SPF Digital Championship Jan 2021

For the first time Visions decided to enter a competition run by the Scottish Photographic Federation. Covid actually made this easier as it could all be done online without the need to attend the competition.

The SPF ran two separate competitions depending on how many photographs you wanted to enter. Each photographer was allowed to submit 4 photographs.

The Plate Trophy: This required 15 images, with 8 chosen for the first round. All first round photos would count towards the score and then the best 4 of the remaining photos would also count.

The Ian Bowie Trophy: This required 20 images, with 8 chosen for the first round. All first round photos would count towards the score and then the best 8 of the remaining photos would also count.

As this was our first time we went for the Plate Trophy. The selection of the photos was done using a combination of club member scoring and then a panel doing the final selection. It was important to get all the highest scoring photos in the first round – or at least to get all your lowest scoring photos in the second round!

So we had our 15 photos and were waiting nervously for the results……

The SPF first published a shortlist of nearly a hundred photos that had been shortlisted by the two judges for one of these awards in each competition.

The Best Overall Photo
The Best Landscape
The Best Nature (which had to obey very strict rules with only certain editing allowed)
The Best Portrait
The Best Creative

We were delighted to see four of our photos in this list – one by Rob Romani and three by Alan Meek.

The awards were presented at a Zoom meeting on 30th January.

There were 18 clubs in each competition – that is a total of 630 images to judge! There were two judges. Andrea Hargreaves MPAGB EFIAP/b BPE3 PSA4 and Marilyn Roberts DPAGB BPE3 from the Yorkshire Photographic Union.

We were delighted to find we had come 5th in the Plate competition with 200 points alongside Donside CC and Dunfermline PC. Mearns CC and Statheven CC came joint 3rd with 204 points, Moray came second with 216 points and the winners were Cowel CC with 218 points.

You can see all the club results here:

We did really well for our first entry into SPF competitions and the good news is that as this was an interim competition we can use all our high scoring photos again next year. (Only photos that won awards cannot be entered again).

We will receive a presentation of all the club’s photos some time in February, meantime if you want to see the award winning photos please look on the SPF website.

Congratulations to all the photographers whose scores counted towards our 200 points and congratulations to our selection panel who managed to get most of the highest scoring photos into round one!