This advice is intended for clubs who are affiliated to Federated Mountain Clubs of NZ, to help them run their club competitions, the winners of which get entered into FMC’s national photo competition.
If you’ve got feedback on this post, or would like help getting your club’s online competition set up, please get in touch with FMC.
All on Facebook
Many clubs will have an existing Facebook group, which provides a reasonably easy way to run a club photo competition.
There are a few ways of doing this, but an important trick is to require a ‘hashtag’, to make keeping track of entries much simpler for the organiser. (Whats a hashtag?) For an entry to be valid, the person has to include the hashtag in the caption when they post the photo. Using your club initials, photo comp and the year will should make it a unique tag, but to be safe you can do a search within Facebook first to check. For example #southernclubphotocomp2020. (For the Southern Hang Gliding and Paragliding Club)
Once entries have closed, the judge can simply click on the hashtag and use the filter options that Facebook offers (like “Photos”, “Posted by Anyone”) to see all the entries in one place. Without a hashtag it can hit and miss to keep track of all the entries. If you expect a lot of entries, and have separate categories in your competition. its worth using separate hashtags to make it even easier; eg; #WTMCabovebushline2020
If your Facebook group is normally quite busy with other posts, you can keep the posts relating to the photo competition separate by creating a Facebook event. Alternatively, you could just run the photo competition directly on the group; this will increase posts on your group, which is great if it isn’t normally busy, or you want to create a bit of momentum to involve all your club.
Either way, launch the event with some rules (the suggestions below should be copy/paste friendly for facebook!) and a deadline. Its a good idea to also post the first ‘entry’, to break the ice and to give an example of the entry format for others to follow.
A solo judge could then either decide the winners by themselves, or the organiser could simply create a shortlist and allow members to vote. Voting can be easily done by the organiser posting an ‘album’ of the shortlisted photos in each category, and inviting club members to ‘like’ the photos they want to vote for. Most likes wins.
With this method, all the club members can see all the entries (including who entered them) which is great for sharing the fun, but there’s room for bias and double votes at the end… But if you want a quick, easy and fun competition, it works pretty well!
Welcome to the Yourclubnamehere photo competition for 2020.
This competition has been endorsed by the club committee. and was inspired by the Federated Mountain Clubs of New Zealand photo comp. As a club affiliated to the Federated Mountain Clubs of New Zealand, top 2 photos in each category will be put forward by the club to compete in the nationwide FMC competition.
**HOW TO ENTER**
To enter, post a photo with a caption to this club Facebook group.
The caption can be up to 100 words and should briefly describe the story behind the shot, and the category you’re entering.
It must include #Yourclubnameherephotocomp2020 (the hashtag is important for judging later on so no hashtag/wrong hashtag, = no entry!)
**VOTING AND WINNERS**
Entries for our club comp close on Insert date here.
The judge will select a shortlist of photos for each category, and post them in a ‘finalists’ album to this page. Club members will then vote for the best photos by ‘liking’ the photos. There’s no way to control the number of votes, so vote as much as you want!
Voting will finish on insert date here. The 2x finalist photo with the most likes for each category will be the winners, and will be entered by the club into the FMC photo competition.
**ENTRY RULES**
Entries must not have been entered into the competition before. Photos that have been previously professionally published (in magazines/commercial websites/books etc) are not eligible for entry.
Each club member can enter a maximum of 2 photos per category, which are the same as the FMC competition:
ABOVE BUSHLINE (With no Human Element)
ABOVE BUSHLINE (With a Human Element)
BELOW BUSHLINE (With no Human Element)
BELOW BUSHLINE (With a Human Element)
HISTORIC (pre 2018)
LONG EXPOSURE
NATIVE FLORA & FAUNA
By entering the club comp, you’re agreeing that if your photo wins, it will go forward to the FMC comp and that you agree that the photo can be used by FMC for promotional purposes. All photos must relate in some way to activities that the club participates in. Photos must be taken in NZ. All entrants must be paid up, current club members. Digital manipulation by cropping, adjustment for tone/contrast and stitching of photos is allowed. Filters are not.
Judges decision is final.
For more details about the FMC comp and the rules/prizes, visit the website: http://www.fmc.org.nz/photo-competition/
Any questions, ask here for clarification!
Other online options
If your club doesn’t have a Facebook group, it can still organise a competition online; but you’ll need to allow more time for the promotion, entry processing and voting.
Do your prepration, and then communicate the competition to your members.
Entries would be submitted to the organiser electronically, preferably via a cloud service such as Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox etc.
Judging could be done separately, or the club members can be invited to vote. The latter ads an extra element of complexity, but it does allow members to be more involved in the process, and creates a little more fun for the club!.
The organiser could publish the entries into a ‘survey monkey‘ website. Survey monkey is one type of free online survey providers. It isn’t too hard to set up, and makes voting more confidential, as only the organiser will see the votes as they come in. Have a look at an example photo competition voting survey we made up.
More tips on photo competitions
We’ve created a more comprehensive resource for Club night photo competitions, which is worth reading if you’d like more detailed advice on event planning, prizes, judging, rules and making a club night of it.
If you’ve got feedback on this resource, or suggestions for other ways to do it, please get in touch!
