Photobucket only resizes on a free account if you submit a file over 1MB in size. Optimizing your pictures to be under this limit isn't a major problem when using JPEG files and I've never had a significant problem. I regularly submit files from my 12 megapixel camera (4000 x 3000 pixel res) at full size for this very competition using my free Photobucket account. For the most part I can have the JPEG quality up around the high level (quality slider around the 70 - 80% mark in Photoshop Save for Web dialogue box).