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The Robin Powell Awards night took place on the last Friday of May, and was very well attended. This year we were again lucky enough to have Mr and Mrs Powell to present the prizes at the end of the evening. Geoff and Jean always enjoy being guests at this evening and are always very generous when they donate prizes to go with the two main awards.

For those newer members reading this it used to be called the Print and Slide of the year Competition but was renamed after the tragic death of one of our members. Robin was a great character, a dedicated photographer and a wonderful inspiration to everyone who new him.

This evening was, and still is, the culmination of the whole year of photography for our members and everyone has the chance to enter two prints and/or two digital images which he or she regards as the best work of the year. By the very nature of this type of competition we obviously see work from the entire year including some prints and slides which have been extremely successful in various competitions, exhibitions and Salons. In other words it is show-off night for the club, and this year was again an extremely good example of the clubs successes. The Vale has had a marvellous year winning the Memorial Trophy, The MIPS Trophy (at only the second year of entering) , the Walter Morgan Trophy, the Port Talbot 9 way Battle Trophy, the Swansea Beynon Trophy and the Rhondda Battle Trophy. Jan thanked all the photographers in the Club whose images had made all this possible.

Jan welcomed Jean and Geoff Powell, and all the members and their guests to the hall. She then introduced Brian Coleman AWPF who was the judge for the evening.

Brian commented on the quality of the images which, usually very good, were of a higher standard than ever this year. He proceeded with the judging and pointed out that since this was an evening of ‘the best images of the year’ he would start the marking at 15. He continued to work in groups of images for each mark until he reached the 20`s. There were six images that scored 20 and Brian left these up during the refreshment break together with the other prints for everyone to see.

Members and guests enjoyed a wonderful buffet, and there was much discussion as to who the final winner would be.

The second part of the evening then took place and Brian proceeded to judge and critique the digital images. After discussing these at length, Brian awarded six scores of 20 and eventually the Robin Powell plate for best projected image was awarded to Phil Ray for his image ‘Santa`s Clocked Off’

Brian then announced that the winner of the Robin Powell Shield for the best print was Jan Cawley with her image ‘A Single Bloom’.

Geoff Powell then presented the following awards…..