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External competitions offer VCC members the opportunity to compete nationally (through CAPA) and internationally (through PSA). All VCC members can enter the external competitions in which our Club participates, providing they meet the requirements of the individual competition.
The act of submitting your photography to the scrutiny of judges is one step in helping to free you from your own subjective biases. We have all taken images that we love, but the hardest images to judge are your own. CAPA publishes all "winning" images in public galleries on their web site. If you enter, be sure to go in and look at the competition when it is all over. You will see some great images.
Your External Competition Committee decided to reduce the number of CAPA "Club" competitions this season. CAPA are continuing to promote the standards of the "Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity", often referred to simply as "C2PA" standards. Enforcement of compliance has proved to be more difficult than originally anticipated. Their current plan is to allow content credentials to remain optional through 2027. However, if you plan to enter a CAPA competition, you still MUST plan ahead and take extra steps so that if requested, you will be able to easily show the provenance of any image you enter.
If your image is good enough to be chosen for an award by CAPA, you should expect to be required to provide CAPA with proof of the "provenance" of your image, satisfying CAPA that it IS your image, and that you used no generative AI in creating it. "Provenance" can include the editing processes AND the original image metadata. Failure to satisfy CAPA will lead to disqualification of the image.
Adobe has helpfully tried to clearly label which AI is "generative" and which is not. You must watch carefully for their "generative" warning labels: using a generative AI process is grounds for dismissal of your image by CAPA. If your "Club" competition image is disallowed, that means that the Club will have only 5 images instead of the usual six. We were deprived of Club awards twice last season when one of six images was disqualified. CAPA publishes what tools are acceptable and which are not: AI Summary – Safe & Flagged Tools
While using the full "content credentials" procedures is encouraged, the fact remains that not all image processing software is choosing to support C2PA standards, and CAPA, while providing some guidance for users of Lightroom, Photoshop, Luminar Neo, ON1 Photo Raw and Topaz Labs, (all of which are supporting C2PA) it still remains that credential preservation will limit you to specific processes and orders of procedures, and it is generally not transmittable between programmes.
In June, 2026, CAPA updated their Submission Authentication Requirements. All competitors MUST retain their original captured image, perform all editing on a copy, not the original, and keep originals accessible for speedy retrieval if requested. Every CAPA competition web page contains direct links to the most up to date requirements and aids.
CAPA has recently published their "Provenance Guide" which attempts to set out a method of preserving content credentials when using Lightroom AND Photoshop, but the process is cumbersome at best. Here is a direct link: Protecting Your Competition Images (Provenance Guide).
VCC members entering CAPA competitions should try to adopt the provisions of the "Pitfall Guides" provided by CAPA for the software they are using. The "guides" also alert you to which "AI" processes are generative and which are not, and hence, which are NOT allowed and which ARE allowed.
On this web site, go to External Competitions and click on any image for details about that competition.
One of the duties of your External Competitions Committee is to select our Club entries in accordance with the rules of each contest, and in a way that is fair and considerate of all of our members. Your Committee members will each independently judge every entry from members (except their own) using Club "I.C.M." software. Members will not know the name of the photographer. One Committee member will scan the top entries for compliance with photographer limits. The judges will then discuss the rating results and make final selections in accordance with contest rules and their own best judgment. The Committee may invite a “guest” judge from time to time.
Once the VCC entries have been selected by the Committee, we will ask selected members to provide their original RAW or JPEG image, in addition to their actual entry. Assuming compliance with our requests, and no "red flags", the Committee will enter the selected entries.
While only CAPA is pursuing their "forensic" approach to proof of provenance, ALL photographic competitions which VCC enters DISALLOW generative AI. It is up to individual VCC members to take care to avoid use of generative AI, and to keep a record of their process.
To submit images to a competition, click Competitions-Submit Images to a Competition.
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