crazy-like. $5 entry fee! You’d think you’d get what you pay for, but you know what? In this case, you get a LOAD more than you pay for.

The judges they get are pretty decent. I don’t know who is on the judging panel for the upcoming Hot Shots competition, but Jessica Vogel, an affiliated PPA judge will  be there as a speaker on print competition, so I’m going to make a wild guess that she’s judging, as well. Jessica judged the 2013 PP of Ohio competition, where I was assistant print chair and was I able to observe her judging style throughout the day. I was impressed & am fully confident that the rest of the judges chosen by PPN will be as qualified as Jessica.

Since I’m  not into recommending things I haven’t done myself, rest assured that I have entered print competitions through the PPN before. I used their system in both 2011 and 2012 to weed down some images for competition later on in my home state. In December of 2011, I entered six images that I was considering for the 2012 Northeast District. Since my home state of Ohio was hosting the 2012 District competition, I wouldn’t have the additional opportunity of submitting 6 images to Ohio for our state competition that year. I love that we host the District competitions so often, but I don’t like the loss in competition opportunity. So, the PPN fills that gap in the pre-IPC flowchart.  😉

Through this additional opportunity, I was able to get some input on several images that I was unsure of. I ditched the ones that scored below an 80 and moved forward with the ones that did.

The only criticism I can make of the PPN competitions is that they have yet to change their requirements over to match the dimension requirements of higher level PPA competitions. For digital entries, the PPA standard is 4000 pixels on the longest side, but for PPN, the measurement is currently 3000. I’m hoping they’ll make that change some time in the future. It’s not a major big deal, but it’s another set of specs to keep track of in an already confusing rule-laden process.

So, all you folks out there that are serious about competing; the deadline is July 11 at midnight. The fee is $5 per entry. Get off your arse and do this! Quick, before the people in charge raise the entry fee.

Here are the important links you need for now, come back later and I’ll tell you all about the incredible LIVE competition broadcasts, you’re gonna squeal! (oh yes, yes you are.)

Entry deadline: Thursday, July 11, 2013 Midnight EST

Juding/Critiques LIVE: Sunday, July 14, 2013 4:15 PM EST

PPN Hot Shots Image Competition Information

PPN Hot Shots Summer Print Critique Rules

JOIN the Photo Pro Network (PPN)

*As always, this is an unpaid, unsolicited review. Christine is a member of PPN, but since she has been a member for less than one hour, no bribing incidents have had time to occur.