Battle of the photo clubs
For the last three years, two photography clubs have been running a competition between themselves. Abingdon, a club based in the heart of Oxfordshire, compete with Eymet photography club in the Dordogne, to claim bragging rights over each other.
This year an even more international flavour was introduced, with the judge overseeing the competition joining whilst on holiday in Mid-Wales. Each club submitted twenty images each, and it was the challenging task of Perry Johnson, an English semi-professional photographer who now lives in Majorca, to score each image out of twenty. Perry had to consider the techincal and artistic aspects of every image, looking at elements of composition, exposure, focus and artistic intent in order to arrive at a mark.
One of the few benefits of the pandemic has been the increase in the ease with which on-line tools can be used to join people together, and last night was no exception, with over thirty people joining together virtually to watch the competition unfold. Abingdon, in an effort to bamboozle the Eymet appointed judge craftily slipped in titles such as “les arbres en hiver” and “les plumes” amongst their entries. The Eymet club, part of the Association Culturelle Anglo Francaise d’Aquitaine, gathered most of their members together in the wonderful exhibition hall in the main square in Eymet, and enjoyed a glass or two of Bordeaux as the scores unfolded.
This year, the competition was won for the first time by Abingdon, who also secured third and second place in the individual scores. The overall individual winner was Andy Jeffries, a member of the Eymet club, with his wonderful image entitled “A glimpse of an elf”. Both clubs are looking forward to resuming the battle next year, with Eymet looking to win back their crown as keenly as Abingdon are to retain it. All of the images can be seen below and on the Eymet photography club website
An article about the competition was published in the Bugle newspaper.