All members are encouraged to enter competitions, whatever their level of experience. New members may find the idea daunting but competitions are an excellent way to improve your image making.
Constructive feedback from experienced visiting judges is often very useful and it can boost your learning process to see your work on display and being discussed. Competitions are also a good incentive to keep working on your style, technique and new ideas but if you decide not to take part that’s fine; you can learn a lot just by looking at other members’ images and hearing the judge’s comments.
The current schedule comprises eight regular competitions during the season – four with a set subject and four ‘open’ competitions with no set theme – and scores from those are totalled at the end of the season.
Each of those eight regular competitions has a Print and a DPI (Digital Projected Image) section and you may enter up to three images in each.
Seamus Whelan, Alan Taylor, Andrea Thrussell, Stuart Alexander and Barry Hennedy
There are also two standalone competitions during the season – ‘The Mike Goldie Trophy’ and ‘Digital Art’ – which have their own trophies.
The season’s finale is the ‘Image of the Year’ competition when members may re-submit a maximum of three digital and three print entries that were previously entered into that season’s competitions.
The set themes for 2022-23 (in order) are:
Decay
Long Exposure
Numbers / Letters
Circles
The theme for the 2022 Mike Goldie Trophy, as selected by 2021 winner Stuart Alexander, is ‘Precarious’ with the added proviso that the image is unedited apart from resizing/cropping. (Bring up to three images on a USB to the first meeting in September 2022)
For those who like to be prepared, the themes for 2023-24 are:
Nature’s Patterns
Abandoned
Roads, routes and pathways
Metal
Paul Thomas, Sue Clegg, Louisa Harris, Barry Hennedy, Andrea Thrussell and Gwen Tuck
