PORTRAIT
Images can portray a subject or subjects from all walks of life and should reflect the personality of the subject(s).
• Children – This sub-category must contain a child or children from birth to age 16.
• High School Senior – This sub-category portrays a male or female age 16 to 18.
• General Portrait – This sub-category includes families, groups, couples, and adults (18 and older), relationships, models, and fashion portraits, in addition to tastefully artistic figure studies
ILLUSTRATIVE
Capturing the beauty of nature, wildlife, industry, and architectural areas is considered illustrative.
• Landscape/Nature – This sub-category shares joy and adventures while expressing a sense of place. flowers, seascapes, cityscapes, urban landscapes, and sunsets with or without people can be placed here.
• Abstract/Eclectic – This sub-category contains abstract, intentional camera blurs (ICM), and non-definable image content.
• Commercial – This sub-category is used when images are created for a commercial client to advertise a product and promote a brand or company. This can be an interior or exterior of a structure or within an industrial environment. Illustrative can also be conceptual images that tell a story.
• Drone/Arial – This sub-category contains any imagery created by a drone or taken from any airborne vehicle, (e. g. plane, hot air balloon, etc.)
ANIMALS
• Wildlife – This sub–category includes wild animals in an uncontrolled lighting environment, zoo animals, farm animals, sea creatures, birds in their environment.
• Animal Portrait – This sub–category captures an animal(s) portrait using structured lighting in a studio or controlled outdoor environment, with or without the pet owners control.
ALBUM
• Consists of portrait and story-telling themes. Content may include weddings, Bar & Bat Mitzvahs, birthday or anniversary parties, portrait sessions, high school seniors, collections of similar imagery (e. g. flowers, antiques, souvenirs, etc.) Minimum 20 images (10 pages).
WEDDING
Images created at or about a wedding.
• Wedding Open – Images can portray a subject or subjects from all aspects of a wedding including traditional portraits, candids, or detail work.
• Single Maker Wedding Album – Multiple images combined into a digital album collection exclusively showcasing a specific wedding.
• Multi-Maker Wedding Album – Images in the album must be the work of the two entrants, with a minimum of 20 images per entrant. Each entrant must individually enter the competition and pay appropriate entry fees. Multi-maker Wedding albums will be judged as one entry.
ARTIST
A conceptual image altered or manipulated from its original condition. Creations can be a subtle application using post-processing techniques, or a dramatic combination of details to suggest a larger story. The artist is responsible for the idea behind the image and the work done to create the finished art piece. These 2 categories must include thumbnails of each original image plus additional added images used to create the overall composite. *The use of stock imagery (not AI generated imagery) is permitted in this category.
• Artist Open
• Restoration
REPORTAGE / PHOTOJOURNALISM
Images that illustrate an actual public or non-public event, life, an area of human interest, telling news that have meaning in the context or record of events, high impact, and/or lasting emotional response. Images that illustrate sporting events are included in this category. ONLY basic color and brightness adjustments, cropping, dodging, and burning in are allowed. Only single-capture images will be accepted. Composite and multiple exposure images will not be accepted. The original captured image (in RAW or jpg) must be available if requested by the competition committee.
AI IMAGERY (Artificial Intelligence) *Exhibition Only Category
While AI is quickly taking a hold on image making it does not fall under any of PPColorado or PPA’s image entry categories or rules. These are purely photograph based competitions. Even though sky replacement and object removal are AI based operations currently available in common software, such as Lightroom and Photoshop, this type of imagery is not considered to be AI generated content.
However, we have created an exhibition category where you may enter a purely AI generated image and submit into the PPColorado competition for exhibition only. No category winners or trophies will be chosen. At the conclusion of the image competition, we will display these entries to our members to show what can be done. This will be considered strictly for entertainment. Show us what your imagination and favorite AL software can conjure up.
Download 2023 PPC Image Competition Categories for reference.
