Submitted images will be judged by category, so that all of the images in a category, regardless of media, will be evaluated together in the hope of providing greater consistency in scoring. In all cases, the judges’ score is final. The judges are instructed to mark down images they deem inappropriate for the category, even if the image has been accepted by the competition co-ordinator. Poor presentation (improperly matted print, scratched slide, shifted slide mount) will also result in lesser scores.

Ordinarily, each image will be judged only once, by secret ballot. The club owns an electro-mechanical scoring machine expressly for this purpose. However, any of the judges, or the competition coordinator(s), may spontaneously request a re-scoring of an image should there be, in their view, a serious discrepancy in the individual scores. In this circumstance, the judges will be asked to discuss the characteristics of the particular image and acknowledge, or refute, their individual points of view. Subsequent to the discussion, the image will be re-scored, again by secret ballot. There is no requirement that any judge alter their score from the first attempt.

The judges are also asked to provide brief comments on the images they score, with the aim being to give participants helpful feedback. However, due to the sheer number of submissions it will likely be impossible to provide comments on each and every image.

Scoring

Three judges each give an image a score out of 10, so the final score for an image is a number out of 30. Scoring guidelines are as follows:

• 1-2-3: not normally used
• 4-5: poor quality
• 6-7: average
• 8: above average
• 9-10: exceptional