Some tips for photography entries

I thought that I'd take a moment to give some tips for photography entries.  I'll try to come on each day and do tips for each category.  (Though my photography tips will likely be my best since that is something I actually know more about.)

First, the rules:
http://www.georgiapta.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/13-14_Photography_Rules.pdf

Now for some tips:

- The kids CAN enter as many photos as they want.  As a parent though, I will be encouraging my kids to only enter photos that are strong or that they truly love.

- I strongly recommend using a lab like www.MPIX.com for printing the pictures.  When ordering there you can go ahead and order the photo "mounted" on styrene.  This will give the photo the stability that it will need, especially if it moves on past our level.  As I looked at the photos that placed at state, the majority of them seemed to be good prints, i.e. printed through a lab, not at home.

- Because of my 2nd tip, I recommend that you as a parent try to weed down the number of pictures that they enter.  Otherwise it will get expensive to print all of them.

- If possible, have the photos printed on luster or matte photo paper.  Try to avoid glossy.  Luster and matte just show better for most images.  (Metallic is another option that might look good; but some images do NOT look good on metallic. I would only go this route if this is something that your kid is familiar with and they request it.)

- If there is writing in the photo that your child takes, then that is allowed.  Writing on the photo, or using a program like photoshop to write on it is NOT allowed.  This would change the entry to a "visual arts" entry.

- Collages ARE allowed as long as they are ALL photos.  Using other media in a collage changes it to "visual arts".

- For the two tips above, consider this collage:

 As it is, this would have to be entered as "visual art".  However, if it did NOT have the writing on it, it would be eligible as a photo.  For this particular one, even the background is a photo.  It would be fine if it was a solid background though.  Do NOT use something like a digital paper as the background, as that would put it back to being visual arts.

- While it is OK to do a collage, make sure the kids know that often a single STRONG image will be better than a series of images.  If your kids are like mine, they might really want to do the collages since sometimes kids don't get "less is more".  You might even encourage them to do an entry with a collage and an entry with a single image.

- Photo submissions can not exceed 11"x14" INCLUDING the matting.  This means that for most store bought matting you would be looking at an 8x10 print if you are going to mat it.  

- Your child can edit the images in programs like Photoshop, Lightroom and Gimp.  Remember that any editing done must be done by your child.

- I'm going to stress the artist's statement again (this will be a regular theme from me ;-) ).  Please have your kids put thought into a strong artist's statement.  This was very important last year at the district and state levels.

- I'll wrap this up with showing our Kemp entry that won last year at the state level.  William's photo tied at the Kemp level for 1st place.  He won 1st place at the council level for 3rd grade.  At the state level he won 1st place for 3rd grade entries as well as being selected as the entry for 3rd, 4th and 5th grade to go on to the national level.  Last year's theme was "The Magic of a Moment" and William's artist's statement was something along the lines of, "Every moment while you are reading is magical because like magic, what you are reading becomes real in your mind."