The Photographic Alliance of Great Britain is the body that oversees club photography in the UK. In addition to providing a framework organisation for UK clubs and organising national competitions, the PAGB also provides awards to recognise individual’s achievement at various levels of club photography. There are now five levels of PAGB awards, with two recent additions:-
- BPAGB (Badge Award) – approaching good club photography.
- CPAGB (Certificate Award) – good club photography.
- DPAGB (Distinction Award) – exhibition standard photography.
- EPAGB (Excellence Award) – good exhibition standard photography.
- MPAGB (Masters Award) – the very best of amateur club photography.
When I first applied for a PAGB award, the Badge and Excellence awards did not exist, so the first step was the CPAGB award, which I achieved in November 2019. This involved submitting 10 print images for assessment. I then went on to achieve the DPAGB award in May 2021, which required 15 print images to be assessed. The images are mixed in with other applicants and are scored as individual images, so there is no requirement for them to form a cohesive panel of linked images. Each image is scored by 6 experienced judges who award a score between 2 and 5. A score of 4 indicates that they think it is to the required standard, a score of 3 indicates a ‘near miss’, 2 is a failure, and 5 indicates the image is good enough for the next PAGB level. The pass mark is 200 at CPAGB and 300 at DPAGB, so an average of 20 pts per image is required. Marks above 24 are very rare, making it difficult to build a large positive margin to compensate for any particularly low scoring images. Consistency is therefore important to avoid low scoring images from dragging the average down.
CPAGB Award
The 10 images I submitted for my CPAGB are shown below – scores and titles can be seen by clicking on any image to launch the slideshow. All of the images had a good track record in exhibitions, but even so, a couple fell short of the required mark. However my overall score was 219pts, which gave me a successful submission.
DPAGB Award
The 15 images I submitted for my DPAGB are shown below, along with the scores. I decided to re-use four of my best scoring CPAGB images, though I slightly re-edited some of them. I also supplemented my landscapes with a number of character/creative images. This was partly because opportunities arose to attend photo sessions to capture this type of image, but also because they had done well in exhibitions in the period after achieving my CPAGB award. Once again, some images fell short of the target, but my overall score of 318pts was a fairly reasonable pass mark.
EPAGB And MPAGB Awards
The standard required to achieve an MPAGB award is very high, and requires images that are likely to win multiple awards in exhibitions. I know I am not yet at that standard (and may never be!), however in 2023 the PAGB introduced the new EPAGB award, which is intermediate between the D and M awards. Similar to the D award, this requires 15 images which are judged along with DPAGB entries, however the pass mark is 330pts, so requires an average of 22pts per image, and all images must be new. The E standard is therefore slightly higher than the D, and would appear to be within reach, so this is something I may consider in the near future.
Gordon – 20th Jan 2025