Our External Competitions

In addition to our internal competition program, the Club competes extensively against other local and regional clubs.  This gives us the chance to visit other clubs and their members, and compare some of our best images with theirs.  Importantly, additional competitions provide us with a wider range of assessment comments on selected images so that we can get a sense of aspects of photography where Club photographers might usefully develop their skills.

Among the external competitions we are involved with each season are the following:

The Bracknell Nines

We host our own annual competition.  We invite eight other clubs in our area and each club submits six digital images which are assessed by an external judge.  Since Covid this has been staged online, not in our regular Monday evening slot.

SCPF competitions

These are the competitions organised by our regional Federation – the Southern Counties Photographic Federation, SCPF.

SCPF PDI and Print leagues – The leagues are divided into divisions of up to 8 clubs.  Each club plays each other during the season which runs from November to March.  Each club hosts one round with images assessed by an SCPF qualified judge.  Each club in the division submits eight images at the beginning of the season leading to up to 64 to be judged on each night.  Thus, over the season, the same set of images is judged eight times by eight judges.

SCPF Championships – this is a federation-wide competition with some 20-30 clubs submitting 15 digital images and 15 prints each, which makes for a marathon judging exercise!  Members are encouraged to attend, so that they can see the standard of photography and see how the day runs.  The top two clubs progress to represent SCPF at the national competition.

Last year Mark Perkins’ image of a Female Emerald Damselfly won the ‘Best in Competition’ in the SCPF Championships and was awarded the Gold Medal

SCPF Exhibition – Again a federation wide competition (print and PDI) and last year 35 clubs submitted 8 PDI images which were each judged out of 10.  The prints are displayed to the public in Salisbury during January and the digital images shown on a slideshow on a large screen there.  Members may visit the exhibition and experience a wide range of photography at this exhibition.

SCPF Finals Day – The two top-scoring images from each club in SCPF compete against one another

Other Inter-Club Competitions

The Albany Cup – organised by Guildford Photographic Society – this is a print competition for eight clubs.  Each club provides four prints on a theme chosen by each club.  In the first half of the evening the images are marked individually and after the break they are assessed as a panel, on how cohesive and consistent the prints fit the theme.

The club has a good track record in this competition and last year it won it.

Windlesham & Camberley Non-Advanced competition – This is a competition for six local clubs that focuses on images from eight “non-advanced” photographers (i.e. those who are not in the top division of the club, do not have “letters” and have not had images used to represent their club in the last two years.

Again, we have a good track record, winning again last season.