Competition Rules

[Mike Farley]

I was at the Surrey Photographic Association's Officers' Meeting at the weekend and one topic which came up was cheating in competitions. Not for one moment do I think that anyone in the club is deliberately transgressing competition rules, but nonetheless I feel I should report what was said.

The genre where cheating is most likely to occur is, of course, Nature where the rules are especially strict and there is very little that can be done to an image, certainly nothing which changes the essential truth of what was seen. Apparently FIAP, the international body to which the PGB is affiliated, has recently banned two individuals for life for contravening the rules, which deprives others of the opportunity to benefit from the shots which they taken legitimately.

The PAGB has also banned two individuals, one for three years and the other for five, apparently for passing off other people's images as their own.

[davidc]

Bear in mind also the distinction between Nature and Wildlife. The latter is even more strict than the former.

[Mike Farley]

Bear in mind also the distinction between Nature and Wildlife. The latter is even more strict than the former.

Given the "nature" of the comments, I suspect that it was the latter to which SPA was referring. In the club's recent Nature competition, the judge seemed quite relaxed about certain types of changes and one of my images was criticised for not removing some distracting elements in the background.