GB Cup Small Clubs

Well done members! Oldham PS have come second in the GB Cup for Small Clubs 2020. Two members received awards:

Karen Shivas receives a Judge’s silver medal from Andrea Hargreaves for “Gainsborough”.

Christine Widdall receives the “Best Creative” Award for “Pepper and Toby go to Sea”.

What’s the GB Cup?

The GB Cup for Small Clubs is a UK clubs’ projected image competition run annually by the Photographic Alliance of Great Britain. There are different divisions in the competition –

• Any Club may enter either the Open Cup or the Small Clubs Cup. “Small Clubs” refers to the number of entries a Club wishes to submit and not to the number of members in a Club. (The Open Cup is for 15 images from at least 6 workers and the Small Clubs enter 10 images from at least 4 workers.) Nature images may not be included in these competitions.
• Any club may enter the Nature Cup. Each Entrant Club must submit between a minimum of 3 Nature Images and a maximum of 21 Nature Images. The Club order of merit will be determined by the total for the 10 highest scoring Images.

The ones we didn’t enter…

The Open Cup attracts the top clubs in the UK – so, not surprisingly this year, the rankings were:- 1. Rolls Royce, 2. Wigan 10 FC, 3. Catchlight CC, 4th equal, Chorley PS and Smethwick PS, and 6. Arden

In fact – all the usual suspects. Those who regularly attend the national club championship competitions in PDI at Warwick and prints, at Blackburn, will get to know the top clubs and also the quality of their work that we are chasing. The top dozen clubs rarely change except in order.

There’s also a GB Trophy for Prints, which this year was won by Chorley, ahead of Rolls Royce and Arden…again, all the usual suspects.

The Nature Cup. In this award, the standard of the nature work is amazingly high…think “world class”, think “un-manipulated” and think pictorially beautiful. This is something we should aspire to, as our growing number of nature photographers are thriving but still lacking in experience of open competition. Hopefully we will enter next year. We need a minimum of 4 workers to achieve a ranking.

(Maybe we should revisit the idea of having a formal nature group, to push our standards up, as well as taking opportunities to go out together).

The Judging level

All of the competitions in this group are judged by three judges using electronic keypads, scoring from 2 to 5 each, so the marks are out of 15. It is not that the small clubs trophy has a lower standard, just that it has fewer images in it. So if we want to enter against the big boys, we just need a few more national standard (non-nature) images for the GB Cup…and they need to be made available for selection. Some great images come in for appraisal…when you have adjusted them, please consider if they are good enough for the general competition bank on the portal, so we don’t have to chase you for a picture when we need one!

PAGB Rule Changes

Please be aware that the PAGB are changing their competition rules – see below (I have taken these notes from the L&CPU Executive meeting, so the wording will not be exact). The L&CPU have agreed to adopt the same and the changes will appear in the future in the L&CPU Comp Rules.

1. Once a piece of work has been used to represent one club in a PAGB competition, it cannot be used to represent another club in another PAGB competition.

2. Only one member who lives more than 30 miles outside the geographical limit of the Club’s Federation is allowed as part of a club’s entry.

3. An image, or the main major element in an image, if so similar as to be nearly identical to an image or the main major element in an image, is not eligible to be used.

Christine Widdall (webmaster)