The Two Hemispheres Challenge Competition

Established in 2009, The Two Hemisphere competition is an annual bilateral photographic competition between LBPC in the UK and Camberwell Camera Club in Melbourne, Australia.

The competition takes place in November each year, with each club entering 30 PDIs which are judged both in the UK and in Australia.  Each entry is scored out of twenty and the scores from both the UK and the Australia judges are aggregated to determine the winning club.

In LBPC, the organiser draws images from the previous season’s competition entries, together with any additional entries submitted by members. These are whittled down to a final 30 by external NONE camera club photographers, where care is taken to involve as many members as possible. Ideally, one image from 30 different authors, giving many their first chance to enter an International competition.

Peter Brady of the Camberwell Camera Club wrote:

The experts tell us that we are living in the digital age. An age where parameters such as speed, precision, ease of doing and efficiency will lead us to better and more productive lives. Some industries and activities are affected more than others and photography is high on the list. Changes to cameras, computers and available computer software packages have been profound and the whole photographic scene has evolved into a new art form.

It is against this background that Ruth Goldwasser of Camberwell (Australia) Camera Club set off to a Royal Photographic Society Audio Visual Conference in the UK in 2008, where she made friends with Dave Gillow of Leighton Buzzard (UK) Photographic Club.

From this chance encounter a new type of activity has evolved – International Club competitions.

The Two Hemisphere Challenge is a still photography contest between the two clubs using digital techniques. The contest is held annually and is based on the quality of work as assessed by two photographic judges, one from each country, as judged from 2×30 images.

Each year the challenge is hotly contested and has matured to the extent that, Dave Gillow’s son Martin, has designed and produced a Virtual Trophy as a record of success. Modern technology has brought photographers from across the world together in a friendly competition which will see an improvement in the quality of the photography produced from our two clubs.

When all the judging has been completed, the results, together with all the scores and the comments of the two judges, are published HERE