Join our Facebook group
Club Competitons & Rules
Skip to Section:
- Monthly Minicomps
- Portfolio Competition
- Edited Video Competition
- Dave Nesheim Memorial Shootout
- Entry Submission Guidelines
- Competition Rules
New in 2013: Points from the minicomps, edited video, and portfolio competitions will count towards overall award placements at the end of the year instead of being treated as separate awards. (The points values for edited video and portfolio have been raised accordingly to give these competitions more weight than the minicomps). The shootout will remain a separate award category but will also count toward your overall point total.
Monthly Minicomps
At each LAUPS meeting, we hold themed "minicomps" for attending members to vote on.
2013 Minicomp Topics:
| Month | Stills | Video |
| February | Odd Couple | Odd Couple |
| March | Echinoderms | Echinoderms |
| April | Flowers of the Sea | Flowers of the Sea |
| May | no minicomp (portfolio contest) | Air Breathers |
| June | Schools | Schools |
| July | Black & White | no minicomp (3-minute edited contest) |
| August | Molluscs | Molluscs |
| September | Sand Creatures | Sand Creatures |
| October | 2014 LAUPS Calendar | Cleaning Station |
| November | Diver in Scene | no minicomp (5-minute edited contest) |
Point Structure for Mini Competitions:
- 1st Place = 5 points
- 2nd Place = 3 points
- 3rd place = 1 point
Minicomp Entry Guidelines:
- New in 2013: each entrant may submit up to 2 images and/or videos
- Please note that there must be at least 3 entrants in a category for a competition to take place. Novice and Open entries may be combined if there are not enough novice entries.
- Videos may be up to forty (40) seconds long and contain up to 3 clips edited together. No music, titles, voiceover - just the raw footage.
- Submit your entries using the upload page. Submissions are due by midnight the night before the meeting.
Portfolio Competition:
Once a year in May, LAUPS has a still image portfolio competition.
Portfolio Entry Guidelines:
- Entrants may submit up to five (5) images that make up a portfolio - your portfolio could show off a particular style, a favorite subject, a recent trip, or any other theme you choose.
Point Structure for Portfolio:
- 1st Place: 10 points
- 2nd Place: 6 points
- 3rd Place: 2 points
Edited Video
In July there is a three (3) minute edited video competition, and in November there is a five (5) minute edited video competition.
Edited Video Entry Guidelines:
- At least 80% of the footage, exclusive of titles, must have been shot underwater.
- Do not put your name on any titles.
- The video may have audio added. Audio must be royalty-free if it is to be posted on the webpage one day.
Point Structure for Edited Video Competitions:
- 1st Place = 10 points
- 2nd Place = 6 points
- 3rd Place = 2 point
Dave Nesheim Memorial Shootout
We're opening up the whole month of October for our members to take pictures that can be entered in the Shootout competition, to be voted on at the November meeting.
Shootout Entry Guidelines:
- All images and video must be taken in local waters during the month of October 2013.
- You can dive on your own, from the beach, on a boat, pretty much however/whenever you like as long as it's Southern California in October 2013
- Still photographers may enter up to three (3) images
- Videographers may enter one (1) edited video.
- Total length cannot exceed 40 seconds
- Music and an opening title are allowed
- Voiceover, additional titles and video effects are NOT allowed
- If there are enough entrants we will have separate novice/open categories; otherwise they may be combined
Point Structure for Shootout:
- 1st place: 10 points
- 2nd place: 6 points
- 3rd place: 2 points
Entry Submission Guidelines:
Still images must be submitted using the upload page by midnight the night before the meeting.
Videos may also be uploaded using the upload page. You can also arrange a different method of digital delivery ahead of time with the webmaster, such as Dropbox or Vimeo.
Late entries will not be accepted, unless you have technical difficulties using the upload page and have contacted the webmaster prior to the upload deadline.
Still image file formats: JPEG is greatly preferred due to file size issues. TIFF and other open standard file types are acceptable. Raw files are strongly discouraged and may not display at all.
Still image size: Our projector has a pixel count of 1400x1050. This is the ideal pixel count for your entries. DPI doesn't matter, that only affects prints.
Video file formats: entries should be submitted as Quicktime movies. Click here to see our recommended settings for exporting your movie to Quicktime.
Projection: Our projector is a Canon SX5O.Our display software obeys color profiles. Our projector has an Adobe RGB profile, and we calibrate to that, so we consider that the ideal profile for your files.
Competition Rules and Guidelines
General Rules:
- To enter any of the competitions and/or vote on entries, the entrant must be a current, paid member.
- Entrants do not need to be present to participate.
- There must be a minimum of three entrants for each competition category
- Winning entries in stills will (eventually) be published on the website. Please let the webmaster or club comp chair know if you do not want your images posted.
- Videos or slideshows may also be one day published the website. For this to occur, any audio used must be properly licensed. Royalty free music may not include rights for web publication; entrant takes the responsibility for web publication of audio.
Open and Novice Categories:
NEW IN 2013: Novice Video category! We encourage all you still photographers whose cameras CAN take video to give it a try and compete!
Members start out in the Novice division and move up to the Open division the next year if their total accumulated points for the year are 25 or higher.
Members may move up to open voluntarily. Members competing as open can never drop back to novice.
If there is an insufficient number of entrants in the Novice or Open divisions, the divisions may be combined for the competition.
Eligibility of Images:
- All images must be taken underwater unless noted otherwise in individual competition rules. No pool or aquarium images.
- For all competitions, entrants must have shot all footage or images themselves.
- Any images that have placed 1st, 2nd or 3rd in a major competition or have been published are ineligible for entry in any club competition.
- Previous minicomp winners may be entered as part of a portfolio competition, but may not be re-entered in future minicomps.
- Previous shootout winners may be entered as part of a portfolio competition, but may NOT be entered in future minicomps.
- Elements from a winning portfolio competition may be used in future minicomps and may also be used as elements in future portfolio competitions, but entire portfolios may not be re-entered.
Conservation Rules:
Marine life should never be stressed or endangered for the sake of a photo. Entries exhibiting the following behavior will be disqualified.
- Divers visibly damaging (e.g. gear dragging or kicking up sand) the environment.
- Animals with signs of stress (e.g. puffed puffers, inking octopus).
- Animals moved to an unnatural environment or risky location.
- Animals being fed artificial food from divers.
- Marine life being touched (e.g. coral polyps, seahorse tails).
- Divers exhibiting poor buoyancy control.
Digital Image Manipulation Rules:
- No image manipulation is allowed, other than the type of full-frame manipulations which happen during the computer processing of raw images, the creation of in-camera JPEGs, or the scanning of slides or negatives.
- For instance, the following are allowed: minor full-frame changes to white balance, brightness, contrast, color, saturation, and sharpening.
- NOT ALLOWED: backscatter removal, addition or removal of subjects, spot adjustments (ie, increasing the color saturation of the subject while decreasing the background).
- Our intent is to run a photo contest, not a Photoshop contest, and to keep the playing field level for those still shooting jpegs and less knowledgeable in Photoshop.
Challenges:
Any member may challenge an image by notifying a Board member with in 48 hours of the competition. The Board of Directors will take up the challenge at the next Board meeting, If the Board finds cause, the owner of the challenged image will have an opportunity to either present all necessary evidence at the Board meeting or to withdraw the image. If an Image is withdrawn, the member will lose points for that image. If the Board disqualifies the image, the member will lose all points accumulated in all competitions for that calendar year and will be barred from any further competition for that calendar year.