@Phil V - That's not what the travel guidelines say...
The overall category summary:
"Applications have no geographical limitations and should express the feeling of a time and place, portraying a land, its people or culture."
There's nothing in the criteria about 'wanting to go there'. Here's the criteria in full:
- Your submission should show clear evidence of a genuine knowledge and understanding of your theme.
- The theme could, for instance, relate to a journey, to aspects of a particular place – landscapes, seascapes or architecture of a region, to an event or activity carried out in a place, or to people making up a community.
- The images should accurately depict the theme.
- The Statement of Intent should describe the theme being illustrated and particular important aspects of it.
- There should be a strong content of related, but varied pictures to match the statement.
- Care should be taken to avoid stereotyped images.
- Image manipulation that significantly alters the truth of the situation or event is not permitted.
- The use of some images recorded using High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography will be acceptable for an application in the Travel category provided the use of such a method does not alter the truth of the original scene. However, if High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography is used for images that make up a complete or substantial part of a submission, it should be entered in the Applied category.
Hence I thought the Caves of Mendip might be suitable, but to submit in Travel they would like more images from the broader caving scene, not just images from the caves; which seems reasonable.
My exposure bracketing is pushing their interpretation of the last point quite hard I but didn't get to question this as the Chair of the Travel panel took a look at the scope of what I'm doing and immediately said my work would be far better suited to the Applied category.
The Applied category is where adventure panels like mountaineering and scuba diving usually get submitted, so there is a strong precedent.
It gives me a challenge in that the criteria for Applied asks that the statement should not talk about the difficulty of capturing the images. At the moment that's most of my statement and I need a complete rethink about what it says.
There was nobody present from the Applied panel, but I was given lots of excellent advice and the RPS will put me in contact with the right people to mentor me through my application.
As I suspected, the RPS has never had a panel of caving images submitted. At 'F' that works massively in my favour - yay!
The great news is that my project is viewed as suitable materiel for a panel.
By submitting in Applied I don't need to constrain the images geographically; this will be a huge assistance as Mendip caves have a distinctive look.
One person commented that I might struggle to create 20 caving images with sufficient variety to form a panel; perceptions like this will also work in my favour and I'm happy to accept the challenge
The real biggie for me is the sheer image quality needed to apply at 'F'; I've got to raise my game quite considerably.
I reckon it is going to take at least a year to get the images I need.