After much discussion, the committee has decided to make some changes to the grading and promotion system for the coming year.
We will be adding a new grade beyond the current A grade, and making it harder (or rather, making it take longer) to progress through the grades. The new grade will be called the "Salon" grade ("S" for short). Members whose grade is currently A Bronze or above will be judged at the Salon grade.
We will be adding another award that the judge can give, namely a “Merit”. This will sit between Acceptance and Highly commended in the scale.
As well as this re-naming, we will be adding the requirement to score a specific number of points at the various grades, in addition to simply achieving honours.
On club night, images will be judged in groups of grade, as now, but with the addition of the extra grouping of Salon grade. Points will be awarded according to this table:
Open Subject Set Subject
Image of the night: 10 points 11 points
Honours: 8 points 9 points
Highly Commended: 6 points 7 points
Merit: 4 points 5 points
Acceptance: 2 points 3 points
Passed in: 0 points 0 points
(You will receive more points for the Set Subject)
The requirements for progressing from grade to grade are:
To get from C grade to C Bronze you need: 50 points
To get from C Bronze to C Silver you need: 125 points
To get from C Silver to C Gold you need: 200 points
To get from C Gold to B grade you need: 230 points
and 8 honours earned at C grade
C Graders will not be required to enter Prints until they reach B grade.
To get from B grade to A grade you need: 230 points
and 8 honours earned at B grade, of which 2 must be prints.
To get from A grade to S Bronze (Salon grade) 230 points
and 12 honours earned at A grade, of which 6 must be prints
To get from S Bronze to S Silver you need: 300 points
and 20 honours earned at S Bronze, of which 10 must be prints
To get from S Silver to S Gold you need: 400 points
and 30 honours earned at S Silver, of which 10 must be prints
And the last change, during club night judging there will be no naming of the Honours photographer until the end of judging.