PAGB Inter-Club Print Championship 2025
Last weekend a group of us travelled all the way up to Blackburn for the annual PAGB Inter-Club Print Championship. We were one of two clubs representing the SCPF, the other being Yateley Camera Club and we were given that honour because we won the SCPF Print Championship back in March.
About the Competition
This is a competition in two parts – a qualifying round in the morning decides which of the two final competitions each club competes in after lunch. There were 36 clubs taking part, with each club submitting twelve images, so the three judges had to mark 432 prints before lunch. The top eight clubs from the qualifying round, along with any ties, would go through to the Final while the rest would compete for the Plate.
To take part in the competition, each club has to upload PDIs for up to 50 prints that could be used in the competition. They must also select twelve of those for the qualifying round and decide on the order in which the prints will be judged. This is all done online a few weeks before the event, the club then has to take all the prints with them to the venue. We only selected 40 prints as we felt that was sufficient to cover all possible outcomes – even if we managed to qualify for the Final which requires a further fifteen prints.
As with all the competitions at this level there were three judges, each scoring between two and five giving each print a total mark from six to fifteen. They sit in a row about six feet from the illuminated print stand and each print is put up in turn and stays on the print stand until all three have pressed their scoring buttons. This typically takes less than ten seconds although they may choose to examine a print more closely if there is some aspect they are unsure of. There is just a score, no discussion between the judges and no critique as there is insufficient time for that.
The Qualifying Round
Our twelve prints in the qualifying round scored a total of 154 points – an average score of 12.8 per print and we were just nine points short of qualifying for the final. That put us in 18th position which meant we would be competing for the Plate in the afternoon along with 26 other clubs.
Ian Roberts had our best score in this round with a 15 for “Hyena Scavenging for Food”. We also scored 14s with Andy Dulson’s “Nina”, Ann McDonald’s “Resting” and Jim Munday’s “Powering Through the Bend”.
Final Selection
During the extended lunch break we had to decide which of our prints would be used in the afternoon’s Plate competition. We could reuse up to four prints from the qualifying round plus we had another 32 unused prints in our box from which we had to select another four. There are restrictions on the number of nature prints (just two), no more than two prints from any photographer and at least three monochrome and three colour.
The four highest-scoring prints from the morning were definitely going to be reused in the afternoon so before we had our lunch we deliberated about which other four would do best from the remaining prints based on how various types of print had scored in the morning.
The Plate
After lunch, having handed in our final print selections, we returned to our seats in the auditorium to see what the judges thought of them. It is quite common in these competitions that a print that scores highly in the first round doesn’t score quite so well in the final round. Usually it’s just a point lower but two of our first round high-scorers dropped two points in the Plate, one dropped one point but one print scored one point higher.
Our eight prints scored a total of 104 points, which is the highest score we’ve ever had in this competition – an average of 13 per print. We were just four points behind the winning club (Ipswich and District Photographic Society) but we were in 12th place. That’s still the best position we’ve achieved since 2017 and a big improvement on last year’s 18th place, when we were 14 points behind the winner.
Ann McDonald had our best score with a 15 for “Resting” and we also had a 14 for Julia Wainwright’s “991 Leaving a Dust Trail”.
The Final
The Final competition is always dominated by some of the best clubs in the country such as Smethwick, Catchlight and Rolls Royce Derby, and this year three clubs tied for first place – Arden Photo Group, Chorley Photographic Society and Smethwick Photographic Society. Catchlight Camera Club, who have won this competition for the last four years, were in fifth place.
PAGB Website Links
The full results can be found on the PAGB website here, and the winning images can be found in the PAGB Galleries here. The PDF format catalogue is now available here.
All in all, it was a long weekend which involved a lot of travelling – a seven hour drive to Blackburn on the Friday but an easier return journey on Sunday. The competition itself was quite intense but a lot of fun and competing at this level helps to raise the profile of the club. We will need a good result in the SCPF Championships in March in order to qualify for next year’s PAGB competitions.
The featured image above is “Resting” by Ann McDonald, which scored 14 in the qualifying round and 15 in the Plate.