>>> Last Photographer Standing - The RULES <<<

[Andy]

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(25 March 2008) Wow! We made it through the whole process! We're currently in the process of doing some revising and prepration for LPSII... stay tuned, things in this thread are subject to change in the coming days.

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The Competition:

Dgrin Last Photographer Standing contest is a straightforward knockout competition with just three rounds: Qualifying Rounds, Semifinals and a Grand Finale. (See the diagram)




Every two weeks, a Qualifying Round.
There will be 20 qualifying rounds over the year. Each time, 10 people are selected for the next round, a Semifinal.

Every three months, a Semifinal.
There will be four semifinals a year. Only the Qualifying Round winners can play, up to 50 of you. 10 advance from each Semifinal to the Grand Finale.

Once a year, a Grand Finale.
Only Semifinal winners can play. That’s up to 40 of you. The winner is the Last Photographer Standing.


Confused?
Here's a diagram,

• Qualifying Contests (this includes the semifinals and grand finale) last 2 weeks, and the competition goes for 1 year.
• Each semifinal cycle (every 12 weeks) has up to 50 eligible entrants (taken from qualifying contest finalists).
• The grand finale has up to 40 eligible entrants (taken from the finalists of the 4 semifinals).

...and a schedule,

March 5 - start of the 1st contest
March 19 - finalists chosen and beginning of 2nd contest
April 2 - finalists chosen and beginning of 3rd contest
April 16 - finalists chosen and beginning of 4th contest
April 30 - finalists chosen and beginning of 5th contest
May 14 - finalists chosen and beginning of 1st semifinal contest

May 28 - semifinal finalists (10, eligible for Finale) chosen w/open voting for a public choice award,
and beginning of 6th contest
June 11 - finalists chosen and beginning of 7th contest
June 25 - finalists chosen and beginning of 8th contest
July 9 - finalists chosen and beginning of 9th contest
July 23 - finalists chosen and beginning of 10th contest
August 6 - finalists chosen and beginning of 2nd semifinal contest

August 20 - semifinal finalists (10, eligible for Finale) chosen w/open voting for a public choice award,
and beginning of 11th contest
September 3 - finalists chosen and beginning of 12th contest
September 17 - finalists chosen and beginning of 13th contest
October 1 - finalists chosen and beginning of 14th contest
October 15 - finalists chosen and beginning of 15th contest
October 29 - finalists chosen and beginning of 3rd semifinal contest

November 12 - semifinal finalists (10, eligible for Finale) chosen w/open voting for a public choice award,
and beginning of 16th contest
November 26 - finalists chosen and beginning of 17th contest
December 10 - finalists chosen and beginning of 18th contest
December 24 - finalists chosen and beginning of 19th contest
January 7 - finalists chosen and beginning of 20th contest
January 21 - finalists chosen and beginning of 4th semifinal contest

February 4 - semifinal finalists chosen and the beginning of the Grand Finale
February 18 - public voting for the Dgrin's Last Photographer Standing!

March 3 - Start all over again...
***This date is currently pending, please stay tuned. -Doctorit 18Feb08

[Andy]

The Rules
[effective: 5 March 2007]

CONTEST OVERVIEW

• Each contest will last 2 weeks. Every other Monday at 00:01 (12:01am), NYC time (GMT -5), a contest will end, and a new one will begin.
• There will be four, 12 week cycles each year. Each cycle consists of 6 contests: 5 qualifying rounds and 1 semifinal.
• A once-yearly Grand Finale will determine the Last Photographer Standing.
• At the end of each contest, 10 finalists will be selected by a panel of judges. An open vote determines a winner for each semifinal. The Grand Finale winner is determined by open vote alone.
• Any registered member of Dgrin is eligible to enter the qualifying contests. The semifinal contest will be open only to the finalists of the 5 previous contests (up to 50 eligible). The Grand Finale will be open only to semifinal finalists from the entire year (up to 40 eligible).
• You can qualify as a finalist up to 5 times per semifinal round and up to 4 times per Grand Finale (year), however, you can only enter 1 photo in each semifinal or the Grand Finale.
  
  
  JUDGING/WINNING
  
  
• The panel of judges for each contest may consist of Dgrin moderators, Artists-in-Residence, and specially appointed guest judges.
• Judges rankings will be compiled, and finalists from each qualifying round will be announced 72 hours after the close of the given contest round.
• Public Choice Award (4/year): The winner of each semifinal contest, selected by an open vote, is the recipient of Dgrin's Public Choice Award.
• Dgrin's Last Photographer Standing (1/year): The winner of the Grand Finale will be selected by two rounds of open voting. The first round will contain all eligible entries (up to 40). The 10 photos earning the most votes will move on to the second round, where an open vote will determine the Last Photographer Standing.
• Voting is open to any registered member of Dgrin. The voting will start after the close of the contest period, and will last for 72 hours. In the event of a tie, there will be a sudden-death vote off! A new 24-hour poll will be opened immediately to select the one winner from the tied entries.
• Judges (to be spearheaded by the Artists-in-Residence) will be providing critique on every finalist photo.
  
  
  PHOTO ENTRIES
  
  
• To be eligible, digital photos must be shot during the respective 2-week contest period. Entries must have exif embedded or appended. Click here and here for help. Photos entered without proper exif showing a clear shot date will be disqualified. Photos made via HDR, you can include the exif from one of the merged images.
• Only one photo may be entered into the contest thread per photographer. You may post your potential entries for comment/critique in a separate thread in the Contests and Challenges Forum.
• You may enter a photo into the contest thread at any time during the contest period, and you can also change that submission at anytime during the contest period, by editing your post. The order of entries in the contest gallery has no bearing on the selection of the finalists.
• Photos must be not longer than 800 pixels on their longest side. If you use SmugMug, link a -L image (Large) for landscapes or use a custom image size to maximize a portrait. If you cannot link your photo, attachments are limited to 150Kb in size. Photos with branding or watermarks will be disqualified, however, a small signature and copyright are encouraged. No borders or framing (discussion here).
• You must give a unique name to your photo in the title of your entry post, for selection and voting purposes.
  
  
  PRIZES
  
  
• Public Choice Award (4 per year)
  1st: $1500(USD) Gift Certificate to B&H Photo, Adobe Photoshop CS2, Adobe Lightroom, a Crumpler 4 Million Dollar Home a Lensbaby 3G, a $200 fotoflōt gift certificate and a 1 year SmugMug Pro account
  2nd: Adobe Photoshop CS2, a a $150 fotoflōt gift certificate and a 1 Year SmugMug Pro account
  3rd: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, a $100 fotoflōt gift certificate and a 1 year SmugMug Pro account
  4th through 10th - 1 year SmugMug Pro account
• Dgrin's Last Photographer Standing
  One Winner: $7500(USD) Cash, Lifetime SmugMug Pro account
  
  Prizes:
  
  B&H Gift Certificate
  
  
  Crumpler 4 Million Dollar Home
  
  
  Lensbaby 3G
  
  
  Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Adobe Lightroom
  
  
  fotoflōt Gift Certificate
  
  
  
  
  THE FINE PRINT
  
  
• The Contest & Challenges Forum Moderator and Dgrin Admin will handle any irregularities, and their decisions are final.
• Prize winners must comply with paperwork requirements.
• You must be 18 years of age or older to compete and be eligible to win prizes.
• SmugMug employees, Dgrin moderators, and their immediate families are not eligible to be chosen as finalists or contest winners.
• Copyright, ownership: entries remain the property of the photographer. Other than for publicity purposes at Dgrin or SmugMug, we don't have any rights to use your photo, period.
• Dgrin reserves the right to modify or cancel this contest at any time, without notice.

[DoctorIt]

Lots of SmugMuggers still having issues with exif. Besides the links above, here's another very quick way to provide a link to shot info on SmugMug:

There is no excuse for any SmugMug hosted image entry not having a simple link to exif. Here's the simple simple version of how:

Use this generic url to get exif for ANY of your SM images, where YOU replace the part in {brackets}:

Code:

http://{username}.smugmug.com/photos/newexif.mg?ImageID={image ID number}

*Image ID number is just the SmugMug number, not the -L or -M, or any size suffix. For example:
http://doctorit.smugmug.com/photos/n...geID=128587481

Thank you