Timing
- The Annual Portfolio Competitions will be held in February for Open and November for Novice.
- Entries will close around two weeks prior to the meeting date to allow time for the external judge (appointed by the WAUPS Committee) to review the entries and return the results and feedback. Exact dates will be published in the WAUPS enews to members.
Portfolio type
- You can choose whatever images you like for your portfolio, but they generally fall into two types:
- A “theme” portfolio will have a specific focus such as a colour, location, fish species, etc.
- A “range” portfolio showcases a range of skills and interests such as macro and wide-angle photography and the ability to capture action, behaviour, portraits or detail
Images
- All portfolio competitions will be projected in digital format so only jpeg files will be accepted.
- Each photographer must submit a single portfolio made up of:
- Six images for the Open Portfolio Competition; or
- Four images for the Novice Portfolio Competition
- All images on a solid colour background of choice and saved as a jpeg file. A background colour of black or dark grey provides good framing to the selected images.
- Sizing of the portfolio is dependent on whether you use Photoshop or Lightroom. See ‘Example ways to create a portfolio’ below.
- A rectangle landscape orientation works best for on-screen judging but you can choose a different orientation if you wish (such as square or portrait orientation).
- The images forming your portfolio can be different sizes and orientations. They can be displayed in whatever order or layout you think works best. You can add a stroke/border to your images if you wish.
- Images used in portfolio competitions must not be the same images (or very similar images with only minor variations) used in any previous portfolio entry as the intent of this competition is to showcase unique, content-diverse images. If the portfolio entry contains images that the committee considers to be the same as used in previous entries, the portfolio entry will be disqualified and not included in the judging.
- It is acceptable to use images previously submitted into the Pixels competition.
- An image that has won Image of the Year competition is not eligible to be used in the portfolio.
- If the portfolio entry contains less than the required number of images, it will be disqualified and not included in the judging.
Example ways to create a portfolio
There are many ways of creating a digital portfolio and suggested below are two approaches.
- Using Photoshop or Elements
- Create a new file in Photoshop (FILE menu, option NEW) with a Width of 6000 pixels, a Height of 4300 pixels and a resolution of 240 pixel/inch (you are asked for these when creating a new file).
- Fill the background of this new file with black (or a solid background colour of your choice) (EDIT menu, option FILL…then fill Contents with the chosen colour at an Opacity of 100%).
- Copy and paste your images onto the background and resize and arrange. You might also like to add a stroke/border to each image (EDIT menu….option STROKE).
- Using Lightroom
- In the Library module, put your final selection of images into a collection. Then choose this collection folder so that the images appear in the film strip at the bottom.
- Go to the Print module and in the Layout Style palette choose Custom Package. Scroll down the right side palettes until you get to the one called Print Job. At the top choose Print to: JPEG file. Tick the box for Custom File Dimensions and type in 28 inches x 20 inches, also choose 240dpi and 100% quality. Go to the Page palette and tick the box Page Background Colour and click on the colour box and choose a solid colour of your choice.
- Add your images by dragging and dropping them from the filmstrip onto the background and arrange.
- You might also like to add a stroke to each image (Image Settings palette…option Inner Stroke, choose the width and colour).
- It is advisable to turn off the image cell guides (Rules, Grids & Guides palette….uncheck the image cells option) as this can be mistaken for a stroke as the cell guide is a white line.
- Once finished, click the Print to File button at the bottom to save it as a jpeg.
It is likely that the final jpeg image for submission is a very large file (anywhere up to 20MB). This is fine and will ensure that the judge can view your portfolio at a large size on his/her screen. Members are responsible for ensuring their portfolio is sized correctly so that it displays well for the judging.