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PPSCV
Serving the Bay Area Community of Professional Photographers since 1949

Providing Education, Certification, Image Critique and Competition, and Peer-to-Peer Networking

HomeImage Competition: PPA Competition Changes 2020

2020 Changes for PPA Image Competition


PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHERS OF AMERICA·TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2020


An Action Team was formed to explore the concept of judging District and IPC with a system that would not utilize numeric scores. There were several reasons to research a change:

  • Current system is confusing
  • Current system does not focus on the value of the merit
  • Current system needs congruency between judging at Districts and IPC
  • Transparency and consistency needs to be established for how category winners and GIA’s are chosen

Following research and deliberation, the Board of Directors is very excited to announce the following changes, that will go into effect for the 2020 PPA Image Competitions:

  • At District and IPC Judging we will utilize two different outcomes for entries: “Merit” and “Not a Merit”
  • At District Judging Category Award winners will be decided in a “head to head” judging from all merit images.
  • At IPC ALL merited images will be judged for the Loan Collection.
  • After IPC, GIA award winners will be decided using “head to head” judging from all Loan Images.
  • Entrants will now be able to see each individual judge’s decision during live streaming. These individual results will be stored in the members “My PPA” account. Judge’s names will not be attached to the results.
  • Normally entrants are able to order critiques before the competition & up to 1 week after the competition ends to enhance their education.
    For 2020 Image Critiques Are Now Open to All PPA Members!
    This year, we have made them available to all members for only $10/image!

In Conclusion, moving the evaluation process away from numeric scores to the merit / no merit at districts and merit / no merit – loan / no loan at IPC is a much simpler system to understand for our members. These realignments shift the focus back to what is the heart of PPA Image Competition- the PPA Merit and PPA Master’s Degrees. This new system will better aim to create consistency and transparency across the competitions for both scores and awards and will be more succinct and easier to explain to members, especially new members/entrants. This new system will be beneficial to the judges by allowing them to focus on the image itself and always keep the merit at the heart of judging process.

Thank you, we are looking forward to a great 2020 Image Competition Season,

Your friends at PPA.