I had applied to be examined for one of the Photographic Alliance of Great Britain (PAGB) awards in June 2018. This was for the Credit award (CPAGB). The first available places were at the adjudication to be held at the Coleg Llandrillo in Rhos-on-Sea, Conwy.
After applying, my preparation for the adjudication was limited to hearing the results of colleagues visits to a PAGB advisory day and sharing an example set of images with colleagues for their review.
Coleg Llandrillo
We arrived at the college shortly after 9.30 am and joined the queue of candidates waiting to hand their prints in to the organisers.
Once our prints and print boxes were gone we headed out of the college and braved the storm outside to walk up the road to a small Co-Op to pick up sandwiches for lunch.
On our return the gymnasium was open and we joined all the other candidates to wait for the start of adjudication.
At the front of the hall there was a light box for the prints to be viewed and away to the adjudicator’s right was a screen so that the audience could see a PDI version of each print. The adjudicators sat together with their voting pads on a table in front of the light box. Any of the prints could be passed to an adjudicator if they wanted a closer look at that print.
There were 60 candidates for print and 21 for PDI. There would be 600 prints and 210 PDIs to be reviewed. There were six very experienced PAGB judges who all vote on every image (i.e. the whole 810 by the end of the day!), in practice they have about 10 seconds to look at most images. The maximum possible number of votes for any one image is therefore 30 and the minimum is 12.
This was going to be a long day for everyone involved!