A report by Chris Baldwin our External Competition Secretary

The return of this day after the removal of Covid restrictions was a rather low scale affair. It was held at a new venue for the event: the Chiltern Lifestyle Centre in Amersham. The audience consisted of 8 people running the event, three judges and 29 paying attendees, well down – about a third of previous years.

The three judges each had a voting pad awarding 2, 3, 4 or 5 marks to an entry. They viewed each image for about 10 seconds then voted. There was no spoken appraisal, only the title read out by one of the organisers. In the second part, whilst the judges viewed the prints, a PDI of the image was projected onto a large screen. This enabled the judging to proceed very quickly. The viewing and scoring of the 270 PDI images took 45 minutes. In each half the scoring was followed by the selection by the judges of their personal choice of best in the competition. It was ended by announcements of these choices and the club results. The print competition took place after a 25 minute break for refreshments and this time the viewing and scoring was over in 35 minutes – 195 prints.

In the PDIs, Banbury’s best scores were 13 marks for Gareth Morgan’s “Wet Race Day” and Chris Baldwin’s “Mr Grumpy”. Twelve marks went to Derek Lane’s “Lend Me An Ear” and Chris Baldwin’s “Almost Got It”. Eleven marks were awarded to Derek Lane’s “Feel The Silence”, Gareth Morgan’s “Here Comes The Rain”, Michael Greenway’s “Black Star Riders” and Jane Jarvis’s “Iced Iris”. I had been forced to shorten Michael’s title as it was longer than the competition allowed (Black Star Riders Featuring Scott Gorham and Ricky Warwick). At the end the club came a rather disappointing 16th out of 18 clubs, gaining a total of 160 marks. Watford won with Amersham and Oxford tying for 2nd place.

For the prints competition, club’s officials had to arrive at the venue by 12:30 pm with their entry – a box of 15 prints. Labels had been previously sent to the clubs detailing each print’s title with a position for the score to be added. The organisers then took one print from each pile to make up a round in the competition of 13 prints for the 13 clubs taking part. At the end of the competition the organisers had restored the piles of prints so that each club official could return home with them. Any prints scoring 13 or over from the fifteen available marks were retained by the CACC to provide a pool of entries for the national annual competition (organised by the PAGB). I returned with a print of Diana Gamble’s that had been retained in 2019, the last time the event was held before Covid.

In the prints competition Banbury faired much better. Thirteen marks was awarded to Chris Baldwin’s “Barbary Lion Emerging” and it was retained. Twelve marks went to Diana Gamble’s “It’s Mine”, Jim McCartan’s “Is There Something On my Head?” plus his “Woodland Squirrel”, Jeff Youngman’s “Wild Fox Portrait” and Chris Baldwin’s “Defending The Kill”. Eleven marks went to Jeff Youngman’s “Choir, Gloucester Cathedral”, Chris Baldwin’s “Still Keeping The Tea Warm” and Michael Butterworth’s “Gabrielle”. The club total was 163 marks which gained it a very creditable 9th equal place which is higher than we can remember from previous years. Watford won this event, as well, with Amersham and Maidenhead tying for 2nd place.

Banbury Camera Club’s entries to both the Projected and the Print competitions are shown below.

More information about the Chilterns Association of Camera Clubs (CACC), its events and competitions can be seen on The CACC Website.

CACC Print Champs – 2022-03-13 : Print Open Open

CACC Projected Champs – 2022-03-13 : PDI Open Open