Disclaimer: The Kodak Challenges were originally sponsored by the Eastman Kodak Company but are no longer associated with the Eastman Kodak Company.

Each challenge is governed by a moderator, who chooses the theme for the challenge. The selection of the moderator is explained near the end of this document, along with the duties of the moderator.

Themes are customarily broad enough to allow almost anyone to participate. For example, "Seasons of the Year" would be a sufficiently broad theme, but "Winter" would be a poor theme because we have participants all over the world, many of whom are not experiencing winter at any given time.

Duration

In each challenge, there is a submission period followed by a voting period. The submission period customarily begins soon after the end of the previous challenge and lasts long enough to include at least four weekends, customarily ending on a Tuesday.

The voting period begins when the submission period ends and lasts for one week, customarily ending on a Tuesday.

The precise dates and times are chosen by the moderator and announced, along with the theme, in a post at the Kodak SLR Talk Forum at DPReview.

Galleries

For each challenge, there is a challenge gallery at Pbase. The challenge gallery should reiterate the dates and times of the submission and voting periods and should have links to the DPReview thread and the Idiots' Guide.

The challenge gallery contains two subgalleries:

1. The competition gallery:
• You may enter photos you took during the submission period using any camera.
• Photos not taken during the submission period may not be entered in the competition gallery.


2. The exhibition gallery:
• You may enter photos you took at any time with any camera.

You may enter up to four photos in each gallery. All photos must conform with the theme chosen by the moderator. If there is any dispute whether a given photo conforms with theme, the moderator decides whether the photo is eligible. In borderline cases, it is customary to allow the photo to be entered and to remind people that their votes should take into account how well each photo expresses the theme.

There are no restrictions on post-processing photos in either gallery. You may enter images that are composed of multiple photos. In the competition gallery, if an image is composed of multiple photos, each component photo must satisfy the same requirements as non-composite photos.

Submitting Photos

You do not need a Pbase account to submit photos. In fact, the submission process works better if you are not logged into Pbase.

You do need to have cookies enabled at Pbase.

To submit a photo, open the Competition or Exhibition gallery and click on "edit this gallery" at the top of the window. You will be asked for a password. Type "pixelcount". With any luck, you should then see a screen for uploading a photo.

After you have uploaded a photo, you will be able to edit that photo as long as your Pbase cookie does not change. Things that may change your cookie include logging into or out of Pbase and changing your password. Also, if you copy a photo from one gallery to another, you may lose the ability to edit either the copy or the original, so don't do that.

If you need to edit a photo but discover that you have lost edit access, post a message in the Challenge thread at the Kodak SLR Talk Forum at DPReview and someone will send you a password with edit rights.

You may upload photos only during the submission period.

In each gallery, you may have no more than four photos at any one time. You may delete any of your photos and upload additional photos at any time during the submission period provided that you never exceed the limit of four photos at one time.

You may edit or retouch any photo that you have previously uploaded and replace the corresponding photo at any time during the submission period. You do this from the "edit image" page corresponding to that photo at Pbase, which does not change the position of the photo within the gallery.

Except for editing or retouching a previously uploaded photo, all photos must be uploaded at the end of the gallery, where they are usually placed by default.

Photos may not exceed 300 kilobytes in size and the shorter side may not exceed 700 pixels.

If possible, please include EXIF data in photos in the competiton gallery. You can do this in Photoshop by using "Save As", not "Save for Web". Usually, a JPEG quality level of 7 or 8 is about right. Please do not use a higher quality level than is necessary to preserve the visual appearance of the photo.

Voting

General guidelines:

• You are not required to have entered any photos in the challenge in order to vote.
• If you entered any photos in a gallery, you are morally obligated to vote in that gallery. Otherwise, your own photos have an unfair advantage.
• Please consider both the quality of the photos and their appropriateness to the theme while you are casting your votes.

There are two methods for voting:

• The online Voting Application
• Voting by posting at DPReview

The moderator must choose which method to use and announce the voting method in a thread at DPReview.

If the moderator chooses to use the online Voting Application, anyone may vote by going to http://warrensarle.com/vote/ and following the directions there.

If the moderator chooses to have voting done by posting at DPReview, anyone may vote by posting a message containing their votes in the appropriate thread at the Kodak SLR Talk Forum at DPReview.

In each gallery:

1. You must assign exactly four votes to the one and only photo you choose for first place.
2. You may assign up to three votes to any number of other photos provided that your total number of votes does not exceed 16.
3. You may not assign fractional or negative votes.
4. You may not assign any votes to your own photos.

If the moderator chooses to have voting done by the Voting Application, voting rules 1-3 are automatically enforced. The moderator is required to enforce voting rule 4.

The moderator tallies the votes and ranks the top five photos within each gallery according to the total number of votes received. The Voting Application can do the arithmetic if the moderator has chosen to use it.

Irregularities

In exceptional circumstances, the moderator may change the dates and times of the submission periods after the challenge has started. In such circumstances, the moderator should make every effort to avoid giving an unfair advantage to any particular individual or group. If someone requests a change in the submission or voting periods on grounds of hardship, positive evidence of the alleged hardship should be provided.

If the moderator announces the theme but neglects to specify the time that the submission period begins, the announcement will be taken to imply that the submission period begins at the moment the announcement was posted. If the Pbase galleries are not ready at that moment, please have patience with the moderator.

If there is a conflict between the times in the dpreview announcement and the challenge's pbase page, and neither is obviously in error, the earlier starting time and the later ending time shall be in effect, and the moderator should prominently post a correction to that effect in the dpreview thread when the inconsistency is pointed out.

If the voting application is used, the moderator is responsible for checking whether anyone votes for their own photos. If so, that person's votes must be disqualified.

If a voting post does not follow the rules in the previous section, the moderator or some other good citizen should point out the problem to the voter and ask the voter to correct it. If the votes are not corrected by the end of the voting period, the moderator must either correct the votes or disqualify all of the votes by that voter for the gallery or galleries where the problem happened, using the following procedure.

Let X represent the maximum number of votes assigned to any photo in the gallery.

1. If the number of votes assigned to any photo is not a whole number, the fractional part is discarded.
2. If two or more photos are assigned X votes, or if X is greater than 4, all votes in the gallery are disqualified.
3. If X is less than 4, the photo that was assigned X votes is given 4 votes instead of X votes.
4. Any negative number of votes is changed to zero.
5. If the total number of votes is greater than 16, all 1-point votes are changed to zero. If the total number of votes is still greater than 16, all 2-point votes are changed to zero. If the total number of votes is still greater than 16, all 3-point votes are changed to zero.

The Moderator

The photographer who submitted the winning photo in the competition gallery becomes the moderator for the next challenge. If there is a tie for first place, the tie is broken in favor of the photo that received the most 4-point votes. If there is still a tie, the tie is broken in favor of the photo that received the most 3-point votes, and so on. If there is still a tie, the photo entered earliest wins.

If the winner abdicates his/her social responsibilities, the photographer who took the second-place photo becomes the moderator. If the second photographer also abdicates, anyone who entered the challenge may volunteer to be the next moderator. If there are two or more volunteers, the one with the photo receiving the most votes will be moderator, with ties broken as above.

The moderator:

1. chooses a theme for the challenge
2. creates galleries at Pbase for the challenge (actually, Warren has to do this until he writes instructions to explain to other people how to do it)
3. posts an announcement of the challenge in a new thread at the Kodak SLR Talk Forum at DPReview (usually by copying the announcement for a previous challenge and making appropriate edits) describing the theme and specifying the precise dates and times the submission period begins and ends
4. answers questions about the eligibility of photos
5. resolves disputes regarding the challenge
6. posts an announcement when the submission period ends and the voting period begins
7. posts an announcement when the voting period ends
8. tallies the votes and posts an announcement with the results, naming the moderator for the next challenge
9. moves the top five photos to the beginning of each gallery

The moderator may make reasonable changes to the above rules for the duration of the challenge that (s)he moderates.

2007-01-09