Posts in Competition
Print League Results for 2023-2024 Season

Last night’s competition judge by Dominic Byrne ARPS saw the conclusion of this season’s Annual Print League. In total twenty images are eligible to be the photographers additional choice in the Print Image of the Year (PIOTY) competition on 28th May when Viveca Koh FRPS FIPS has agreed to select this year’s best print.

The winner of this Season’s Print League was Maurice Young with an aggregate score of 55.5 points, second was David Jordan with 54.5 points and third was Des King with 54.0 points. Pat Stebbings (53.5), Dave Balcombe(52.0) and Terry Newman (50.0) completed the top six places in the competition.

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Review of this Season's External Competitions

Norwich and District Photographic Society has shown consistent improvement since 2019, particularly evident in our performance in the traditional photographic competitions we engage in. This season has been no different:

In January, we participated in the prestigious Cambridge Camera Club Inter-Club Digital Competition, where the strongest clubs from across East Anglia compete. The competition, comprising Monochrome, People, Landscape, Nature, and Open categories, challenges each club to submit their best image per category. With only the finest images showcased, the competition is fierce. This season, we achieved a commendable joint 7th position.

February marked the commencement of the East Anglian Photographic Federation’s Annual Championships, starting with the PDI Championships. Clubs submit 15 images in the initial round, with the top 12 clubs advancing to the subsequent round, featuring 10 additional images. This season marked a significant milestone for NDPS as we progressed to the second round for the first time, securing 9th place overall.

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NDPS retain the Alan Taylor Memorial Trophy

Norwich & District PHotographic Society has successfully retained the Alan Taylor Memorial Trophy after the completion of the Annual Three-way Battle with Ciné - Photo Club Nivernais (CPCN)) in France and Foto-Club Koblenz (FCK) in Germany.
After the three rounds during which the same 20 images entered by each club were scored by a judge in each country NDPS had an aggregate score of 508.0 points with FCK second on 468.0 and CPCN third on 443.5. The judge for the UK leg of the competition was Paul Radden DPAGB, EFIAP/s, PSA4*.

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It's Good to Share...

Edward Russell has become the third NDPS member to have a photo selected to be Amateur Photographer’s Picture of the week (Tuesday 25th July 2023 edition) so far this year.

To take part in the competition readers simply have to post their photos on AP’s social media channels from which the editorial team selects their weekly favourites.

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Great result for NDPS in the EAF Print Championships

Sunday 12th March saw three members make the trek down to Fulbourn, just outside Cambridge to deliver our entries in the EAF Print Championships 2023 and watch the judging. This year there were only 18 clubs competing, whether this was still due to the after effects of covid lockdowns or photographers just cutting back on printing we don’t know but in the past there have been over 30 clubs entered out of 106 in the EAF.  However, all but one or two of the clubs who normally finish in the top 15 were present so we suspected before the judging commenced that we were in for a tough time...! 

This season all clubs entered 15 prints, to be marked by 3 judges who could each award a score up to 5 per images.  The maximum aggregate score for any club being 225. The Judges were Dave Tucker DPAGB EFIAP/g BPE3*, Adrian Lines ARPS MPAGB AFIAP and Jane Lines LRPS MPAGB BPE5*.

 After the formalities the judges got down to business and it quickly became obvious from the first round that it wasn’t going to be a high scoring competition with most prints scoring 11 or below and some mutterings from the Beyond members at the back of the hall after they received only 9 for their first print. As the rounds continued it also became clear that the judges didn’t favour any particular genre but were giving a fair spread of marks across all subjects but print quality was clearly important.

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NDPS retain the Alan Taylor Memorial Trophy

The annual Three-way Battle between Ciné Photo Club Nivernais in France, Foto-Club Koblenz in Germany and Norwich & District Photographic Society went right down to the ‘wire’ with NDPS winning the Alan Taylor Memorial Trophy by the smallest of margins - one point.
After the three rounds played out on separate nights in each contry NDPS scored 482.0 points from Koblenz with 481.0 points and Nivernais who scored 455.5 pints.
The Norwich round was judged by Naomin Saul ARPS ASINWP EFIAP DPAGB APAGB BPE4*

The theme chosen by Foto-Club Koblenz, who were the organisers of this year’s Battle was GRAPHIC. NDPS entries for the competition included images from 15 different member of the Society. Congratulations to NDPS member David Jordan whose image Staircase was awarded the highest aggregate score in the Battle - 29.5 out of a maximum of 30 points..

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Cambridge Digital Inter-Club Competition 2023

The regional club competitions start each year with the Cambridge Digital Inter-Club Competition and it’s always a good chance to meet up with old friends and photographers from other clubs and see some of the best images from around the region. This year was the first in person meeting for a few years because of the effects of covid and those effects were still evident. Normally 35 clubs compete with a waiting list and there have been up to 190 visitors but this year numbers were down with only 27 clubs entered and only around 60 external visitors, but it was still a good meeting.

The Cambridge club are very well organised the competition runs very smoothly, and their catering team provide very good cakes. There are five rounds, Mono, People, Landscape, Nature, and Open, each image is marked out of 20 and the highest scoring club is the winner.

Ralph Duckett MPAGB EFIAP APAGB, from Staffordshire had the hard job of judging this year. He has been a member at Burton on Trent Photographic Society for over 40 years. An experienced PAGB judge, he gave concise and useful comments with good humour on each image and awarded very high scores to many of them, his opinion being that the standard was very high. Ralph awarded 37 images with full marks of 20/20 and this gave him a very difficult job to select his overall winning image. He whittled these down to a final 7 images but then threw it out to the audience to help him select the winner – not the most conventional way to pick a winner but this ended the afternoon with at least the winning photographer happy!

 Five members from NDPS went along to observe the competition. Two of our 5 images scored 20 and overall, we ended with 94 points, out of 100, putting us in equal 8th place slightly down on last year but still a result we were very happy with. Top club was Photographic Imaging Co-Operative (PICO) with 99, second was Welwyn Garden (98), third North Norfolk Photographic Society (97).

Next up are the St Ives Interprint and the EAF Championships. If you get the chance to go along and watch the judging it is recommended as it gives you a good feel for the standard of work in the region and will inspire your own photography.

 Review by Dave Balcombe ARPS & Joan Jordan ARPS

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Annual Print Panel Award - 2022

Des King backed-up his recent success of his print ASPECTS OF THE SAINSBRY ART CENTRE being chosen best Print Image of the Year by winning the Annual Print Panel Award for 2022. In the first round a record number of entries were held back by Judge Justin Minn’s who said his task had been made extremely difficulty by the very high standrad of photography shown during the evening. But as always there can only be one winner and Des’s panel of five images entitled ON THE COURSE swept away the trophy.

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Details of NDPS's Annual Open Public Photography Competition announced...!

Norwich & District Photographic Society’s
Annual Open Public Photography Competition

Norwich & District Photographic Society (NDPS) returns this Autumn to Norwich Cathedral between Tuesday 27th September and Saturday 29th October when the 106th Annual Exhibition is held in the prestigious Hostry Exhibition Area.

Would you like to see one of your photographs exhibited at Norwich Cathedral in the Autumn..? That's the prize awaiting four lucky photographers in our Annual Open Public Photography competition..!

To enter send up to three digital images and indicate your age if under 18, by midnight on Sunday 31st July. The judge of this year’s exhibition entries will choose the winner and two runners-up from a final shortlist of twenty selected by the members of the NDPS f1.4 Forum. In addition, there is a separate award for best Junior Photographer under the age of 18 years old on the 1st of September 2022.

The authors of the four photographs selected will each be awarded a framed certificate at the ‘Private Viewing’ for NDPS members and their guests on Tuesday 27th September at 7:00pm in the Hostry.

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Topic for next Year's International Three-way Battle is announced.

Next Year it is the turn of Foto-Club Koblenz to organise the Annual International Three-way Battle between Kpblenz, Ciné-Photo Club Nivernais, and NDPS when all three ‘clubs’ will again compete for the Alan Taylor Memorial Trophy, currently held by NDPS.

The topic that FCKO have chosen is ‘GRAPHIC’.

In the context of the competition Graphic photographs are photo motifs that result in a graphic motif through light, dark, colors, surfaces, lines and dots. What is meant is the language of form - also in nature, objects, light and shadow, facade(s) and building structure (not "simple" architecture).

The remaining rules are the same as until now. NDPS will be ready to send our 20 +1 images by the first week of January 2023…!

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Another outstanding result for NDPS this time in the EAF Print Championships 2022

Norwich & District Photographic Society continued our recent success in external photographic competitions and inter-club battles with an excellent performance in the EAF Championships. This report is by Dave Balcombe who was one of the five NDPS members who were at Fulbourn on Sunday for the championships.

On Sunday13th March five club members went to the print championships in Fulbourn. There are we currently understand 116 clubs in the EAF but only 17 entered the print championship this year whereas normally there are at least 25 and frequently in the recent past many more. Each club entered 15 prints and the winners would go forward to represent the EAF at the national championship organised by the PAGB. This style of competition is somewhat different to normal club competitions, there are 3 judges with a numeric keypad, the prints are placed on a display stand, and they score between 1 and 5 so the maximum score is 15. They are all experienced judges and the scores come up in seconds with no other feedback or commentary so often images that might do well at club level don’t do so well if they don’t have instant impact.

The Norwich entry was drawn from all the photographs entered in our Annual Exhibition and all other internal competitions and members were invited to submit any other images they wanted considered by our selectors.

By the half way point we knew we were doing fairly well and lying in 5th place, but it was very close at the top. We think the judges must have had a good lunch as the scores immediately after they had dined were noticeably higher and when the final scores were totalled up we still had the 5th highest score of 178.

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Cambridge Camera Club Digital Inter-Club Competition

Last Saturday afternoon after the judge, David Lowe ARPS , DPAGB from Smethwick had delivered his critique for the images entered by the twenty-five competing EAF Clubs taking part in this year’s competition Norwich & District Photographic Society tied on 90 points with Ampthill & District Camera Club and Shillington & District Camera Club.

Unfortunately, David chose the reserve image from Ampthill, so they were declared the winners with NDPS, and Shillington declared ‘equal second’.

Near but so far. Nevertheless, this was outstanding achievement and confirms the recent successes by NDPS in other inter-club competitions and the continuing growth of talent and commitment to improvement amongst the Society’s members..

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The Annual Three-Way Battle Norwich | Ipswich | Lowestoft

Last night saw the return of this well-loved 'battle' between three of East Anglia’s oldest photography clubs. The Coronavirus pandemic had kept us apart since 2019, but Ipswich were this season's hosts and representatives of all three clubs met in their meeting room in Ipswich for the judging by Sarah Kelman ARPS, DPAGB from Cambridge with the meeting being Zoomed live to those members of the three clubs who did not attend in person.

And what an evening of excitement it turned out to be!

We arrived in Ipswich fresh from the outstanding performance by our members just four days before in a new style photo-competition with Sheffield Photographic Society and the London club, Old Coulsdon Camera Club, but far from being battle weary we were prepared for a tough engagement. Throughout the evening as first monochrome and then colour prints were displayed and marked the top score swayed from one club to the other until, at half time, amazingly, all three clubs were separately by just half a point. There were murmurs of surprise from the Competition Secretaries, a lot of ad hoc checking of points and the judge said she could not recall a similar situation.

In the final part, everything was left to play for. Another 21 digital images were displayed, and careful notes were made of the scores. Finally with every picture displayed and the scores recorded on the software and the notepads of the Competition Secretaries the winner was declared. Norwich and District Photographic Society! The final scores were NDPS 181.5, LCC 180.5 and IDPS 177.5

The NDPS selection from 14 different Society members showed our strength in depth with more than 76% of our entries being awarded at least 81/2 out of a maximum score of 10. Congratulations to Adrian, Alan, Dave B, David J, David T, Des, Gary, Jayne, Justin, Malcolm, Maurice, Pat, Patricia and Tom, whose excellent images across a broad selection of photographic genres all contributed to our success.

The image below shows NDPS Chairman alongside a representative from Ipswich being awarded the winner’s trophy by Sarah Kelman.

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Annual Three-way International Battle

Norwich & District Photographic Society has won this year’s Annual Three-way Battle with our friends Foto-Club Koblenz in Germany and Ciné - Photo Club Nivernais in France

Over the three legs of the competition during which renowned photographic judges in Koblenz, Nivernais and Norwich reviewed and scored the same 63 images (20 + 1 reserve from each club) shown anonymously in a random sequence Norwich amassed a magnificient total of 510.0 points (all images being marked out of 10). Koblenz came second with 456.5 points and Nivernais third with a final score of 419.0 points.

Norwich now holds the Alan Taylor Memorial Trophy until the 2022 competition which will be organised in keeping with tradition by Ciné - Photo Club Nivernais

Congratulating NDPS Helmut Wagner from Koblenz wrote ‘Congratulations to NDPS for having won clearly this year´s Three Way Battle . You really had excellent photos and the scores of the judges and many opinions of our members have shown that’.

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RPS Digital IMaging Group - Projected Image Competition 2020

Congratulations to the follow NDPS members who had images accepted for the RPS Digital Imaging Group’s Projected Image Competition 2020.

Open Colour Category

BOUQUET Ian McIntosh LRPS

DAWN MIST Dave Balcombe ARPS*

HORSEY WINDPUMP AT DAWN David Turner LRPS*

SUBWAY SPEEDER Robin Myerscough*

Open Monochrome Category

BALLETIC HIBISCUS Ian McIntosh LRPS

BREAKOUT Dave Balcombe ARPS*

BRIGHTON WEST PIER Dave Turner LRPS*

Altered Reality Category

THE GIRAFFE HOUSE Dave Balcombe ARPS

Due to the limited number of spaces available for the print catalogue, a selection of the highest scoring images were chosen to be shown. The images marked * above were not included in the print catalogue but will be included in the expanded digital version of the catalogue.

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Photographer of The Year Round Two Judged by Caroline Preece LRPS

Last Tuesday saw the judging of Round Two of POTY, another round of digital images. The themed image was ‘In A Row’ and the second image was unrestricted

Caroline Preece had, of course, seen all the images beforehand and was able to make pertinent comments about each of the presented images. The members offered a cornucopia of dazzling images for consideration in each of the four separate classes. There is no doubt that NDPS has some outstanding photographers in its ranks..!

Altogether a total of 78 images were judged and we offer our congratulations to the following winning photographers -

Free choice images

f5.6 League SALTWATER SOAK by Stuart Woodcock

f2.8 League JUST AFTER HARVEST by Bill Daniels

Themed images (IN A ROW)

f5.6 League SHIP TO SHORE by Pat Stebbings

f2.8 League ROW OF POLES ACROSS A GRAIN FIELD by Neil Hall

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Image of the Year selected by Andy Swain LRPS, CPAGB

Andy Swain LRPS, CPAGB last night (2nd June) selected ‘Is the Watehole Safe’ by Nick Lewis to be the NDPS ‘mage of the Year’.

Unfortunately due to the restrictions imposed by the UK Government regarding social distancing and gatherings during the current Covid-19 pandemic the competition was held virtually via Skype and was restricted to just a Digital category with the normal Print category being scrapped this year.

Andy had seen all the images for about a week ahead of the competition which enabled him to look at ‘high quality’ versions of each image and ensured that potential projection issues over the internet were eliminated on the night of the competition. With every member entitled to submit an image along with those that had qualified automatically via earlier rounds of the Photographer of the year competition Andy judged nearly 40 images.

Before starting to give his judgement on each image Andy said he had been impressed by a number of ‘striking’ images and on the general high standard of work submitted in the competition. However, as in all competitions there has to be a winner and so it proved…!

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The results of this season’s Photographer of the Year competition are announced...

In what turned out to be a very close finish to this season’s POTY competition just one-point separated the top four photographers after the five rounds had been concluded.

Congratulations to Neil Hall who retains the trophy he won last year with an aggregate 74 points for his best four rounds just half a point ahead of Gary Hagg with 73.5 points with both Nick Lewis and Maurice Young both with 73 points. Nick, however, took third place on count-back with Maurice fourth overall.

The result means that all four photographer scored an average of more than 9 points out of a possible 10 for the eight images that counted towards their total in the competition.

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Covid 19 - Weekly Friendly Photo-competition, Week Four Results

The image that received the most LIKES in Round FOUR of the competition was SPIKY by Ian McIntosh, in second place was PEAS PLEASE ME by Neil Hall with AFTER BESHTY by Robin Myerscough in third place.

Congratulations to Ian whose image goes forward to the FINAL when the weekly rounds come to an end after the Government’s current 'lock-down' measures are relaxed. The Theme for this week's competition which closes at 20:00 (8:00PM) on Friday is - ‘WHAT IS IT..?’ and the title of the image MUST identify the subject.

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Results of POTY Round Five are announced...

In anticipation that the projected image using Skype would not be to the usual standard obtained using a PC/projectorat a normal meeting Andy Wilson was sent high resolution copies of all the images a few days before. This enabled him to look through the images and formulate this scores and eliminated the risk of inconsistent projected images on the night. Although generally image quality was not too bad this nevertheless proved to be a good idea as it led to Andy providing great feedback on each of the images which all the members appreciated. Many thanks Andy and willlook forward to greeting you back in Norwich under more normal circumstances in the not toodistant future.

A great evening of photography resulted in Adrian Richmond winning a POTY round for the first time with his excellent monochrome image Silent Reflections in the Rain. In second place was Dennis Hales’ image Time on my Hands with Brendan McCarney’s image Great View being placed third.

Another four images were held back by Andy in the first round of the competition and these are all shown below.

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