Competitions
Focus hosts monthly judged competitions for members of all levels. Guests may enter work for critique only. There are categories for Color Prints, Monochrome Prints, and Color and Monochrome Digitally Projected Images. Members can submit only 2 entries per medium, for a maximum of 3 entries per competition. (Any Competitions done solely via Zoom will not have Prints as part of the competition)
Photographic subjects are specified for each month or will be “Open”, meaning the subject is left to the photographer to decide. To view the subjects for upcoming competitions, visit the Calendar page or grab the PDF from the Competition Definitions page with the full list for the year.
Members who meet the annual requirements can advance to the next competition level the following year. Details are in the Competition Rules PDF.
Submitting Digital Images
Images for digital projection must be no larger than 1440 pixels in height and 2560 pixels in width. Files must be in JPG format with sRGB profile embedded. Maximum file size is 2560 KB (2.5 Meg). File names must start with your initials followed by an underscore. After the underscore, put the image title; but limit the name to 25 characters including spaces. If the “true” filename is longer than 25 characters, abbreviate it to 25 characters and include the full name in the comments section of the Digital Entries Submission form.
The submitted images must have the name of the member and the title of the image embedded in the image file metadata. (In Photoshop – Document Title and Author, In Lightroom – Title and Creator) and instructions on how to do this are on the Digital Submissions page. The member will receive a confirmation that the image has been received.
We have put together an Action and Export Preset for Digital Submissions for PS / PSE / and Lightroom. Download the ZIP file for Focus LRExport PSAction (Right click and Save, PDF instructions included in the ZIP file). These tools will help you consistently prepare competition images with the proper filesize, image dimensions, color space, filename, etc. (and they have been updated to the new 2560×1440 size we use as of July 2023)
Files are due no later than Midnight (Mountain time) on the Saturday before the competition. Visit the Digital Submissions page to submit your entries for our monthly competitions.
Additional Materials
A PDF of the complete FCC Competition Rules is available. Everyone should read the complete rules document to make sure they are following all our rules and won’t have any issues with their images being rejected for any competition.
You should have the Adobe PDF Reader already installed on your computer. If not, you can download the install file from the Adobe Reader page.