PXL Shots

This site is all about photography...
Photography contests in particular! Users submit their photos for a given theme. Later on, people can vote on these entries to determine a contestwinner. Great prizes can be earned in these contests. Below, you can read more on how to participate.

No. Everything is free of charge.

Yes, you can earn real money in various different ways:

• End in the top 3 of a contest. The higher the level, the more you win.
• Subscribe and win a jackpot contest.
• Challenge someone for a 1vs1 contest for a amount of credits. The winner earns the credits from the loser of the 1vs1 contest. (go to 'my challenges')

If you have any questions or problems with registration, uploading images, ... simply send a mail. Also, suggestions for improvements are always welcome. Send your e-mails to support@pxlshots.com

Go to the registration page and fill out the form with your desired username, password and e-mail. Registration is free and takes only a few seconds. After signing up you will receive an e-mail to activate your account, so make sure to use a valid e-mail address. (avoid using free e-mail addresses such as hotmail, yahoo, ... as they might block out certain e-mails.) Please note that multiple registrations per ip-adres to manipulate contest results will be logged. After you activated your account, you can log in and start.

When your account is active, you can start participating in the contests, win prizes, vote and comment on other images, ...

With this card you can keep track of your history on this site. You will see the following numbers:

• Talent: your talentpoints are calculated according to how many contests you win and how accurate you vote. While your talent goes up, you can participate in advanced and pro contests to win bigger prizes.
• PXL Points: your PXL points show how active you are on this site.
• Activity Rank: your activity on this site compared to others.
• Contest Entries: the number of images you submitted to the contests.
• Votes Placed: the number of votes you placed in the contests.
• Vote Percentage: the percentage of images you voted on since you registered.
• Vote Power: this number indicates how important your vote is(min. 0, max. 1000) Please read below how votepower works.
• Comments Placed: the number of comments you placed in the contests.
• Contests 1st place: the number of contests you ended on first place.
• Contests 2nd place: the number of contests you ended on second place.
• Contests 3rd place: the number of contests you ended on third place.
• Average Score: the average score over all contest entries you ever submitted.
• Top 3 Percentage: the percentage of your images that ended in the top 3 of a contest.
• Total Credits Won: the total amount of money you ever won on this site (100 credits = $1).
• Total Credits In Account: the total amount that is not paid out to you yet (100 credits = $1).
• Thumb Up Comments: the number of comments you placed that received a thumb up. The author of an image can approve your comment if he/she thinks your comment is useful.

Apart from these numbers, your profile shows your contest portfolio (all finished contests), your albums, the latest comments you received and the latest comments you placed.

In a contest people show their photography talent by submitting it. From that point, other people can vote on the image. At the end of a contest, the image with the highest score wins the contest.

In most contests, you can win credits. 100 credits are worth $1 (USD). The higher the contest level, the more you can win. (see lower on this page). You can use your credits to participate in special jackpot contests, to challenge other members or make a request to payout your credits. To avoid any 'hit-and-run behavior', you'll have to meet the following requirements before requesting a payout of your earnings:

• 1) A balance of $20 or more in your account...
• 2) A minimum of 3 entries that finished in the top 3.

When you have a balance of $20 or more in your account, you can request a payout by sending a mail or PM on the forums. Usually this payout is done with paypal, but if you prefer a different method or paypal is not available in your country, simply explain it in your mail!

Each week(on thursday) we start contests. Apart from these regular contests, we sometimes start big prize contests and custom contests.

Most contests run for 10 days. Once a new contest starts, you have 8 days to submit your entries. After these 8 days, the contest goes into 'vote only' mode for 2 days. After these 2 days, the contests ends and the winners are announced.

Most contests are free for all contests, which means everyone can participate and win the credits. However, few contests work differently:

• Free For All Contests: Everyone can participate and win credits.
• Beginner Contests: Only users with a level lower than 10 can participate.
• Leveled Contests: For leveled contests there is a minimum level requirement to participate. Prizes in these contests are higher than in regular contests. Raise your level by winning contests and by voting accurately.

• 1. register for free
• 2. click on an active contest you want to participate in.
• 3. click on the 'add an entry for this contest' link.
• 4. upload your image.

Yes. Each contest has a maximum number of entries, but this is more than 1 in most cases. But remember, quality is more important than quantity!

Contest winners are determined by voting on a 1-100% scale. Each registered user can place a vote per image and the weight of this vote is determined by the votepower of the user. Please read below how to gain votepower. When the contest ends, the image with the best score wins the contest. In case of a tie, the image with the most votes wins. The winner of a contest will be announced on our news page each time a contest ends.

Each user has votepower. Votepower represents the importance of your vote. The higher your votepower, the more important your vote. When a new user signs up, he/she starts with 0 votepower. Once the new user has 7 finished entries, he/she can start gaining extra votepower by voting accurately. Your vote counts as 1 vote when you have 100 votepower. When you reach votepower 400, your vote counts as 4 seperate votes, and so on ... A votepower of 199 or lower means your vote counts as 1 seperate vote. A votepower below 100 does not count in the final result.
Accurate voting means within a specific range, determined by the average value of all votes placed on that entry. When you vote within this range, your votepower increases and the closer you vote to the average vote, the more votepower you gain. When your vote is outside the range, your votepower decreases.
An accurate voterange is always 40 points wide. The following examples explain what will happen in different cases.

VOTEPOWER CALCULATION: EXAMPLE 1

The final score of an entry is 65%. This means you will gain votepower if you voted between 45% and 85% on that entry.
Here are some examples of votes placed on this entry:

• user 1 voted 10%: decrease of 3 votepower (Max Votepower Lost)
• user 2 voted 37%: decrease of 2 votepower
• user 3 voted 41%: decrease of 1 votepower
• user 4 voted 45%: no change in votepower
• user 5 voted 53%: increase of 1 votepower
• user 6 voted 65%: increase of 3 votepower (Max Votepower Win)
• user 7 voted 70%: increase of 2 votepower
• user 8 voted 85%: no change in votepower
• user 9 voted 87%: decrease of 1 votepower

VOTEPOWER CALCULATION: EXAMPLE 2

The final score of an entry is 22%. This means you will gain votepower if you voted between 2% and 42% on that entry.
Here are some examples of votes placed on this entry:

• user 1 voted 2%: no change in votepower
• user 2 voted 10%: increase of 1 votepower
• user 3 voted 22%: increase of 3 votepower (Max Votepower Win)
• user 4 voted 30%: increase of 2 votepower
• user 5 voted 44%: decrease of 1 votepower
• user 6 voted 70%: decrease of 3 votepower (Max Votepower Lost)

VOTEPOWER CALCULATION: EXAMPLE 3

The final score of an entry is 80%. This means you will gain votepower if you voted between 60% and 100% on that entry.
Here are some examples of votes placed on this entry:

• user 1 voted 1%: decrease of 3 votepower (Max Votepower Lost)
• user 2 voted 52%: decrease of 1 votepower
• user 3 voted 60%: no change in votepower
• user 4 voted 71%: increase of 1 votepower
• user 4 voted 81%: increase of 2 votepower
• user 4 voted 80%: increase of 3 votepower (Max Votepower Win)

It is not encouraged to just vote a 100% on the entries you like and 1% on the entries you don't like. This is not accurate voting.
Also, to make the final score of an entry more accurate, there's a jury panel with a fixed high votepower of 2000. Meaning that their vote has 20 times more weight than a vote from someone with votepower 100.

Talentpoints are a measurement of how often you win. Your talentpoints are linked to a certain level. The more talentpoints you get, the higher your level. A higher level allows you to participate in high level contests, which have bigger prizes than the normal contests. In the following table, you can see how much talentpoints are needed to get to each level:

Tier 1	Tier 2	Tier 3	Tier 4	Tier 5	Tier 6	Tier 7	Tier 8
lvl 1: 0+ lvl 2: 30+ lvl 3: 40+ lvl 4: 50+ lvl 5: 60+	lvl 6: 80+ lvl 7: 100+ lvl 8: 120+ lvl 9: 140+ lvl 10: 160+	lvl 11: 200+ lvl 12: 240+ lvl 13: 280+ lvl 14: 320+ lvl 15: 360+	lvl 16: 440+ lvl 17: 520+ lvl 18: 600+ lvl 19: 680+ lvl 20: 760+	lvl 21: 920+ lvl 22: 1080+ lvl 23: 1240+ lvl 24: 1400+ lvl 25: 1560+	lvl 26: 1880+ lvl 27: 2200+ lvl 28: 2520+ lvl 29: 2840+ lvl 30: 3160+	lvl 31: 3800+ lvl 32: 4440+ lvl 33: 5080+ lvl 34: 5720+ lvl 35: 6360+	lvl 36: 7000+ lvl 37: 7640+ lvl 38: 8280+ lvl 39: 8920+ lvl 40: 9560+

When a level 12 contest starts for example, you will need to have 240 or more talentpoints in order to participate.
Besides that there are 'free for all' contests (anyone can participate) and beginner contests(only users with level 10 or lower can participate).

Earn talentpoints by winning contests

You can earn talentpoints by ending in the top 7 in a contest. The higher your entry ends, the more talentpoints you earn. Also, the higher the contest level, the more talentpoints can be earned. The following table show the amount of talentpoints that can be earned in all the different contestlevels. The horizontal indexes represent the contest level (1-25) and the vertical indexes represent the final rank (1-7) of an entry.

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17
1	35	37	39	41	43	45	47	49	52	54	57	60	63	66	69	73	76
2	30	32	33	35	36	38	40	42	44	47	49	51	54	57	59	62	65
3	25	26	28	29	30	32	34	35	37	39	41	43	45	47	49	52	55
4	20	21	22	23	24	26	27	28	30	31	33	34	36	38	40	42	44
5	15	16	17	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24	26	27	28	30	31	33
6	10	10	11	12	12	13	13	14	15	16	16	17	18	19	20	21	22
7	5	5	6	6	6	6	7	7	7	8	8	9	9	9	10	10	11

Example: Your entry finishes third in a level 15 contest means that you will earn 49 talent points.

Earn talentpoints by winning 1vs1 challenges

You can also earn talentpoints by challenging other users for a 1vs1 contest. The higher the level of your opponent, the more talentpoints you earn if you win the challenge. The following table shows how many talentpoints you win for each opponent level:

lvl 1: 1 lvl 2: 2 lvl 3: 4 lvl 4: 8 lvl 5: 16

lvl 6: 18 lvl 7: 20 lvl 8: 22 lvl 9: 24 lvl 10: 26

lvl 11: 28 lvl 12: 30 lvl 13: 32 lvl 14: 34 lvl 15: 36

lvl 16: 38 lvl 17: 40 lvl 18: 42 lvl 19: 44 lvl 20: 46

lvl 21: 48 lvl 22: 50 lvl 23: 52 lvl 24: 54 lvl 25: 56

lvl 26: 58 lvl 27: 60 lvl 28: 62 lvl 29: 64 lvl 30: 68

lvl 31: 76 lvl 32: 84 lvl 33: 92 lvl 34: 100 lvl 35: 140

lvl 36: 180 lvl 37: 240 lvl 38: 300 lvl 39: 380 lvl 40: 500

You have a cool a idea for a photography contest? Go to this suggestion page and share it with everyone!