Monthly Image Competition Rules

General: 

• Anyone can enter the competition by submitting their image as described below. APPA members can earn points toward our Photographer of the Year (POTY) annual awards.
• Current members of APPA must have their dues paid by the submission deadline to compete.
• Submission fees are $10 per image for members, $20 per image for non-members and $5 for each critique requested. 
• The submission window will open ten days before the monthly membership meeting from January through October.
• Digital images must be submitted to the website by midnight the Thursday before the monthly meeting. If a change to this schedule is needed, it will be announced on our events page.
• Participants may submit up to two (2) images.
• A minimum of three (3) images must be entered among members to constitute a print competition.
• The entrant's name, business logo or other maker identification shall not appear anywhere in or on the face of any entry.
• The participant does not need to be present at the program planned for the monthly meeting; however, they must be present at the business portion of the meeting to qualify for ribbons or points toward our annual awards.

Entering: 

• To enter you must create an account at the Print Competition website (https://printcompetition.com). You can sign up for a basic or premium membership. Basic membership gives you unlimited competition entries for the calendar year, presently for $16 a year. Premium membership includes email and text message score notices, archive access, game day apps and more for $20 per quarter or $75 per year.
• When the competition is open members will receive an email announcement and it will be announced on our Facebook Members Only Page.

• Once you have created an account go to Austin APPA print comp for the current month. The Austin PPA logo will be displayed along with all the other guilds with open competition events.

• Be sure you select "Austin" APPA vs. "Arkansas" APPA. You can enter the Arkansas competition but you will not earn points toward Austin POTY awards.
• Click on our logo and scroll down the page. You will be asked if you are an Austin PPA member and if this is your first time entering.

• Click on “Create New Image.”  Enter a title and select a category.
• If you want to purchase a critique, check the box and click to upload your image.
• Once your image is uploaded you will receive an email confirmation.
• If you need to replace the image, click on the upload button again and select a different file.
• Click the payment button.

Requirements:

• Entrants must have captured and created the original exposure or exposures. 
• All processing, manipulation, printing or rendering must have been done by the entrant or under their direct supervision.
• No entry will be eligible if it has been made under the supervision of an instructor or as a class assignment. All images submitted must be self-directed. Images created in an educational environment under direct supervision from an instructor are ineligible.
• Any entry that has been created from an existing photograph, portrait, graphic or any other artwork produced by another person is a violation of the competition rules and will not be judged, accepted or displayed. 
• All entrants must have obtained and have access to all necessary releases (model or property) and agree to hold APPA harmless against all claims and liabilities arising out of APPA's display, publication and promotion or other use of each image submitted to APPA.
• If an entry, in the good-faith opinion of the APPA, violates copyright, trademark or any other applicable law, that entry shall be disqualified.

• Files must be sized where the longest dimension is 4000 pixels.
• Each file must contain an embedded color profile of either sRGB or Adobe RGB1998 and be saved at a JPEG quality setting of 10. In most cases the total files size should not exceed 3.5 MB

Judging: 

Two judges will be recruited from the pool of trained jurors published by the Professional Photographers of America (PPA). Merit requests will be submitted to PPA for judges interested in earning service merits. A maximum of 4 service merits for judging may be awarded per year from any one community guild.

One judge will provide scores and critiques. A second judge will provide scores and a tie breaker called judge’s choice. If the number of critiques ordered is more than the first judge can supply, the second judge may be invited to provide a portion of the critiques ordered. Critique fees will be passed on to the judge providing the critiques.

If a guest speaker for the month is familiar with the traditional PPA scoring system and the 12 elements of a professional photograph as described below, that speaker may be recruited to serve as our second judge to supply scores, supply the speaker’s/judge’s choice tie breaker and possibly critiques if there are more than the first judge can supply.

Images will be judged considering the following twelve (12) attributes of a professional photograph, as defined by the (PPA).

1. Impact  2. Creativity  3. Style  4. Composition

5. Print Presentation 6. Color Harmony 7. Center of Interest  8. Lighting

9. Subject Matter  10. Technical Excellence/Print Quality  11. Technique  12. Story telling

CLICK HERE FOR DETAILED ATTRIBUTE DESCRIPTIONS

Judges will use the traditional (PPA) 100-point scoring system.

PPA's Original Scoring Scale

Exceptional	100-95
Superior	94-90
Excellent	89-85
Deserving of a Merit	84-80
Above Average	79-75
Average	74-70
Below Exhibition Standards	69-65

Judges will evaluate the images for the month and enter their scores independently. Scores will be averaged together to arrive at the final score for each entry.

• A  speaker or judge selects their first three choices based on their personal preference which may or may not be tied to how they scored the images.
• In the event of a tie, the speaker’s/judge’s choice will be used to break the tie.
• If the 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd choice selections do not break the tie, then the maker with the highest individual score will win the placement.
• If a tie is still not broken, two winners may be awarded placement at the discretion of the image competition director.

Critiques:

Judges will submit 3-to-5-minute critiques and funds collected are sent directly to them. They may record a video (typically MP4 files) or audio only.

• Recordings will be uploaded to the printcompetition.com website where only the audio portion of critiques will be posted.
• Premium members on printcompetition.com will receive an email announcing that an audio file has been posted. It will say that there was a judge’s debate regarding your image, however our monthly competitions are judged independently.
• Printcompetition.com was built to support live image competitions where discussion among the jurors is recorded. Our two judges do not typically discuss the images submitted each month.
• APPA records judge discussions at our annual competitions.
• Premium members can listen to critiques from the Past Entries page in your account (see the link in the top right corner of your account).
• Premium members can also listen to critiques through the archive pages and listen to critiques on images entered by other photographers.
• Video critiques are not guaranteed. Some judges are only equipped to produce audio critiques.
• Judges are reminded to assume makers do not receive a visual critique and to avoid language that relies on seeing their feedback.
• If a judge does supply video critiques, they will be forwarded to the makers through the competition director.
• Critiques are due the Friday after the monthly membership meeting where results are announced.

Awards: 

Members who participate in monthly image competitions are not required to be present to receive scores and critiques. However, members must attend the business portion of the monthly meeting (or the portion of the meeting where the results are presented) to receive ribbons or to receive points toward Photographer of the Year (POTY) awards.

• For participation, competing members will receive one (1) point toward the POTY award for participation. This is only 1 point per month whether the makers submit 1 or 2 images in the monthly competition. 
• For placement, competing members will receive 3 points for first place, 2 points for second place and 1 point for third place based on the combined scores of at least two judges. Ribbons will be presented for 1st, 2nd and 3rd places.

• For speaker's/judge's choice, members will earn one (1) additional POTY point.
• Only the highest-ranking speaker's/judge's choice earns the extra point.
• A ribbon is also awarded to the first-choice image maker.

• For images that earn a merit level score (80 or above), members will earn one additional point toward POTY. This is in addition to participation, placement or speaker/judge’s choice points.
• Non-members are not eligible for ribbons or points toward any awards but will receive scores and critiques (for premium members).

For questions contact the competition director at:  competition@austinppa.com

2/19/2026 VAL