How do you feel about representing your country, photographically? The 4 Nations competition is your chance to achieve this honour. It is a cool photo event, quite different to the usual salons and competitions.

This annual challenge pits the best photographic endeavours of the four national photographic societies of Australia, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand. Each society selects 80 images to represent them. All the resultant 320 images are judged by a panel of three international judges, who are all independent of the four countries. Images are scored anonymously, and the 3 judges scores are aggregated. The society with the highest total score gains the “Bragging Rights”.

Wherever PSNZ finishes in the challenge you can feel proud that your selected image was part of our team chasing the honours.

Each society’s entry of 80 images are divided into in 4 separate categories; 35 are Open Colour, 15 are Open Mono, 15 are Nature and 15 are on the topic of “Our Country”. All categories are considered open in terms of subject but each category has an overriding condition attached. Nature images must comply with the PSNZ standards, Open Colour and Open Mono must be just that, colour or mono. The Open Country is a little more interesting, the subject is once again open but the image must have been exposed in New Zealand. The idea is to have a stunning photograph that showcases a recognisable aspect of our country.

This is a very representative competition by virtue of the fact that each society’s entry of 80 images must be created by 80 different photographers.

First step is, you select your images and enter them to be considered for PSNZ Team selection. This is a supreme international event so we are looking for your best images. Think honours worthy in our Sony PSNZ National Salon.

All images are judged and scored anonymously by a panel of PSNZ accredited judges. The “team” is selected based on rankings derived from the aggregated score of each image. As this is a team event, there will be only one image per team member. All four of your images may meet the selection criteria but only the highest ranked one will be selected.

Our PSNZ selected entry is then sent to the host society who randomly aggregate all the 4 societies’ images and send them off to be judged by a panel of international judges in a neutral country.

The host society then sorts out the winners and disseminates the results. The society with the highest overall points total is declared the winner. The highest pointed image in each of the 4 categories will be awarded a Gold Medal. There may also be up to 2 Honourable mentions made per category. PSNZ will strike a PSNZ Gold medal for any medal winners and a PSNZ Silver medal for Honourable mentions. These are usually presented at the National Convention.

All members who had an image selected in the PSNZ team will receive an electronic certificate honouring that achievement.

The opening date for the 2025 submissions will be confirmed soon.