PAGB Digital Champs 2025

We did it, we won the PAGB championships at Warwick for the third consecutive year. Wow, what an achievement!

In 2023, we tied with Wigan 10.

In 2024, we were a superb eight points clear at the top.

This year we’ve gone back to the nerve racking and tied in first place with Rolls Royce Derby.

The top two clubs from each Federation within the PAGB are invited to compete in these championships along with the previous year’s finalists (top eight). In total this year there were 37 clubs competing for the title - some seasoned competitors and some very new to the process. Each of these clubs must select a bank of 40 images from which they will choose their entries in each of the three rounds. The first round requires eight images, no more than two by any one photographer, no more than two nature images. These are assessed and scored amongst all the other clubs images and at the end of this round the scores are tallied, a table is produced, this is when you find out how you’ve done and where you’re placed.

Round 2, and the process becomes somewhat tactical at this stage largely based on where you are placed in the table, if you are in the top eight, you need to select images that will consolidate your place there, if you’re outside the top eight then you need to select some images that will get you up there. All this of course is happening whilst you are trying to assess which genre of images seem to be scoring better than others, so selection isn’t quite straightforward. You can’t simply select your best eight images as you need to hold some back for the Final or Plate competition.

The next 8 images are all assessed and scored, and a second table is produced, the top eight clubs go forward to fight for the Championship, the rest of the clubs will then compete for the Plate. Through a combination of quality images, judgement and a little bit of luck, we made the final in fourth place but 10 points behind the leaders, now the selection really matters.

The Final requires 20 images and you can include no more than 10 that you used across the first 2 rounds so this means a minimum of 10 new images, maybe more. Again, there are restrictions. - no more than 4 images per photographer and no more than 5 nature images. Usually, nature and sport images score slightly higher than other genres but in this championship they didn’t seem to do so, so there wasn’t a need to put the max number of nature images forward. 

The judges did seem to be scoring reasonably consistently but did show a very slight tendency towards artistic content and portraiture. With this in mind we actually selected 12 new images which were taken from the bank of 40 and we knew we probably had to take a risk or two using more creative and portrait images and hoping that this would claw back the significant 10 point gap.

I am very glad to say that the risk we took did the trick, the quality of our images came to the fore and by the end, we were happily sat at the top of the table, what an achievement again.

So, a big well done to those that had their images selected in the bank of 40 and then in the subsequent rounds. But also, to those who routinely enter the club competitions and push the quality ever upwards. The club simply wouldn’t be where it is without the members putting this effort in, give yourself a big pat on the back.

Finally congratulations to Jeanette Savigar whose ‘Noble Hound’ image was awarded a Silver Medal by the judges.