Guidelines to help pick your Photos/Images for a BCC Clinic/Competition
- Start by reviewing the specific BCC Clinic categories to see which photo/image categories interest you or suit your photography style
- Review your image archive or plan to capture a new image for each of your categories.
- There are 4x “common” photo/image categories in the BCC clinics**
and 1x “Digital Fine Art” category.
- Members are allowed to choose 2x of the 4x common categories, and the Digital Fine Art category (if they so choose) as this category is optional – for a total of 3x images max
- Please Do Not submit photo/images that have previously been submitted to any BCC clinic/competition or any other competition. (This includes the same photo from a different angle)
- Don’t place names or watermarks on your photo – the image should be anonymous
- Don’t save your name in the filename of the photo – the name should reflect the image/category
- For best judging results choose images :
- That are a good fit/match to the image category you have chosen
- Use “leading lines” to draw the viewers eye into the scene
- Images that are sharp and in focus
- Are not over-exposed or captured in harsh light
- Are not over-sharpened or overly processed with filters
- Do not have blown out sky’s or bright areas that distract the viewer
- Save your photo/image as a JPEG file for uploading to the BCC website
- Save your photo to size 1920×1080 for landscape and 1080 x 880 for portrait
(note: you may have to try several portrait settings until you find one that works for your image)
- Now that you have 2-3 photos/images that you will use for the clinic – move on to editing.
**Note: The BCC Verginnia Berrie competition is similar to a clinic, but it has 10x common image categories to choose from, as well as the optional Digital Fine Art category.
Members submit up to 5x common images and one Digital Fine Art image for a total of 6x images.
Editing your Photos/Images:
- Once you have chosen your images, you should perform some basic editing of your photos/images to better prepare them for Clinic judging.
- “Editing Do’s” – the following editing functions ARE allowed under the common categories:
- Exposure and Colour adjustments, Brightness and Contrast adjustments
- Sharpening/De-noising via software
- Hue and Saturation adjustments
- Vibrance enhancement
- Cropping (changing the image focus by cropping out unwanted portions of the image)
- Applying of (discrete) photo filters
- Cloning out or removing small distracting items/objects (street sign, pop can, branch or twig) for a cleaner image
- “Editing Don’ts” – These editing functions are NOT allowed under the common categories:
- You cannot INSERT any object, person, or structure into your image that was not originally in the image
- You cannot REPLACE the sky or the foreground when editing in the common photo categories
- You cannot CREATE a composite image (an image made up of multiple other images/items) into the common photo categories – even if you own the other images.
- Editing under the Digital Fine Art Photo/Image Category:
- The Digital Fine Art image category has the most relaxed photo/image editing rules within the BCC for a clinic or competition
- A Digital Fine Art photo/image edit may use advanced techniques including but not limited to:
- Sky replacement
- Foreground replacement
- Composite images- Note: all images for a composite must be owned/created by the image maker (they cannot be downloaded from a website)
- Advanced Photoshop/Lightroom functions
- Generative AI (used to create image data that did not exist previously in the makers image) is still NOT approved for use within the Digital Fine Art category.
Advanced editing techniques do not necessarily need to be used to submit an image to the Digital Fine Art Category