Fine Art Directors, Art Program Directors and Fall Photo Teachers,
The 2021 Fall Photo Contest is now open! The contest deadline is Oct 30, 2021 and awards will be announced by December 1.
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.
We are also excited to see faculty entries again this year. Faculty entries are judged in one large pool, but faculty can enter as many images as they like. Student entries are $3 each and faculty entries are $1 each.
Contest Entry and Metadata: We are moving to a new contest platform this year, Varsity Hype. Some of you will be familiar with this platform from last year’s Spring contests. We felt it was simpler to have one website for all art contests.
We are grateful to the staff at the Association of Texas Photography Instructors for partnering with us for the past two years and we encourage all of you to keep up with ATPI events and contests. Remember your account is still active on the ATPI contest site and you can still use it to enter ATPI and other photography contests. (If you are looking for another contest for your students, the Texas Photographic Society’s Student contest is going on now and entries are through the ATPI contest website.)
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.
We have a webinar in the works for walking you through the entry process. You will receive an email with registration information once we have a time nailed down. It will be recorded and made available on our YouTube page so you can refer back to it. We will also have training videos with step-by-step instructions for entering metadata in your photos before submitting to the contest.
Other Resources: We encourage you to review the previous year’s contest winners with your students. You can find PDF versions of the awards programs here. You can see brief notes on judging criteria 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. We highly encourage you to join.
Awards, News, and Updates: We are upgrading the printed awards program and will have online winners galleries. 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].
We look forward to seeing your entries in this year’s contest! Look for more announcements for our winter and spring photo contests!