Contents: Intent of the Canon Challenges Rules and Guidelines Intent of the Canon Challenges: Our CTF Challenges provide us with friendly photographic competition and sharing of ideas. Above all else, our Challenges exist for us to grow, learn, and have fun with our photography. It is through sharing opinions, thoughts and techniques that we will all become better photographers. To that end it is important for you to not only enter the Challenges but also to voice your opinion by placing comments on the images in the challenges. Please read the challenge rules and guidelines below. The gallery location is published in the challenge announcement thread. RULES AND GUIDELINES The Canon Talk Forum Challenges are open to everyone so please participate. You don't win anything (the eligible entry winner picks the next challenge topic and sets up the galleries and moderates the challenge), but it can be a fun way to practice your photography and get some feedback. Eligible Gallery entries must taken with a Canon digital camera and be taken during the specified time period. Exhibition Gallery entries can use any camera and be taken at any time. * Only 3 pictures of yours can be posted, per gallery (Eligible and Exhibition). A total of 6 images posted per challenge Photo by photo, please share your comments with your fellow participants. Challenges reach their full potential when the dialog becomes as important as the photos themselves. THE CHALLENGE Challenge dates are published in the announcement thread. In the Challenge Gallery there is a link to a World Time service so that you can determine what GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) is for your local time. HOW DO I GET THE PASSWORD TO ENTER? If you are new and do not know the user id and password, please send an email to: CTF2009(-at-)grad.com The prior address ctf2008(-at-)grad.com is still open but we ask you to email the CTF2009 address. Thanks. Please replace (-at-) with @ in the email address before you send it out. One of the challenge administrators will contact you with that information, but please be patient. THEN WHAT? Go to the desired gallery, eligible or exhibition, and edit the gallery. Use browse to locate and upload your picture. Be sure to add the required information below. Help pages for the CTF challenges are located here: http://www.pbase.com/ctfchallenge/ctf_faq IMPORTANT: Please respect our Pbase bandwidth and ensure that your photos are no more than 200k in size. This is a hard and fast rule. Images over 200k (204,800 bytes) will be moved to the pending gallery. Very often your computer will show a different file size. PBase.com is the final authority on file size. You do have the opportunity and are encouraged to make changes to your file size, replace it on PBase.com and return it to the proper gallery. Photos have no limit on dimensions, but bear in mind that the most popular screen size is 1024x768 so try to present your picture to fit accordingly. Viewers are more likely to appreciate your work at its original size without the use of scroll bars! It is recommended that you keep the longest dimension to 800 pixels or less. If you have problems or concerns uploading add a post to the thread. (*)New file size rule of 200k in effect as of May 6th,2009. Old rule was set to a 150k file size limit. Required Information Each submitted photograph should include... 1. Your Name 2. Picture Title Important note: When titling the photo please make sure the same title isn't already used by some other entry or else your photo may not appear in the voting booth 3. Camera Used 4. Date of Picture (for Eligible Gallery only) Optional information that's always appreciated is... 6. Description and Comments 7. Photography Tips 8. Post Processing Details 9. If using Photoshop's "Save For Web" method, which strips out the Exif data from the final saved image file. You may include Exif info like shutter speed, aperture, iso, etc... in the Caption or Tech Notes sections. Note: Pictures too large (200k or 204,800bytes) or missing any of the required information will not be allowed. Please do not upload off-topic entries. The moderators have the final decision on uploading or deleting pictures. Pictures that do not adhere to the guidelines will be moved to the pending gallery, where the owners will have time to put them right and move them back to where they should be. Most pictures that end up in Pending are over 200k. See the tutorials for help. Post-Processing -- Do whatever you like to your photo and the voters will decide if it's too much. UPDATE OR REPLACE There is an "unspoken" agreement regarding changing your challenge entries. Photos are changed all the time as photographers came up with better shots or improved their existing shot. If an image is manipulated further from the original upload, then replacing the original is fine. This retains the comments and the "work flow" of the image. However, it is understood that if an image is replaced with something totally different, the original image should be deleted and the new image should be uploaded as a new image, go to the end of the queue, rather than replace the previous image. Uploading your images early in the challenge isn't a place marker for something better. There IS an advantage in getting in early (more hits, more chance of comments etc) but if you change your mind later on, then please observe a courtesy to the other challenge entrants and upload to the end of the queue. Another important note: Please do not delete or replace your entries once voting has started. Doing do might get you banned from the challenges for up to 6months. If you have any questions please email an admin at CTF2009(-at-)grad.com Also please do not edit other users' posts VOTING When the challenge has ended, you can place your votes in the CTF Challenge Voting booth at http://www.liteserv.com/ctfvotebooth The announcement thread will specify the voting dates. There is usually an separate thread just for voting. BANNED -- 1. Anonymous voting. 2. Voting for your own entries. 3. "Stacking" the vote. Although anybody and everybody is encouraged to vote do not ask friends and family to vote for your pictures. Because we use a "Voting Booth" we can, if needed, track votes by IP address or by ISP. Stacking the vote is easily detected!