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.