An Update from Council

An Update from PSNZ Council

by Moira Blincoe LPSNZ

I’M TAKING THIS opportunity to update you on Council’s October announcement of the intention to introduce a ‘two-year image capture’ policy for the SONY National Exhibition and NZ Camera submissions.

Since the announcement we have received feedback and email communication regarding this decision, specifically for the SONY National Exhibition entries. There was a small representation of members who expressed their dissatisfaction with this announcement on the Society’s closed Facebook page. The number of members of the FB group is not even fifty percent of the membership; therefore most other members would not be aware of the comments posted. Council has taken this feedback into consideration as our discussions have continued.

Equally, we received many emails from members who supported the decision.

Not a day has gone by when Council has not been discussing this issue. Included in recent feedback from one member was the recommendation to still retain a time limit, but to push out, or increase the number of years.

Again, Council took this into consideration and after further discussion, I wish to announce that Council will extend the time frame to ‘five-year creation’ for the SONY National Exhibition ONLY.

We feel that this is a reasonable length of time to be able to select an image that you feel worthy of entering into the national exhibition, if you haven’t created any images you wish to enter, in the preceding 12 - 24 months. This means that every element of an image submitted must have been created by the photographer in the previous five calendar years for the SONY National Exhibition.

By introducing this policy, we were not trying to be the picture police by telling you how you must shoot your images, or that you must present works in a certain style. In my previous article, I had used the words ‘current trends’ referring in part to why the decision was made. I realise that ‘current trends’ come and go, just like a fashion fad. When bell bottom jeans came on the scene everyone rushed out to buy a pair.

When HDR processing became trendy, all we saw were heavily saturated and over processed works. We do not want that.

Ideally, we want our photographers to be encouraged to shoot and submit their latest work and not simply drag from historical, back catalogues.

This change will come into effect for the 2022 SONY National Exhibition.

NZ Camera

Council has agreed that the two-year capture timeframe for submissions to NZ Camera will be retained. This means all components of a photograph must have been created in the two years prior.

With entries for the 2021 NZ Camera publication due to open approximately 1 March 2021, all entries must have been created from 1 January 2019.