Competing in Image Competitions Sponsored by Other PPA-Affiliated State Organizations

One of the pieces of advice I give to my students is that they should look around and see if there are any other image competitions that would be helpful to them. There are many state level PPA-Affiliates that allow non-members to enter for a score, only. This can be a viable way of testing the waters with a new image before submitting to your own state and/or district.

This can also help you out of a tight spot if you’re like me and are in a state that is hosting one of the District competitions. Normally, my state (Ohio) would have its state level competition about a month before Northeast District. Ohio lets me enter 6 images, and generally I use the 4 highest scoring images as my entries for the Northeast District. This year, however, Ohio is hosting the Northeast District competition and Ohio entrants lose a step of competition that they normally have. It’s all fine – I love it when we host Districts – but it’s a little nerve-wracking to take 4 images straight to Districts – I like a little more input than that before I send my stuff on to IPC – so in this set of circumstances, entering first at a different state would be a good option for me.

The important thing to bear in mind is that state level associations do not have a standard for judging like the PPA does at District and IPC judging. Anyone from a Master to an fully Affiliated PPA Judge may be asked to judge at the state level. It is up to you, as a serious competitor, to make sure your images are seen by the most experienced and educated judges as possible. It would stand to reason, that if you want to see how your images *may* fare at your district, stick to competitions that are being judged by the same level of judges. Fortunately, there are a number of states that are exceptional about getting as many trained judges as possible on their panel.

As a matter of fact, I did some research and entered several images at another state just a few weeks ago. I knew who on the judging panel were PPA Affiliated judges and I used their critiques and comments as guidelines for reworking the images.  It was well worth the entry fee to have that additional input.

Hang tight, Wootness will be releasing information about individual upcoming competitions that have PPA Affiliated Judges AND allow non-members to compete for scores. I will be providing all the pertinent deadlines, entry details and contact information of who is in charge.