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Competitions

How do I enter my images into competition?

If you aren’t already a member of the FCCC site, you would first need to join the site. Visit this FAQ to learn how to do this.

Once you are a member, you will see the Submit Images item under the Competition menu. Here’s a direct link: http://f3c.org/competition/enter/

When you visit that page, you will see instructions for paying the entry fee and submitting your images.

I uploaded my competition images, but I don’t see them in the galleries.

When you upload your images on the submission page, you won’t see them in the current gallery pages until they are approved by the competition admins. Also, make sure you select a category for you images, otherwise the admins won’t even see them for the approval process.

Under the new 2016  competition rules there is only a Beginners class in the Color Category in all other categories Beginners are included with Advanced in a new “Mixed” Class. When viewing galleries you  must select the “mixed” class for Mono, Creative, and Documentary entries. If you select  advanced or  beginners for those categories you will see “This competition did not occur or has yet to take place.”

Why isn’t my image approved yet?

When you upload an image, it must be approved by our competition directors before it becomes officially eligible for competition. This review process can take up to 24 hours, and even longer on weekends or holidays. Remember, although the directors make every effort to quickly approve images, all roles at the FCCC are volunteer roles, and the people serving those roles may have other pressing priorities. So, if your image has not yet been approved, it does not mean there’s something wrong. It can simply mean the competition directors did not get a chance to review it yet.

If you decide at the last minute to submit your images, especially for print competitions where you need to print out labels and entry forms before delivering the prints, it is unreasonable to expect your images to be quickly approved. Please do not wait until the last minute. Otherwise you may not be able to enter the competition, even though you’ve paid the entry fee and uploaded your images. Sorry, but refunds will not be issued.

The reason for this approval step is for the protection of the maker and the public:

  • Our directors need to ensure that no “offensive” images are publicly displayed or entered into competitions. This decision is solely based upon the discretion of the directors.
  • Our directors need to ensure that there is no identifying information in the images. This means that your name and your club’s name must not appear in the image title, or embedded in the image, itself.
  • Our directors may want to suggest moving your image to a more appropriate category before approving the image. Although there is no requirement for you to do so, it is recommended that you review the Competition Rules and Regulations page to ensure your image has the best possible chance of doing well in judging.
I recently paid to enter the competition, but now I’m ready to submit images, and I’m being asked to pay again.

It’s very likely that you paid for a previous (now completed) competition. It’s extremely important that you take note of the type of competition in the headings displayed on the page before paying. We tried to make this very clear by displaying it in red in two places on the page, above the Pay Now button. A common occurrence is when the digital competition comes right after the end of the print competition for a triannual. See the image below — it now says “digital,” but could have said “print” when you paid:

I can log into the site, but it won’t let me upload my images for the competition.

This is likely because you have recently joined the FCCC website, but the join process is not fully completed yet:

  • If you joined as someone affiliated with a Florida camera club that is under the FCCC umbrella, the leaders or reps of that club need to confirm your membership with that club in order for you to be an approved “free” member of this site. When you originally joined this site, you would have received a join confirmation email explaining this fact. At the same time, the reps of that club would have also received an email asking them to confirm your membership with that club. The reps would receive daily reminders until they either confirm or deny your membership. If you still haven’t received an email confirming either decision, it is up to you to reach out to them to let them know you are awaiting their action. At this point, it is out of the hands of the FCCC.

My first image uploads ok, but my next images fail (I see an “x” where my image should be).

There is an issue in Internet Explorer with the upload process where only one image at a time can be uploaded. If you upload, but do not see your image displayed, there are two workarounds:

  • After you upload each image, refresh the page, and then the next upload should work.
  • Use another browser, such as Firefox or Chrome. It appears to be working fine in these browsers.

Also, please make sure your image files are under 8mb.

We are still looking at this, and it is a very elusive bug to fix. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Wasn’t there a limit to how many images you can submit for a category (color, mono, creative)?

This used to be the case, but this limit has been removed with the latest rules and regulations. Now, all four images can be submitted to the same category.

I was told my name was in the file name for the image I uploaded. How do I fix this?

Remember that although the default title for your uploaded image comes from the file name you gave it, you can easily change the title after uploading it. Simply click on the title field under the uploaded image, and replace the current title:
Rename Image

How exactly are the different color ribbons distributed?
25% of the entries in a category win ribbons. They are distributed as Blue (top 5%), Red (next 5%), White (next 5%) and Yellow (next 10%). It can get confusing, especially when there are ties for scores that cause overlap. So here’s an example and another explanation at the end:
  • 27 total images (25% wins a ribbon, which is 6.75 rounded up to 7 total):
  • 5% Blue (1.35 ribbons, rounds down to 1). There were three with the same top score, so at this point 3 total ribbons awarded. 2 eaten into the next set of ribbons.
  • 5% Red (1.35 ribbons, rounds down to 1) — so top 10% wins Blue or Red (2.7 total ribbons, rounds up to 3 total, 3 already filled by Blue, 0 remaining for Red). At this point still, 3 total ribbons awarded, but none of them are Red.
  • 5% White (1.35 ribbons, rounds down to 1) — so top 15% wins Blue, Red, or White (4.05 total ribbons, rounds down to 4 total. 3 already filled by Blue (3) and Red (0) winners, so 1 remaining for white). Since two had the same score for 4th place, they both got white. At this point, 5 total ribbons awarded. 1 eaten into the Yellow ribbons.
  • 10% Yellow (2.7 total ribbons, rounds up to 3) — but only top 25% wins a ribbon (6.7 total ribbons, rounds up to 7 total, 5 already awarded, so only 2 remaining for Yellow). All 7 ribbons now awarded.

It can seem confusing when score ties occur, but think of it this way — if the Phillies and Marlins were tied for first place with 95-67 records, and the Mets had a 93-69 record, would the Mets be in second place or third place? Just because the two teams above them had the same record, it doesn’t change the fact that they have the third-best record, so they are still in third place.

You also may notice at times that a color or two may not even be represented in a category. The reason for this is because many images can tie, causing enough of an overrun into the next color so that no ribbons for that color would fit. For example, if 10% fill up Blue due to numerous images with the same score filling the bottom of that color, there may be nothing remaining to get a Red ribbon. So after 10% or more already get assigned to Blue due to several ties (so they all deserved Blue), there would be nothing left that gets Red, and White would get the 11th% through the 15th%.

What is the FCCC view on nudity?

At this time, our policy is to accept tastefully done nudes. If the competition committee feels that an image is pornographic, it will not be allowed. That will be left up to the discretion of the competition committee.

Galleries

Many of my gallery images do not show ribbons or scores awarded for older competitions.

The website was totally redesigned and automated in 2014. Although all of the past images were converted to the new site, much of the scoring and ribbon information about older competitions was lost, or simply not available in electronic format. We do apologize for not being able to supply this past information in your personal galleries. The work involved in retrieving it from various sources and then manually entering it is arduous, time consuming, and maybe inaccurate, therefore the volunteers who run this site have decided not to attempt the task.

General

What if my question isn’t answered here?

If you can’t find an answer to your question on this page, you can contact us directly by selecting the Contact Us item under the About menu, or by directly visiting this link: http://f3c.org/about/contact/

It doesn’t work!

If you have issues on this site, and you need to contact us about it, it is extremely important that you explain:

  1. Exactly what page you were on when you encountered the issue (copy the link in your browser’s address bar).
  2. Exactly what you were trying to do at the time (buttons clicked, fields filled out, etc.).
  3. Exactly what the response was from the site (messages, text, behavior).
  4. The browser you were using (and what the version of that browser is).
  5. The operating system you were using (and what the version of that operating system is).

If you don’t provide us with these details, we’ll have just as much success resolving your issue as if you went to the doctor and just said, “Doc, I’m not feeling well. Please give me medicine.” Obviously the doctor won’t know what’s hurting you, how to diagnose your problem, and what to prescribe as the proper treatment and prescription.

Of course, you probably do understand this, but you’d be surprised how many comments we get that simply say, “Your site is broken. Fix it now.”

Thanks! 🙂

Known Issues

My first image uploads ok, but my next images fail (I see an “x” where my image should be).

There is an issue in Internet Explorer with the upload process where only one image at a time can be uploaded. If you upload, but do not see your image displayed, there are two workarounds:

  • After you upload each image, refresh the page, and then the next upload should work.
  • Use another browser, such as Firefox or Chrome. It appears to be working fine in these browsers.

Also, please make sure your image files are under 8mb.

We are still looking at this, and it is a very elusive bug to fix. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Membership

How do I join the FCCC?

You would need to register on the site by clicking the large red Join Now button on the right-hand side of the page (or click on it, below):

Join Now!
Enjoy the benefits of being a member!

or selecting the Join the FCCC item under the Membership menu.

Once you’re on that page, when entering your profile information, you have a couple of options:

  1. Join as a member of an FCCC-affiliated camera club
  2. Join, and then register a new camera club to affiliate with the FCCC
  3. Join as a competition judge

The first option will provide you a free membership to this site. If you use this option, make sure to select your club from the Camera Club Affiliation drop down list. You must already be a member of the club before doing this, otherwise the club will not approve your FCCC membership.

Your club reps would then receive an email asking them to confirm and approve your club membership. When they do, you’ll receive an email letting you know, and you’ll then be an official member of the site. Then you’ll be eligible for this and all subsequent competitions as long as you remain a member of your club. You will also be eligible for member discounts for events, etc.

The second option allows you to join with the intention of registering a new camera club. You should only use this option if you are a president or rep of your camera club, otherwise, your membership will not get approved. Once you join using this option, you would be redirected to the Sign Up Camera Club page, where you would specify the information we need in order to approve new clubs, and then directed to the payment page where you could pay your initial annual fee via PayPal (or credit card), or get our mailing address to send in a check for the fee. If you use the online payment method, once the payment is processed, your club would immediately become a registered FCCC club, you would automatically become an affiliate member (and rep) of your club, and other members could join affiliating themselves with your club. If you pay the annual fee via check, your club’s activation would be initiated upon our receipt of your check payment.

The third option should only be used if you are not yet a member of the FCCC, but you’ve been invited by our Digital Competition Coordinator to become a judge for an upcoming competition. If you use this option, you would be able to use the judging feature on the site once the judging period for your assigned competition begins, but you would not be able to participate in entering competitions, etc.

I forgot my password. Can you send it to me?

For security purposes, we do not store your password in the system. Instead, a “hash” value representing your password is stored. Nobody can sign into your account using this “hash” value, so your account is safe.

But if you did forget your password, you will need to have it reset. In order to do this, visit the Forgot My Password item under the Membership menu, or visit this link: http://f3c.org/membership/password/

We will send a temporary password to your email address, which you can use to login to the site. Once you use this password, visit the Update My Profile item under the Membership menu, or visit this link: http://f3c.org/membership/profile/, and change the password to one you can remember.

My new temporary password doesn’t work!

If you requested and received a new temporary password via the Forgot My Password option, but you still can’t sign in successfully:

  1. Make sure you are using your email address, and not any old “username” you may have had for the old version of this site.
  2. The password is case-sensitive, so make sure you are correctly using the lowercase or uppercase version of any letters.
  3. If you copy and pasted the temporary password from the email, please make sure you did not copy any spaces before or after the password. You can play it safe by double-clicking the password before copying it.
  4. Try manually typing in the temporary password. Make sure you don’t confuse zero (“0”) with the letter “O”, one (1) with the lowercase letter “l”, or the lowercase letter “1” with the uppercase letter “I”.
  5. If it’s not very clear because of the above characters, use the Forgot My Password option again to ask for a different temporary password. But first try the copy and paste method described in point #1, above.

Once you have logged in successfully with the temporary password, be sure to visit the Update My Profile page to change your password to something you will remember.

I can log into the site, but it won’t let me upload my images for the competition.

This is likely because you have recently joined the FCCC website, but the join process is not fully completed yet:

  • If you joined as someone affiliated with a Florida camera club that is under the FCCC umbrella, the leaders or reps of that club need to confirm your membership with that club in order for you to be an approved “free” member of this site. When you originally joined this site, you would have received a join confirmation email explaining this fact. At the same time, the reps of that club would have also received an email asking them to confirm your membership with that club. The reps would receive daily reminders until they either confirm or deny your membership. If you still haven’t received an email confirming either decision, it is up to you to reach out to them to let them know you are awaiting their action. At this point, it is out of the hands of the FCCC.

I’m a member of my camera club, but I can’t login to this website.

Although you are a member of your camera club, membership to the FCCC website is separate.

First of all, you’ll need to make sure that your camera club is one of the active clubs listed on the Clubs page. The only way to become a free member of this site is if you are affiliated with a club that is an active paid member of the FCCC umbrella.

Second, you’ll need to register on this site, and affiliate yourself with that club. Once your club confirms your membership, you will become an active, free member of this site, and can participate in our triannual competitions, and have access to other benefits and member discounts (as was available for the recent FCCC Conference). Please read the FAQ on the details of how to join this website.

I’m an FCCC member, but I changed my camera club. How do I make this change on the FCCC site?

It’s very easy to change your club affiliation:

  1. Visit the Update My Profile page.
  2. Click the Camera Club Affiliation dropdown.
  3. Select your new club from the list. The site will display a confirmation dialog with important information.
  4. Please read the instructions in the dialog, and confirm it when you’re done.
  5. Click the Save My Changes button. The admins of your new club will receive an email notification.
  6. Once your new club confirms your membership with them, all actions from this point forward will be for your new club, such as entering competitions.