PAGB Awards Group

PAGB Awards Group

The Photographic Alliance of Great Britain

PAGB Awards Group

This is a new group, aimed to raise interest in this alternative to the RPS distinctions.

The Photographic Alliance of Great Britain has a number of Awards of Photographic Merit (APM), with Certificate and Distinction levels being their most popular.

Unlike RPS distinctions, which are based on panels, the PAGB judge each image on its own merit. With the help of two experienced PAGB adjudicators, the group will initially focus on the Certificate level award. This should prove to be a very achievable goal for club-level photographers.

Certificate (CPAGB) is the first level and is defined as “good club photography”. Diploma (DPAGB), defined as photographs that would be likely to achieve a high level of acceptance in Open Exhibitions and Master (MPAGB) are the next levels.

Places in the group will be limited so that each member can receive detailed personal advice on his or her images.

How to gain the CPAGB Award

Adjudications in Projected Digital Images (PDI) and Prints are carried out by a panel of six judges, selected from the PAGB Approved List of Judges for their photographic skill and their extensive experience.

For CPAGB each of the 6 Adjudicators is required to vote on each photograph, with a vote between 2 and 5. The total number of points gained for 10 Prints or 10 PDIs needs to be 200 or more to gain the Award.

The Adjudicators vote as follows; “image to standard” = 4 and “image NOT to standard” = 2. A vote of 3 signifies a near miss. A vote of 5 means the image is worthy of the next level up.

As each image is judged the score is “read out”. On average each image needs to gain a score of 20. Adjudication day can be very exciting!

Successful submissions

You can view some members’ successful submissions on the Distinctions Gallery page