E. THOMAS SMITH
NATURE PROJECTED IMAGE COMPETITION RULES
2020 - 2021
This annual nature competition was initiated in 1968 by Mrs. Janice Healy in honor of her father. The winner receives the E. Thomas Smith trophy at the banquet in May. The winner holds it for one year, until the following May banquet, when it passes to the next year’s winner.
This competition follows the Photographic Society of America’s (PSA’s) rules for Nature Images. These images shall be truthful to the subject as seen and shall not show evidence of the “hand of man.” The PSA’s rules read:
“No techniques that add, relocate, replace, or remove pictorial elements except by cropping are permitted. Techniques that enhance the presentation of the photograph without changing the nature story or the pictorial content, or without altering the content of the original scene, are permitted including HDR, focus stacking and dodging/burning. Techniques that remove elements added by the camera, such as dust spots, digital noise, and film scratches, are allowed. Stitched images are not permitted. All allowed adjustments must appear natural. Color images can be converted to grey-scale monochrome. Infrared images, either direct-captures or derivations, are not allowed.”
Eligible subjects include, but are not limited to, trees, wild flowers, weeds, grasses, fungi, ferns, mosses, animals or birds (except domesticated), reptiles, insects, fossils, weather, land/seascapes (without boats or other human evidence), geological formations, etc. Animals and birds in zoos, animal farms, and preserves are acceptable if there is no evidence of a man-made environment and the animals are not a domestic species.
Ineligible subjects include cultivated plants or flowers, domestic animals (dogs, cows, etc.), scenes which show human artifacts (fences, buildings, telephone wires, etc.), mounted specimens, museum habitats or groups, or subjects no longer alive.
Post Processing may be performed on nature images using software such as Photoshop. HDR may be used only for exposure blending, but not tone mapping or other HDR tools are to be used which violate the limitations of the competition. Exposure blending combines correctly exposed sections of two or more images of the same subject.
The following is a guideline concerning processing procedures performed on a nature image:
Acceptable
- Cropping and resizing
- Restoration to the original color of the scene
- Selective lightening and darkening
- Removal of dust and scratch marks on scanned images or spots from dust particles on digital camera sensors
- Sharpening
Unacceptable
- Moving, cloning, adding, deleting, rearranging, combining, or changing in any way, elements that affect the integrity of the image content
- No special effects filters can be added or applied
- No tone mapping or other HDR adjustments
Members may enter a maximum of four digital images taken at any time and, although they may have been entered in previous competitions, this is not a requirement. Previous E. Thomas Smith trophy winning images are ineligible for reentry.
Entry Deadline: Entries must be submitted no later than the Sunday before Competition.
Website Entry Procedure
1. Image format shall be JPEG and saved using “highest quality”
2. Maximum pixel dimensions must not exceed 1920 pixels wide and 1080 pixels high. Note: when importing into the website, the image’s size will be decreased automatically if either size restriction is exceeded. This can affect the sharpness of the image.
3. Color profile must be sRGB
4. Submitting to Competition.
a. Login to website
b. Click on the Competitions Menu and select Submit Images to a Competition
c. A list of current competitions will appear. If you are submitting images to the 2021 – 2022 Season E Thomas Smith Nature Competition, click on the Select button next to the competition titled E Thomas Smith 2022
d. At the bottom of the window, you will see four buttons
i. Upload Images into the Competition – If you want to load images that are not in your image library
ii. Add Images from my Image Library – If you want to add images that are already loaded in your Image Library
iii. Print Labels for Print Submission – This function is not used by the SMCC
iv. Return to Competition List – Return to the list of competitions.
e. If you would like to submit images that are currently in your library (If you are not sure what images are in your library, you can see them during this process), perform the following steps:
i. Click on Add Images from my Image Library
ii. The Select Images to Enter into Competition window will appear. You should see an Image Search box appear. Click on the button Reset to Defaults and then click on Search for Images
iii. All images in your Image Library will appear.
iv. For those images that you would like to submit, click on the checkbox next to Selected. If you have multiple pages of images, you can browse through all the pages, selecting all those images you want before clicking on Finished Marking Desired Images
v. Click on Finished Marking Desired Images
f. If you would like to submit images that are not stored in the Image Library, perform these steps:
i. Click on Upload Images into the Competition
ii. Click on Select
iii. Locate the images that you want to upload to the system. Click on the file name. If there are additional images in this folder, hold the <Ctrl> key while clicking on the additional images
iv. Click on Open
v. Click on Save Images and Proceed to Edit Page
vi. At this point, you can edit the titles. The recommendation is to give it the exact title of the image without putting in Dates, your name, or competition levels. Those will appear in the appropriate places on the website. I also recommend that you store the original file name of the image in the Author’s Image ID field. This will allow you to locate the original file in the future.
vii. After all changes are made, click on Save any changes and return to the original page for entering the images.
g. Click on Return to competition list. You are now finished entering your images.
Download PDF HERE