Every month, PentaxForums.com hosts an official photo contest for its members. All members are invited to participate! The contest procedure and rules are outlined in this post.

How to Submit

To submit a photo, it is enough to start a thread in the submission forum containing your photo. Note: others won't be able to view your submission until voting time.

Official Rules for PentaxForums.com Monthly Photo Contests

Please follow these guidelines when submitting entries for our monthly photo contests. Your photo may be disqualified or you may be asked to re-upload it upon any violations.

• Submit only one photo per contest
  
• Your submission must have been taken with a Pentax or Ricoh camera and match the contest theme
• Post your submission in a separate thread within the contest submission forum
• The photo dimensions must be between 300x300 and 1400x1200 pixels (WxH)
  Recommended dimensions: 1200x800 for horizontals, 800x533 for verticals
• To ensure smooth loading, photos must be no larger than 1.5MB in filesize
• We recommend that you use our attachment system to ensure you are within limits
• You may receive an e-mail or PM prior to voting time if we detect any issues with your submission
• To verify that your submission was successful, navigate to the contest submission forum and make sure you see your submission thread as well as a photo within it. Only the last photo in your first submission thread will be considered. If you did not use our attachment system, make sure that your photo can be accessed by the public (i.e. isn't behind some sort of permission-based system).
  

Fine print:

• Photos that have won a previous contest (1st, 2nd, or 3rd place) cannot be re-submitted to future contests
• Your submission must be taken by you and may not be a derivative work. Composites are allowed provided you advise in your submission that it is a composite and provided that you took all the photos that form part of the composite image.
• Photos that are Not Safe for Work/Not Work Safe (NSFW/NWS) (i.e. any form of nudity) are no longer allowed in our monthly photo contests. You may still share these photos in our Post Your Photos forum.
  
• Post-processing that enhances your submission is allowed
• Image borders are allowed, but should be used in moderation
• Submissions do not have to be taken in the same month as the contest unless otherwise specified
  
• To avoid voting bias, please do not watermark your photos with your username (but rather with your real name or website if needed)
• Do not specifically list which photo(s) you voted for or comment on others when commenting on the voting thread
• Only the first post of your first submission thread will be checked for a photo. Thus, to change your submission prior to the closing of the contest, simply edit your post. Do not reply with additional submissions.
  
• If your photo doesn't contain EXIF information, please specify the camera and lens in your thread, using the appropriate fields
• Contest start/end dates subject to change based on staff availability
  
• If your photo wins, it will be showcased in our Premier Gallery along with all previous winners. We reserve the right to permanently leave a copy of your photo in that gallery.
  We also reserve the right to publish your photo on our homepage and via social media channels. Proper attribution is guaranteed. You may request that the published photo be altered to include a copyright notice.
  
• Regarding prize substitutions: we do not guarantee substitutions if you are unable to claim your prize. International shipping is offered.
• Prior to receiving your prize, we reserve to right to ask you for a brief blog post describing the technique you used to shoot and process your photo, as well as what equipment you used.
  

Note that we use an automated system to process voting threads. Therefore, if your photo does not meet any of the submission requirements, it WILL NOT BE INCLUDED, and you may or may not be notified of disqualification beforehand.

General Procedure for PentaxForums.com Monthly Photo Contests

Note that our contest procedure has been changed as of July, 2014.

Around the first day of each month, we:

• Announce a new contest theme in a sticky thread in the main contest forum
  • As soon as the theme is announced within the users may start submitting their contest photos
• Close the previous month's contest and make those submissions visible to the public in a special gallery
• Start accepting user nominations for finalist photos from the previous month
  • Comment on others' submissions via the gallery linked above to nominate them to become finalists
  • Include the text "not a nomination" to ask a question without nominating

Following the end of the 2nd week of each month, we:

• Announce 15 finalists from the previous month's contest based on highest number of nominations
• Create a public poll to determine the winners
  • Every forum member gets one vote

At the end of the 3rd week of each month, we:

• Close the voting thread
• Announce a winner of the previous month's contest and send out prizes
  

Proper Conduct

We ask that you do not comment on which photos you voted for within our voting threads.

When submitting photos, your submission thread must have the photo embedded (i.e. IMG and not URL tags), and it must conform to the size guidelines above. You may only submit one photo per contest: if you submit more than one, then only the FIRST photo within your thread will be included.

Additionally, once a new theme is posted, the previous month's contest is considered closed. No late submissions are accepted. As a failsafe, try to have your submission in before before last day of each month. We typically don't announce themes until midnight U.S. time on the last day, but this may vary.

You cannot vote in contest polls if you registered after the corresponding contest closed to submissions.

[JimS_256]

Thanks Adam. I don't know how I missed that.

I got an email notification for the contests in July and September but not August or October. I was really disappointed to miss August since BIF photography is my favorite. Life has gotten in the way of my photography recently and I'm trying to get more active by posting in the contests, but life has gotten in the way of that too (sigh). I keep hoping though...

Again thanks!

[termy]

ref the November 2019 contest
('open' theme).

can a pax submit two (or three) images? Or only one image per pax?

Was looking at it and some of the fields include "aperture", "shutter speed".
Are those two fields compulsory?

Cuz was just thinking, if film images, and cannot recall aperture quite clearly (for eg, can only recall is either f2.8 or f4.0) and shutter speed, will that be a problem?

[Adam]

ref the November 2019 contest
('open' theme).

can a pax submit two (or three) images? Or only one image per pax?

Was looking at it and some of the fields include "aperture", "shutter speed".
Are those two fields compulsory?

Cuz was just thinking, if film images, and cannot recall aperture quite clearly (for eg, can only recall is either f2.8 or f4.0) and shutter speed, will that be a problem?

One photo, and detailed metadata is optional.

[mellofellow]

Hi all! I find it annoying to read multiple messages for Contest thread nominations. I get many of these depending on how many nominations I have made.
The majority of these simply say "I nominate...". It seems nominating auto-subscribes you and I have to unsubscribe. Otherwise, I can change my settings and not auto-subscribe to ALL my threads (including non-contest nominations). This is undesirable.

Is there any workaround?

[Adam]

Hi all! I find it annoying to read multiple messages for Contest thread nominations. I get many of these depending on how many nominations I have made.
The majority of these simply say "I nominate...". It seems nominating auto-subscribes you and I have to unsubscribe. Otherwise, I can change my settings and not auto-subscribe to ALL my threads (including non-contest nominations). This is undesirable.

Is there any workaround?

This is a really good observation- I'm surprised nobody else noticed! Was certainly not intended, and nominations should no longer auto-subscribe you, even if you have that option enabled for other threads.

[Simon K]

Hi, I just uploaded my first contribution and got a surprise, the image is much darker as it is on my computer and it got mushy too. I have no idea what happened, I saved it as an srgb jpg within the size limits. Never encountered such behaviour in any upload her in the forum before. Does anybody have an idea what could have gone wrong?

[Adam]

Hi, I just uploaded my first contribution and got a surprise, the image is much darker as it is on my computer and it got mushy too. I have no idea what happened, I saved it as an srgb jpg within the size limits. Never encountered such behaviour in any upload her in the forum before. Does anybody have an idea what could have gone wrong?

Was the image you originally uploaded taller than 900px? If so, it would have gotten scaled by the system, which can reduce its quality. I'd recommend deleting it, re-scaling on your computer, then re-uploading. The max dimensions before scaling occurs are 1400px wide and 900px tall.

Adam
PentaxForums.com Webmaster (Site Usage Guide | Site Help | My Photography)



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[Simon K]

Was the image you originally uploaded taller than 900px? If so, it would have gotten scaled by the system, which can reduce its quality. I'd recommend deleting it, re-scaling on your computer, then re-uploading. The max dimensions before scaling occurs are 1400px wide and 900px tall.

Yes indeed, seems I just took care about the width, but it is 933px tall actually. I will rescale it, and replace the oversized one. Thank you.

---------- Post added 09-12-20 at 07:01 PM ----------

Was the image you originally uploaded taller than 900px? If so, it would have gotten scaled by the system, which can reduce its quality. I'd recommend deleting it, re-scaling on your computer, then re-uploading. The max dimensions before scaling occurs are 1400px wide and 900px tall.

Thanks again, rescaling did the trick, looks identicall to the original now.

[Adam]

Excellent! Happy to hear thay worked out.

[Broadside]

I browsed the monthly contest for the first time last month, not being wholly sure what to do. The mouse-over text "Click to Nominate" made me worry that I might do something without being able to undo it.

I recommend changing the text to something more accurate, viz "Enlarge / (Option to Nominate)"

[rbatey]

Hi I wanted to enter this month's contest and was just checking the eligibility rules. I see where it says must be taken with Pentax or Ricoh cameras. Does eligibility also include shots taken with Pentax lenses adapted to other cameras (i.e. Sony mirrorless)? Thanks

[MarkJerling]

Hi I wanted to enter this month's contest and was just checking the eligibility rules. I see where it says must be taken with Pentax or Ricoh cameras. Does eligibility also include shots taken with Pentax lenses adapted to other cameras (i.e. Sony mirrorless)? Thanks

Any image submitted to the monthly competitions must be shot with a Pentax or Ricoh camera.

[garethjmorgan]

Does anyone check that the images match the theme?? Several images this month are clearly not still life photos.

[Adam]

Does anyone check that the images match the theme?? Several images this month are clearly not still life photos.

If the image clearly doesn't match the theme, it would be flagged by the moderators. Otherwise, it's up to other users to make that call in the nominations & voting phase.

[garethjmorgan]

Thanks Adam - I thought that would be the case - which is why I am surprised that some of this months pictures haven't been flagged. "Still life" is a very specific genre and a number of images do not match the definition.