Competition Calendar
Competitions in 2025
If you go to Photo Entry you will find that this year’s Competition Groups are now available to you. These are pretty straightforward.
We have grouped all the competitions which score points towards Photographer of The Year into one group, so its pretty large, but everything is in one place, and in date order of closing date. All competitions are now open for entry. As always any entry you make can be changed or amended right up to the closing date.
In addition you will find groups for Non-POTY events ie the Photo Trail and Critique Nights
And new this year a group for the informal Thursday – member judged events
| Date | Closing Date | Competition | Comments |
| 24 February | 10 February | Club Competition One | Print & DPI Theme Open |
| 7 April | 24 March | Club Competition Two | Print & DPI Theme Open |
| 19 May | 5 May | Club Competition 3 | Prints & DPI Theme 2 Images on the Theme Patterns and 2 Open. You may enter either or both categories |
| 23 June | 9 June | Architecture Record and Manipulated | Please read the new rules |
| 6 October | 22 September | Bob Loynds Trophy | DPI Photo Journalism portfolio competition |
| 10 November | 27 October | The remaining Annual Exhibition Categories | Prints & DPI various Categories |
| 8 December | 24 November | Presidents Evening | Prints & DPI Theme set by President – “TBA” |
This year we have amalgamated Beginners and Advanced competitions. The images will be judged as one set but the Beginners prize will still be awarded to the highest scoring Beginner in the competition. (Beginners Cup & Trophy and the Rosenberg Cup)
The rules for The Beginners Cup & Trophy are now identical to Open Colour.
We have revised some of the limits on the number of images you can enter.
Print competitions will remain at 4 prints/competition but for projected images we are returning the number to 4.
We hope this will mean that every competition will get a nice big entry but if the entry exceeds what can be judged in the time available some images will be rejected. We call this capping and will be done if individual sections of the Annual get too big or if we get more than 80 images to Judge on any one night.
Culling
We want to do this fairly so we are again making use of a Photo Entry feature, the ability to “Cull” images.
Photo Entry does this by rejecting the last image entered by you. So the order in which you input images will be important, put your favourite in 1st.
Photo Entry allows you to promote or relegate images with arrows next to each entry until you are happy with the order, so its easy to tweak your entry.
Any images rejected in this way can be entered again in other competitions and, to be fair, members who have not entered the maximum number will escape capping until the cap falls below the number they have entered.
Photographer of the year
The league table is generated by PhotoEntry which is based on your best 20 images of the year.
You will find the link to the table in the POTY group on PhotoEntry and it will continually update after each competition so you can keep track of your position
1. Each member can enter one portfolio of no less than 6 and no more than 8 images which together could illustrate a Magazine or Newspaper article.
2. They need not be sport or hard news but could be from a “Lifestyle” title ie Cookery, Wildlife or anything from the wide range of titles available at a newsagents.
3. The entry must have a narrative or story with a clear structure, an introduction, middle, and conclusion. Therefore images that are simply illustrations, for example like in a catalogue, which do not have a narrative theme are not permitted.
4. This is not a panel competition so no weight is given to the visual cohesiveness of the images when viewed together.
5. The entry will be judged as a set projected sequentially in the order the entrant choses in Photo Entry. The sequence is therefore important.
6. Marks will be awarded based firstly upon how well the set of images convey the narrative chosen and then by the quality of the individual images.
7. The entry can be accompanied by a short text of no more than 100 words outlining the theme chosen.
1. Editing in Photoshop or similar software is not forbidden but the image must document the subject chosen and must remain a faithful depiction of it
2. Architecture – Any image which documents a building, architectural feature or the built environment. This will include the interiors of buildings. The word building applies to any man made feature including houses, churches, bridges, roads etc.
3. Record – Photographs of anything, where the intention is to document the subject
Each year we run a number of events which might have a competitive element but which are basically intended to be for fun, entertainment and a chance to learn or try something new. These events do not count towards the Photographer Of The Year title. [POTY]
Photo Trail
An annual event were members pair up (ideally with someone fresh) and undertake a number of challenges set for them. This is a single evening event.
Critique
On a number of evenings we invite members to show a few photographs with the intention of getting supportive feedback from the audience.
Show and Tell
These are an informal evening were any member can show whatever photos they like and talk about them. It is entirely up to that member wether they invite feedback or not.