Around the end of each year, annual competitions are held based on works submitted to competitions during the year. The winners in this competition receive awards that are announced at the Annual Awards Banquet, normally held in January of the following year.

Awards are made for: (a) the Image of the Year (for each Skill Level separately: Advanced and Intermediate); and (b) the Photographer of the Year.

Image Of The Year:

This annual competition determines the best images submitted into regular competitions held during the previous year in each Division by each Skill Level (Advanced and Intermediate). Gold, Silver, and Bronze and seven (7) Honorable Mention Awards in each Skill Level/Division combination will be determined by the highest score (or combined score if judged by a panel of judges) each eligible image receives.  In the case of ties, the judge(s) will decide the winner(s).

Members may submit into this annual competition any original image that won an award (HM or Excellence) during the prior year's regular competitions that were submitted for posting on the Club's website. Only the original posted images are eligible to be entered. The Competition Chair may limit the number of entries depending on the number of award winning images the previous year.

At the discretion of the Competition Chairperson, Divisions may be combined for the purposes of this competition if there are too few award-winning images in a given Division.

Photographer of the Year

 “Photographer of the Year”  awards will be made for each Skill Level and each Division (provided there were sufficient entries into competition during the year: see below). Gold, Silver, and Bronze Awards will be made for each Division/Skill Level combination to the extent there were sufficient qualifying entries.  “Sufficient” qualifying entries is defined as follows: for a Gold Award in particular Skill Level/Division combination, there must have been at least 40 total entries by all members during the year in that Skill Level/Division combination; for a Gold and a Silver Award, there must have been at least 75 entries; and for Gold, Silver, and Bronze Awards there must have been at least 125 entries.

If there are sufficent eligible images, besides Photographer of the Year awards in Digital and Print, there will also be a Combined Photographer of the Year awards (Gold, Silver, Bronze). These awards will be made to the leading scorers (see below) who did not win a Digital or Print Photographer of the Year award and who entered at least 20% of their images in each of teh Digital and Print Divisions.

“Photographer of the Year” Awards will be made in each of the above Skill Level/Division combination on the basis of the total number of points accumulated over the year in each Skill Level/Division combination from entries in regular competitions. Each entry in a regular competition will score 1 point for the entry. In addition, each entry that received an Honorable Mention Award will score 2 points, and each entry that received an Excellence Award will score 4 points. Thus, an entry that received an Excellence Award will receive a total of 5 points (click here, however, for special rules applying to members who have been moved from Intermediate to Advanced Level during the Competition Year).

Divisions may not be combined for the purpose of making these awards.

Skill Level Eligibility:

Members are eligible for any of the above competitions in the Skill Level to which they were assigned in December of the year. The eligible images for either competition, however, can be from either Skill Level according to the Skill Level of the member at the time the images were entered into competition.

For example, a member may have won an Excellence award while in the Intermediate Skill Level, but s/he subsequently moved up to the Advanced Skill Level.  That image is nevertheless eligible for entry into the Advanced Skill Level Image of the Year competition (in the appropriate Division). For purpose of computing Photofrapher of the Year awards, however, the points assigned to a given image are re-calibrated to what they would have received at the higher level. Thus, for example, if an image won an Excellence Award with 8 points at the Intermediate Level and thus eligible for 5 points at the Intermediate Level, it would only receive 3 pojts in the Photographer of the Year awards at the Advanced level since it would only have received an HM at that Skill Level.