League and Photographer of the Year Overview

The League is a graded competition with a separate competition for each of the Novice, Intermediate and Advanced grades.

The Novice League

This season there will be three categories in each round:

• Colour (Open)
• Monochrome (Open)
• Themed (see below for the themes)

and for each round of the league, each member will be entitled to enter up to three images - One Colour image, one Monochrome image and one Themed image.

For Novice, all entries will be Digital Projected Images (DPI).

There will be six rounds in the league.

Gold, Silver and Bronze medals will be awarded in each of the categories.

Your score for the year in each category will be the sum of your best five scoring images in that category.

The score for the Photographer of the Year (POTY) is the best combined score across the three categories, and the Novice Photographer of the Year will receive a trophy and a gold medal.
All entries must be submitted by email, following the instructions here. Any images submitted that do not follow the instructions may be disqualified from that round of the league.

The Intermediate and Advanced Leagues

This season there will be three categories in each round for each grade:

• Colour Print (Open)
• Monochrome Print (Open)
• Themed (see below for the themes)

and for each round of the league, each member will be entitled to enter up to three images - One Colour image, one Monochrome image and one Themed image.

Please note the following change for the coming season:
For Intermediate and Advanced grades, both Colour Print (Open) and Mono Print (Open) will be prints (all rounds), while Themed entries will be Digital Projected Images (DPI).
Printed images must also be submitted as DPI to facilitate judging nights and image selection for external competitions. Failure to submit the DPI copy of the printed image will result in that printed image being excluded from that round of the competition.

There will be six rounds in the league.

Gold, Silver and Bronze medals will be awarded in each of the categories.

Your score for the year in each category will be the sum of your best five scoring images in that category.

The score for the Photographer of the Year (POTY) is the best combined score across the three categories, and the Intermediate and Advanced Photographers of the Year will receive a trophy and a gold medal.
All entries must be submitted by email and/or print, following the instructions here. Any images submitted that do not follow the instructions may be disqualified from that round of the league.

This season, themes will apply to all Grades, one themed image per round. The themes are listed in the table below.

Round	Theme	Description
1	Activity	Photos depicting activity (should include movement, and not sedentary activity like reading a book). Some examples could be sport, leisure, music, dance.
2	Macro	Images should be very close up.
3	People and the Coast	Capture the diverse range of individuals who engage with and contribute to life by the coast. Examples might include surfers, swimmers, fishermen, walkers strolling along the shoreline, yoga at dawn. See Clean Coasts People and the Coast category for more examples.
4	Reflection	Photos with a reflection.
5	Candid Portraits	Unposed and spontaneous portraits.
6	Flora and Fauna	Photos of plants or animals. FIAP Nature rules do not apply.

On each competition judging night the judge will award marks out of 50. For the purposes of scoring the league, points will be allocated based on the placing of each entry in that month’s competition. This is done according to the adjoining table (a process referred to as Normalisation).

Internal league points (normalised) will be allocated on the placing of each entry.
Joint placing will be allowed from 2^nd place down. E.g. if two images are placed 2^nd then both will get 19 points normalised. Also, in this case the next normalised score will still be 18.

All entries after 11^th place will be awarded 10 points normalised.

Results will be published by the Competition Secretary.

Placing based on Judges score	Normalised Score
1st	20
2nd	19
3rd	18
4th	17
5th	16
6th	15
7th	14
8th	13
9th	12
10th	11
All other	10

Trophies and medals are awarded in each of the ‘Novice’, ‘Intermediate’ & ‘Advanced’ grades as outlined above.
In each of the leagues: Where no more than four people compete, medals will only be awarded to 1st and 2nd place and a certificate for third.
Where no more than three people compete, a medal will be awarded to first place and a certificate for the other places.
It is deemed unlikely that this situation will arise very often as most members in each grade enter at least one league competition, they may then “drop out” for various reasons but they have competed in the league.
In the event of a tie in a category: Medals will be awarded for tied positions. However, once at least three medals have been awarded, no further medals will be awarded in that category for lower placings. For example, if three people tie for 1^st place, then three gold medals will be awarded, but no further medals will be awarded in that category.
In the event of a tie for POTY: Where there is a tie for POTY, then the award will go to the person with the most highest placed images (considered in order from 1^st to last until a resolution is reached). Only counting images will be considered in this process. If there is no resolution by this means, then the award will go to the person with the highest gross (non-normalized) score for their counting images. If there is still no resolution, then a joint award will be made.