Covid has meant that we have had to make a number of adjustments to how the Annual Competition is managed this year. The club  will not be accepting prints this year, so instead there will be an increase in the number of digital entries you can make.  

 Beginners
 Normally, you would be entering up to 10 colour prints, 10 mono prints and 10 digital images on an open subject, as in the bi-monthly competitions.  This year, you can enter up to 15 colour and 15 mono digital images   You don’t have to enter both sections if you don’t wish to, so if you choose to enter one section only, it will be up to 15 images, on an open subject.
 
Advanced
 Normally you would be entering 10 colour prints, 10 mono prints and 10 digital images.  Having had to lose the prints, you can now enter up to 30 digital images.  This being the Annual, the Advanced section is divided into sections, of which there are now 7, as we decided at the last AGM that mono digital images should be a section in their own right, as they are in NEMPF and the salons.  These are:
 
Creative
Pictorial
Photojournalism
Portrait
Record
Monochrome
Nature
 
You can distribute your chosen images across all seven sections if you wish, or just choose two or three – the choice is yours. 
Normally, if you wanted to enter all your digital images in one section, that was fine,
This year, with 30 images which could be potentially entered by one person into one section, please  enter your work in a minimum of two sections, just for the sake of the judge! 
Since one of the sections in monochrome, which is any subject but in a single colour, this should not be unnecessarily restrictive!

And finally ... some notes on what the sections mean.
 
Creative – this means montages, or applied artistic techniques/textures, in other words, creating an image that could or did not exist naturally (if in doubt, have a look at the websites of some of the BPE salons and see the sort of work that is accepted for their creative sections).  Straightforward HDR is not ‘creative’, in this sense, so could be entered in the Pictorial section.
Pictorial – self-explanatory
Photojournalism – bit of a grey area with Record, but basically photojournalism is a record of things happening, as part of a story which needs to be illustrated – which would certainly include Covid queues and, conversely, things not  happening.  But in all cases, an activity.  
Portrait – self-explanatory.  Portraits of people or animals.
Record – see above, photojournalism.  Record shots are essentially about things, or parts of things.  This can include buildings, machinery, art works ...  either whole or a tiny detail of a larger object.
Monochrome – black and white, sepia toned, a single colour tone and white.  Black and white images with a single splash of colour retained are classed as colour, not monochrome.