This is a often-asked question. It’s kind of hard to know what you’re doing in the beginning with print competition and taking a gander at some previous entries is quite helpful.
Currently, these are your options:
1. IUSA Image Exhibit
All entries that received merits or loans are displayed at the PPA’s national convention, Imaging USA. This year it it will be held in Nashville, TN February 1-3, 2015. For more information about that see HERE. The image exhibit will be open from 8am – 8pm Sunday & Monday and 8am – 3:30pm on Tuesday, and will be located at Lower Level, Hall C, Inside the Imaging Expo. The exhibit is free and open to the public.
2. Loan and Showcase Books
Each year, images that receive a loan (L) or showcase (GB) designation are published in books by Marathon Press and are available for purchase.
Loan collection books are HERE. The 2014 edition is $69.95 plus shipping, however, if one of your images is in the book, you receive a special reduced price.
Showcase collection books are HERE. The 2014 edition is $59.95 plus shipping, however, if one of your images is in the book, you receive a special reduced price.
If you need to order a book at the reduced/contributor price, call 800/228.0629 to speak with a Marathon Representative, Monday through Friday, 8am to 5pm CST.
3. Observe Competition
This used to be hard, but with modern technology, it has become much easier in recent years. Presently, there are three ways to do this:
A. Attend a live competition in person.
Competitions are generally conducted so that they may accommodate an audience. if you are a member of the organization hosting the competition, there should be no issue with attending. Presently, competitions are conducted on local, state, district and international levels. Keeping in touch with your organizations will allow you to be aware of when these opportunities are scheduled. Most organizations also have an image exhibit following the live competition so that you may peruse all entries at your convenience.
B. Watch a live-streamed competition – Part 1.
Here’s where it starts to gets fun. 🙂
For the past several years, there has been an independent company, called printcompetition.com with a variety of print competition services. A number of local and state organizations are beginning to use this service for administrative functions. This is where competitors can enter their images online and pay their fees. The organization may also opt to rent some competition scoring equipment, which also includes the opportunity to broadcast the competitions online for competitors who cannot travel to the competition.
Bear in mind that not every organization uses this system and this website is not affiliated with the PPA. Streamed competitions are visual ONLY and do not include ongoing AUDIO coverage.
Access the game Day Application HERE (also available on iDevices). Upcoming streamed competitions are also listed on the main web page.
C. Watch a live-streamed competition – Part 2.
And this is where it gets knocked out of the park.
PPA has entered the playground and boy is this hot stuff! IPC 2014 was live-streamed in its entirety. images being judged and the corresponding audio in all competition rooms are broadcast. Due to the number of entries, judging takes place in multiple rooms simultaneously. Up to five rooms were broadcast at a time in 2014. AND entrants received score notifications via text – WOOTNESS!
PPA has also just announced (see HERE) that the Southwest District competition on Jan 8 & 9, 2015 will also be live-streamed. There is a lack of information about how to access that, but I’m assuming (and we know the risk of doing that) that they will be utilizing the same access website as they did for IPC, which is http://stream.theipc.org/ – stay tuned – Wootness will announce more details on this as they are forthcoming.
4. Competition archives.
Generally I don’t make recommendations on Wootness.net that involve spending money. I’m going to make an exception this time.
Because of the appearance of printcompetition.com on the scene, we are now able to review the archive of images that have been entered into the local and state organizations (PPA District and IPC competitions are not included) that have utilized this website for entry and scoring purposes. In order to view any entries other than your own, you must purchase a Premium membership which is $10 quarterly. I do not get a thing for recommending this membership. I think it’s an incredible value for the money – there are over 10,000 images in the archives at this time. The scores the image received are viewable as well as a recording if the image was challenged. Although there is no audio of the entire competition, challenges are recorded automatically and made available on the site. I heartily recommend you purchase a membership – the educational value is exponentially more than the $10 price tag. You may also access individual competitions for a fee of $25.
Now – pay attention to this – although looking through the results and scores and listening to the recorded challenges can be quite helpful – remember that you do not know who the judges are that did the scoring and challenging. They may have been fully affiliated judges, members with Masters degrees, or somewhere in-between. I recommend that my students pay particular attention to scores and critiques by PPA affiliated jurors, but there is no way of knowing who is who when utilizing this site.
5. Digital Presentations.
These are less numerous and a bit harder to locate, but here are two collections of recent images.
PPA’s 2014 Best of the Best: These are the loan images of IPC in slideshow format.
Marathon Press 2013 Loan Book: The 2013 Loan book in PDF format. This is not the usual way of things, so don’t count on being able to see future ones this way.
And there you have it – five ways to peruse past competition entries – have fun!
Christine