On Wednesday 16 April, we reviewed the results of our third photographic Challenge of the 2024-25 season.

Challenge 3 was again set by our esteemed Programme Secretaries and was to produce “A Self Portrait” with a difference.

The brief added the dare “How weird can you make it?”

The whole purpose of our challenges is of course to encourage us to get creative and producing new pictures, not merely plucking images from our back catalogues.  The subject for this challenge was announced on 19 December and the deadline for submitting our two images was 4 April.  As ever, a pretty tight deadline for us to take, select and process our images, and get them in.

30 projected images were submitted.  They mostly accepted the dare and provided a wide-ranging portrait gallery of fascinating pictures using a variety of creative approaches.

There was no “critique” as such and members were invited to mark each image on a scale from 1 to 5.  So, after a quick “run through” of the images to gauge the overall standard, we got straight into the marking.

After the aggregation of the scoresheets, the top six images were as below:

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For details of the competition rules  CLICK HERE.

If you didn’t know, you can also post your comments at the bottom of the page. Engage with other Members and share your thoughts on the entries and judging. 

NB: Members can watch the competition in full on the ‘Members Only’ section of the website.

Top Performing  Images (30 entries)

  • 1st – “Apologies to VVG” by Paul Stokes – 99 marks

  • 2nd – “This Little Piggy” by Chris Warby – 88 marks

  • 3rd – “Behind the Veil” by Carol Curd – 84 marks

  • “Back to the Seventies” by Martin Wood – 82 marks

  • “Self Portrait 1” by Mike Kitchingman – 76 marks

  • “It’s a Mesh” by Daphne Hughes – 76 marks

First Place

Second Place

Third Place

All Entries (click image for full size)

Congratulations to the authors.  All terrifically imaginative images.

Special congratulations to joint Programme Secretary Paul for his heartfelt apologies to the great Vincent van Gogh!

This unusual challenge proved to be creatively stimulating as well as producing some intriguing images – and lots of laughs.  After the scores had been announced, authors were invited to reveal their creative thought processes.

That’s all the challenges for this year.  I wonder what our devious Programme Secretaries will have in store for us in 2025-26?!