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Entering photography leagues

What is a league?

A league is a recurring photography competition organized by an association, made up of several monthly themes. Unlike a one-off contest, in a league photographs are submitted month by month, and at the end an overall classification is obtained by adding up the results of all the themes.

Finding a league

From the Picstar home page you can explore the available leagues. You can also see them from an association's public page, where the leagues currently active are listed.

When you open a league you will see:

  • Name and description
  • Poster
  • Start and end dates
  • Entry fee (if it's a paid league)
  • Available themes with their submission deadlines
  • League rules (downloadable as PDF)
  • Sponsors (if any)

If the league is organised in rounds, the Themes tab shows them as drop-downs: each round shows the Opening and Closing dates for photo uploads and, inside, its themes. The round you can submit to right now is shown open or, if none is open, the next one to open. When the league only accepts one photo per round, Pick one theme appears next to each round's name.

Entering a league

Free league

Click Participate and you are registered automatically.

  1. Click Participate
  2. Review the price breakdown (entry fee + taxes if applicable)
  3. Accept the terms and conditions
  4. Click Pay — you'll be redirected to Stripe to complete the payment
  5. Once paid, you are registered automatically

Social league (members only)

If the league has social scope, only members of the organizing association can participate. If you are not a member, check the Joining an association section

Submitting photographs

Once registered, you can submit photos to each theme within its deadline:

  1. Open the league and select the active theme
  2. Upload your photograph following the indicated format
  3. Each theme has a maximum number of photos you can submit

Each theme has its own deadline. Once a theme's deadline has passed, no more photographs are accepted for that theme, even though the league remains active.

Some themes also have an opening date: until it arrives, the upload button is disabled and states when you will be able to submit. Dates are set by the association in its own time zone, so the button shows the equivalent time in yours if you are in another country.

Some leagues allow a single photo per round: you pick one of the month's themes and the rest are blocked, with the button greyed out telling you which theme you already entered. If you picked the wrong theme, remove the photo and enter whichever one you want.

You can remove a submitted photo while its theme's deadline is still open: click the bin icon on the photo and confirm. The theme is left without your work, and you can enter another photo or leave it empty.

Your submitted photographs

Each submitted photo appears on its card in full, uncropped: it is fitted inside a square frame with space around it where needed, so a landscape photo has bands above and below and a portrait one has them at the sides. The top corner shows its aspect ratio (for example, 3:2).

  • The small circle in the bottom-left corner shows the frame colour, white to begin with. Hover over it (or tap it on a phone) to reveal the other two, grey and black, to see a dark or a light photo better. The colour applies to all your photos at once.
  • The magnifier in the bottom-right corner opens the photo full size, with zoom, on the same frame colour.
  • Below it you will see the title and description, the status (Accepted or Disqualified, in which case the reason is shown too), the date and time you submitted it and until when you can change it, with the days left. Once the deadline is over, the card shows Deadline closed with its date.
  • Until the results are published, every photo shows as Accepted: if the organisers disqualify one, you will see it, with the reason, once the results are published.
  • An empty slot lists the requirements the contest sets for the photo (maximum size, dimensions and, if any, the minimum size and the resolution), so you can check them before uploading.

Classification and results

When a theme's deadline ends, the jury votes on it and the Salon Chairman closes it. From then on its results appear in the League results section of the league page, without waiting for the season to end. Themes that are still open do not appear anywhere.

While the league is running, the section has four tabs:

  • Wall — the photographs from the closed themes, sorted from highest to lowest score
  • Participant list — a table with the author, theme and score of each photograph
  • Statistics — works received and selected in each closed theme, and authors by country
  • Classification — the sum of each participant's scores

To the right of the tabs, the dropdown picks what all four tabs show. It only offers what is already closed:

  • General classification — all the league's closed themes
  • Thematic leagues and Rounds — the cumulative classification of that thematic league or round. They appear as soon as they have a closed theme and only add up the closed ones; below each one you can see how many it has so far, for example "2 of 5 themes closed".
  • Themes — a single theme

With a theme selected, the Classification tab lets you switch between Voting summary, photo by photo, and Classification by theme, participant by participant. In the summary, the icon next to each photo's score opens the Score breakdown: what each jury member gave and, if the league votes by criteria, the score for each criterion. Jurors are shown without names, as Juror 1, Juror 2… ordered from highest to lowest score, so Juror 1 is not the same person on two different photos.

When the league ends and the association notifies the participants, the section adds the Winning photos tab, with the winners and their awards.

Your league entries and awards are also recorded on your public profile.