The Society holds five competitions for prints and five for projected digital images during each season.
The competitions are divided into two classes – Open and Advanced. Any member who holds a distinction, e.g. FRPS, ARPS, APAGB, or who is a professional photographer, must compete in the Advanced class. Members without distinctions may elect to compete in either class.
Competitions are judged by a member of another club who is accredited as a judge by the SPA or another PAGB Federation. The judge is not required to award marks for pictures; he or she selects around six pictures in each class to go through to finals in June.
There are also five annual competitions:
1. The Halliday Portrait Competition for both prints and projected digital images; members from both classes compete on an equal footing.
2. The Jeff Darken Trophy, is for monochrome prints.
3. Members’ Choice, is only for Open Class members who compete for the Evelyn Gibbons Trophy (projected digital images) and the Bob Fergusson Trophy (prints). Entries may be any image that has not received a certificate during the current competition year.
4. The Jim Cottrill trophy; a genre based competition, e.g. Street, Nature etc.
5. The Programme Competition; the winning image of this “letterbox” format event will become the cover image on the society’s Programme leaflet for the subsequent season.