Club newsletter Issue 1 September 2025

Welcome to the first newsletter for our Club

I shall start off by giving a massive vote of thanks, on behalf of us all, to David and Michael, who are both standing down from the committee at the upcoming AGM. They have helped to bring the Club into being, from the early days in 2017, to now, where we have a steady membership and a varied programme of events, all of which could not have happened without them. So, thank you both.

The last season was one with a number of issues, partly due to illness of organisers or prior engagements for speakers, and last minute changes to the programme. Hopefully that will not be such an issue this coming season. Talking about the programme, please could you all have a think about what you would like to see covered in our meetings. I think the programme is settled up to Christmas, but there are plenty of chances for new ideas to be incorporated in the New Year.

A little birdie has told me that the website is undergoing a revamp as well, so once again, if anyone has any bright ideas about inclusions or changes to this, please let Tim know.

Looking forward, to the next few months, there is the NWPA PDI interclub battle in November. We entered last year, and were not disgraced, IE we were not last! Hopefully we will enter again this year, as the only way to get our Club noticed is to have results to shout about, so we need to get a winning entry. I should have more information about the subjects and closing date after the 7th September, when I attend the next NWPA exec meeting, but it is never too early to start to look out your best images, to see if we can fit them into the required themes.

What are the additional benefits of belonging to a camera club?

As well as the chance to attend meetings and meet up with like minded people, to form friendships etc, there are many other benefits that are provided at no additional cost to you, and some that do involve a small fee. So, I will endeavour to give an explanation of the layers above the basic Club level, to provide further interest.

By being a member of a local club, you are also automatically a member of the NWPA, the North Wales Photographic Alliance. This is the umbrella organisation that supports all the clubs in the North Wales area, including those on Anglesey. There are approximately 16 clubs, all of whom pay a small fee to belong. They give legal advice if required, provide the insurance cover for each club, and organise a number of events and competitions throughout the year. The main ones are the Member’s Competition, which has taken over from the Member’s Exhibition. You enter this as an individual, and at the last one, which was the first, our Club did rather well. It is held in June. There are also two events for the Club to enter, the interclub print battle which is held in April and the PDI interclub battle in November. For both of these images are chosen from our Club members to fit the subject categories, and entered as a Club entry. You can attend the judging of all these events, for a £3 fee, which gives you a raffle ticket as well...I won a £75 voucher for a box of printing paper last time, so was quids in!

The next level up is the PAGB, the Photographic Alliance of Great Britain. All the regional associations such as the NWPA, L&CPU etc all pay a small fee to belong to this organisation, which has similar duties to the regional ones, but at a far higher level. They are responsible for things like formulation of the rules for organised competitions, but this time it is the regional associations who enter, usually using the work from the top two Clubs in their areas, at the interclub battles. There is the Print Battle held in Blackburn in mid October, and the PDI Battle in Warwick in early July. Again, you can attend these events, where you will see the very best level of images from the year, this time I believe the fee is £15, but you do have to book in advance.

Something else that the PAGB organise is the Master of Print. This is, as the title suggests, an annual print competition, formed about 8 years ago, with the aim to encourage photographers to print their work. The standard is extremely high, and accepted images are displayed at an exhibition, starting in Birmingham. Entries this year close on 24th November, so there is time to enter if you feel you could compete. The entry fee is £15, for up to 5 images, and the classes are colour, mono and nature. If you get an acceptance, your name is added to the hall of fame, and badges are awarded for multiple acceptances over the years. To see more information about this, or indeed anything else to so with the PAGB, the website is thepagb.org.uk. Here you will also find the e-news letter, which you can subscribe to, (under the services tab), which is well worth doing, as you will get the newsletter emailed to you every 2 to 3 weeks, which contains details of competitions, distinctions, other clubs, and images from all the winning competitors in various events. It is free!

The PAGB is also the organiser and awarder (is that a word?) of the PAGB distinctions, which come in 5 levels. First there is the BPAGB, a chance to test the idea, and gauge whether your work is up to the standard, then it progresses through CPAGB, DPAGB, EPAGB and finally MPAGB. Each level is increasingly difficult to achieve. There are 2 adjudications per year, held by nominated regions, and I believe the next time it will be in North Wales is in 2027. Achieving the required marks to qualify for any of these levels gives you the honour to add the letters after your name, and you get another badge, a different colour depending on the level you have achieved, although you do have to start at the lower 2 levels, and it can take many years to get to the master level.

Continuing with the hierarchy idea, the PAGB belongs to another even higher level, going worldwide this time. They, and all the national organisations around the world, belong to FIAP, the Federation Internationale de l’Art Photographique. This organisation is the very top of the tree. They only run a few competitions, which are entered by the likes of the PAGB, but their main function is in the patronage of Salon competitions run by clubs around the world. There are other Salon circuits, the main one being the BPE (British Photographic Exhibition), and to a lesser extent the PSA, the Photographic Society of America, or the GPU, the Global Photographic Union. All these work in the same way, giving patronage to a salon competition, where you enter your images, which can be either PDI or print, depending on the requirements of the Salon, and they are judged by a panel of judges, a minimum of 3, and awarded a mark. At the end of the marking, the marks are reviewed to find the level that will provide enough images to make an exhibition, and if your entry is at or above that mark it is classed as an acceptance, which goes towards the target number of acceptances for the lowest award. For instance, the BPE acceptance mark is usually 12. To get the lowest award for BPE you have to get 25 acceptances, so it can take a while. There are currently 12 BPE salons a year, and you can enter the same images in each, although subjects do vary, until you have an acceptance, then that one can’t be entered in this salon again. There is a small entry fee, usually in the order of £8 for the first 5 images and £1.50 for each additional one. I have been entering BPE salons for 2 years now, and have got 4 acceptances! BPE salons are only open to people who live in the UK, but if you want to try your luck against the world, then FIAP is the route to take. In many ways it is very similar to BPE, but most of the salons are run by clubs around the world. I was advised to try FIAP as the standards are often not as high as they are for BPE, so I have tried my first one, in China, and out of 8 entries I got within 1 mark of acceptance with 2 of my images, and within 2 marks with another 2, so this certainly is better than the results I have often got at BPE level. 

I’m sure you are all addled after that marathon! So I will suggest a few more ways that you can expand your appreciation of photography.

Have any of you heard of Camversation? It is an online organisation, originally set up by Mark Evans, a school teacher, during the Covid lockdowns, to keep photographer’s interest going, in the days when we could not meet up at the Club. From a very tenuous start, it has grown to the point where he has given up his full time teaching job, and now concentrates on running the meetings, which as I said are online. He gets some of the really top photographers, not just from the UK, but from around the world as well, who will either show their work, or give instruction on a topic, or a mixture of both. All the presentations are via Zoom, usually 2 or 3 a week, but you can pick and choose what you register for. Always there are links to the presenters websites or galleries, so you can see if their work will interest you or not. Currently he charges £6 per session, and they start at 7pm mostly, but if you can’t watch live, he sends a link so you can catch up during the following 4 weeks. Some are better than others, but I have learnt a lot from them over the last few years.

Something else that you may be interested in...the exhibition by the RPS Landscape Group is going to be on show at Chester Cathedral, from the 6th to the 16th of October. My friend Lynda, from Honiton, has an image in it, so I will be going. Maybe we could have a Club visit? I'm not sure if it will be inside, or on the railings around the Cathedral Green, which is how the Group prefer to show their work, in the open air.

Well, that is it for this edition folks. I will collapse in a heap, after the brainwork involved.

Diana Wynn - Club Chair