St Ives Interprint Competition 2026

The 44th iteration of the St Ives Photographic Club Interprint Competition was held at the Free Church, St Ives, Cambridgeshire on Saturday evening the 28th February.

The 20 clubs taking part this year came from as far afield as North Norfolk, Chingford and Corby with each club submitting 6 prints.  This year’s judge was Clive Tanner, FRPS MPAGB FIPF AWPF and APAGB. Clive is based in Kent and is a well known national and international judge. All of the prints were displayed at the church in a free exhibition during the day and it was during this time that they were reviewed and scored by Clive.

During the competition, the images were displayed as PDI and Clive read his notes based on his view of the actual prints. At the end of the evening, our near neighbours Milton Keynes City Photographic Society, emerged victorious winning the Mark Pink Interprint Trophy with 113 points. Ware and District Photographic Society came second with 112 points and 3rd place was shared by Bury St Edmunds Photographic Society and Ely Photographic Club on 111 points. The Ampthill and District Camera Club prints scored 104 points putting us in equal 17th place which doesn’t really reflect how close the scoring actually was – just an additional 2 points would have lifted us to 10th place.

As is often the case with Inter-Club competitions, there were a large number of natural history images – 43 (36%) , together with Landscape – 30 (25%) and Portraiture – 13 (11%). There were also 12 Sport images (10%).

My perception was that the judge particularly liked traditional landscapes and portraits (of which there were many) and when reviewing images questioned “what does the photographer want us to look at” and didn’t like bright areas near the edge of the image. Interestingly, during the exhibition I spoke to another camera club judge who commented upon the poor image processing and mounting of a couple of images, both of which then received good scores from Clive. If we needed reminding, the takeaway from this is that you cannot predict what judges are going to like.

All of the images can be viewed here – https://stives-photoclub.org.uk/interprint-2026-galleries

Here is a brief summary of Clive’s comments on the A&DCC prints:

“Holly” by Tim Ford – score 18 – Clive commented that Holly is a wonderful model and was surprised to see her with her clothes on(!). He was a little concerned by the brightness of the gold curtain with he felt took your eye away from the model but overall felt that this was a very good effort.

“Isolated” by Paul Wilson – score 16 – The judge felt that the title really suited the image and loved the lighting in the sky and the grey rockface. He did however question whether there was enough content in the picture for lasting interest but said that what has been done, had been done well.

“Early Snowfall” by Richard Burn – score 16 – Clive felt that the print was a bit “heavy” with lots of heavy shadows and that the delicacy of the snow had not been brought out. He felt this was a shame as the image had a lot going for it but that its potential had not been made the most of.

“The Quiet Moment” by Paul Tapping – score 17 – The judge asked the audience to look at this image carefully and questioned what we were being asked to look at. The lightest part of the image was on the right but the interest was on the left. Overall a bit heavy but that the print was good quality.

“Lunchtime at the Bank” by Paul Tapping – score 19 – Clive really liked this with the 3 young ladies set against the backdrop of the majestic Bank columns. The fact that the figures are all sitting in different positions is interesting and the print quality is good.

“The Delinquent” by Belinda Wilson – score 18 – The judge felt that the author was making the viewer really think about the image which he felt was a little disturbing but also interesting. “A thinking picture and nicely crafted”