There are at the moment 13 national Exhibitions that take place throughout the year, for Prints, Slides, Digital Projection or a combination of all three.
Each Exhibition is run on the same basic guidelines, you can enter 4 images in each section. That is 4 Prints, 4 Slides 4 Digital images. There is sometimes a separate section for Nature images. There is an entry fee for each section.
All work entered in an Exhibition will go up in front of a panel of 3 judges and normally titles are read out. The judges will by using an electronic scoring system score from 2-5 without consulting each other. They will score on the premise of:
| 2 | in the judges opinion the image should not be in the exhibition. |
| 3 | the judge is undecided |
| 4 | the image should be in the exhibition |
| 5 | the image should be in the exhibition and be considered for an award. |
All 3 scores are added together to give a total score for each image.
The exhibition organisers will set an acceptance level based on size of entry and judges scoring standard. Usually this is a score of 11 or 12. Any work with the acceptance score, or more will be in the exhibition and the judges will pick the awards from the higher scoring images, at this stage they will consult with each other.
For every acceptance in a BPE Exhibition you gain a crown award. When you have collected 25 crown awards you can apply, free of charge, for a crown rating award. Each successful applicant will receive a Certificate and a ribbon and will be able to use the letters BPE1* after their name.
You can enter the same wok in each BPE Exhibition but once accepted in an exhibition it cannot be used in that exhibition again.. Unaccepted work can be entered in the following year if you think that with a new set of judges it might be more successful.
If you gain a further 25 crown awards (50 in total) you can apply for your BPE2* and so on.
There is no time limit in gaining your awards !
For further information go to http://www.bpe.uk.net and there you will find a list of the Exhibitions you can try.
Jane Greatorex ARPS External Competition Secretary
November 2008