The summer will  soon be over and the forthcoming season will see some changes to our internal  competitions .  Many clubs have already moved away from the scoring of every image, towards a more critique-based affair and so we are going to be experimenting with a new approach and also trialling some alternative judging methods.

Due to the decline in print entries,  five of the six competitions will be digital-only and one will be print-only.  A print-themed evening will be held ahead of this to offer advice and practical know-how on all aspects of producing a mounted print.  All members who wish to enter will also be able to  purchase mount boards from the club at a nominal charge.   The aim of this is to encourage more entries so that hopefully, a print section for each competition may be re-introduced at a later date.  Also, of course,  prints are essential for the continued success of our annual exhibition.

The rules for competition entry are otherwise largely unchanged (the detailed instructions on this will be updated in due course).  In summary, the judge or judges will be asked to critique all images then select a winner and 9 other commended images. These will then be scored from 10 down to 1 for the purposes of our league table.

In terms of judging, two competitions will still be scored by external judges and one (Landscape) will be judged by our own Mark Helliwell.  The other two will be scored by club members – one by a selected panel and the other by all members attending the competition evening.  The exact format of these competitions will be described nearer the time but they will also involve feedback/critique of all images. It will be interesting to see how this approach compares to the external judging we are all used to and hopefully will invite much discussion on how we run future competitions.

As always, looking forward to seeing some wonderful competition entries!