The YPU Exhibition is an annual competition run by the Yorkshire Photographic Union. The YPU is made up of 62 clubs, from Settle to Bridlington and from Whitby to Sheffield. The exhibition takes place in May, hosted by a member club.
RCPS invites all of its members to enter the YPU Exhibition with their own choices of images (in some clubs, the club chooses the entries). Each member can submit up to 10 prints and 10 projected digital images (PDIs). Those images which achieve a judges’ score of 13 or above may be ‘accepted’ into the exhibition and thus displayed publicly. Higher-scoring images may win a certificate or even an award.
Check out our club performance at the YPU Exhibition over recent years, based on the scores for members’ entries. You can also see results by member in the Members’ Section of our website, once you’ve logged in.
Our YPU representative is Richard Egan.
Submitting images to the YPU Exhibition
To enter, RCPS members must register with the YPU via the YPU portal, when you will be issued with a YPU membership number. Please then go into the YPU website’s Portal and read the entry rules carefully. You will be able to use that membership number in future years without registering again.
- Entry form – All entries come first to RCPS, so please submit your images using RCPS’ own online YPU exhibition entry form (to be provided soon).
- The cost – Each image you enter costs £1.50. Please pay the RCPS treasurer; we will then pay our club’s combined fees to the YPU.
- Take note – There are struct rules about image titles and digital file sizes (in Mb), so please ensure you’ve read the rules.
- Prior credits – If any of your print or PDI submissions have been awarded a credit in any other salon, you must use the same image title.
- The closing date for the 2026 YPU Exhibition is yet to be announced. In 2025, it was 20 February. However, our deadline is earlier because our YPU representative has a lot of work to do before forwarding, eg resolving any issues, producing labels with YPU barcodes, and delivering the prints to the YPU.
Print submissions
- Handing in: Bring your print entries to a club night. You must also provide a digital reference for each print (for sizing, see ‘PDI submissions’ below); upload these via the Dropbox link to be provided, just as you would with our own competitions.
- Mounts must be 400x500mm (+/– 2mm tolerance), and no more than 4mm thick to ensure that any winning prints fit the YPU standard display frame. Mounts can be of any plain colour, but must not include a border outside the image. Write your image title, and an arrow indicating ‘up’, on the back only. Do not write your name.
- Forwarding to the PAGB – Winning prints may be selected for inclusion in the PAGB annual exhibition. If so, they will be retained for 1 year and returned to you by next year’s entry date.
PDI submissions
- Sizes for PDIs (and digital references for prints) are the same size as for our own club competitions. Therefore, regardless of format (landscape, portrait or square), no image can more more than 1600 pixels wide, and no image can be more than 1200 pixels high.
- Colour space: Save your files to the colour mode sRGB IEC6 1966-2. In Photoshop, for example, you’ll find this in the menu: File > Convert to profile.
- Image format: Save your images as JPGs using “baseline (standard)” format, not “progressive” format.
- Maximum image size is 1.9Mb.
Categories
| Prints (10 categories) | DPIs (9 categories)) |
| Open Colour Open Mono Record Portrait Sport Action Nature Travel Scapes Creative Young Photographer | Open Colour Open Mono Portrait Sport Action Nature Travel Scapes Creative Young Photographer |
Your results
At the time of the exhibition, the YPU publishes the scores for every image submitted. These are available on the YPU portal, but can only be seen by the image author:
Any questions?
Please contact our YPU rep.