Entries, Categories, and Fees: We have the same ten categories as previous years. Students can enter up to two images in a given category, but may enter in as many categories as they like. Student entries must come from their body of work produced in the last year (since the conclusion of the previous Fall Contest). You can review the category list here. The Student contest fee is $4 per entry.
Faculty Contest: We had 65 entries in the faculty division last year and are looking forward to seeing your work again this year! As a reminder, faculty entries are judged together in one pool, there are no individual categories. The faculty contest fee is $1 per entry.
Contest Billing: After the contest closes and entries have been processed you will receive an invoice from TAPPS that contains your totals for student and faculty entries.
Contest Entry and Metadata: We are continuing to use Varsity Hype for our contest submissions. Some of you will be familiar with this platform from last year’s contest and previous Spring art contests.
Just like previous years, your images will need to be formatted correctly and include metadata in order to be entered into the contest. Including metadata in the photos is both a best practice in photography and invaluable in our judging processes and in constructing the awards program. Proper image formatting helps us save space and bandwidth when processing and storing contest entries.
For a complete breakdown of the submission process along with links to instructional videos on formatting and adding metadata to your submissions, visit the Fall Photo page on the TAPPS website or click here.
Submitting Your Entries: You will be able to submit your entries beginning on September 1st. The Fall Photo page on the TAPPS website will be updated with new links to the contest for each student division (1A-6A) and the faculty division. You can visit the page directly by clicking here. The submission pages will close on November 3rd. If you ever have trouble getting your images formatted correctly or submitted, please contact us at [email protected]
Awards: We encourage you to review the previous contest winners with your students. You can find PDF versions of the awards programs here. You can see brief notes on judging criteria here. We were unable to print an awards catalog last year because the number of submissions had increased beyond the capacity of our in-house printers. We are working on securing sponsors for a print catalog and will keep you updated. Digital copies will continue to be made available on the TAPPS website.
Other Resources / Contests: We encourage you and your students to submit work to the The Association of Texas Photography Instructors (ATPI) Fall Contest as well. You can find more information about the contest here. The ATPI website has winners galleries going back to 2012 and can be a great source of inspiration for you and your students. Membership in ATPI is $20 per school per year, and membership includes access to curriculum and contest resources. ATPI also offers a Winter Conference for students and a Summer Workshop for teachers. This year’s Winter Conference is February 24-26 in Arlington. We highly encourage you to join. You can read more about it in the September issue of The Imagemaker, ATPI’s newsletter.
Further News and Updates: Keep an eye on the Fall Photo page of the TAPPS website for links to everything mentioned above and for awards once they are announced. Follow @TAPPSart on twitter. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected].
*There was a type in a previous version of this post that stated the deadline was Friday November 3rd. The deadline is on November 3rd. If you need more time please let us know by sending an email to [email protected]