It’s a new year and there is certainly a lot of new things happening. First let me apologize for being a bit slow with web updates at the moment. I am going through the busiest month I have ever had in my photography career right now. I actually haven’t had a single day off yet this year so please bear with me right now.

As you may know every year in January the club has graduated a few “A” level photographers to “AA” status. In the past the rankings were strictly subjective without any actual standard being applied. We are changing that now. Just as in any other competitive environment, the competitors will ranked based on their stats. Since there are monetary prizes available to members who compete the board of directors decided that this is a more fair method than had been used in the past. Since the old system was based simply on total points members could simply enter a lot of images and accumulate a winning total even if the overall quality of the submissions was low. Rankings and winners in each category will now be based on the overall quality of work submitted.

In addition, there is now a participation requirement to be eligible for a prize at the end of the year. This is to prevent someone from only submitting a few good images and then coasting with a high average. The requirement is to submit work in at least 4 separate competitions out of the 11 we hold annually. This requirement is only for those members who wish to be eligible for a monetary prize. Members who are non-competitive may still submit in less than 4 competitions for the purpose of sharing work with the club and/or getting a critique from the judges.

Rankings and prizes will be based on a numeric value which for lack of a better name right now is being referred to as the “AQS – Average Quality of Submissions.” Your AQS is simply the number of points you accumulate based on whether images receive an award, an honorable mention, or a merit point divided by the total number of images submitted. Competitive members with an AQS of 4.5 or higher will be ranked as “AA” for scoring purposes and those with a lower AQS will have an “A” ranking.

For our 2011 competitive season members who are “A” ranked may move up to “AA” once they have met the participation requirement and their AQS is 4.5 or higher. Members who ended the 2010 season with a “AA” ranking will be grandfathered in for the 2011 season and will not be lowered to “A” ranking during this season but will lowered at the start of 2012 if their AQS is below the required level at the end of 2011. The only exception applies to those members who ended 2010 at “A” level and were just promoted to “AA” level for 2011. This is the list of members who have just been promoted and are fully subject to the new rules:
Oehl, Georg
Parrish, Robert OP
Poegel, Donna
Robinson, Leon
Volf, Chris
Livingston, Rob
Boyette, Jim
Edwards, Kara
Poynor, Ray
Gehres, Diane

AQS rankings will be not be posted for any member in 2011 until they have met the participation requirement. Any member that does not meet the participation requirement for the year will simply be considered as non-competitive and will not be eligible for prizes. Non-competetive members will be scored on the “A” scale for any images that they do submit and will begin the 2012 season with an “A” ranking.