The 1^st print competition of 2026 was held on Thursday 26^th March at St James church Hall the home of the Nottingham Outlaws. The print competition is run on a bi-monthly basis, through to the final round which is in November of the same year and all rounds contribute to the Outlaw’s print league table. 

The judge for this first round of the competition was Ben Lumley who is a professional sports photographer, you can see his work by following this link, benlumleyphoto

Ben joined us earlier this year to give a presentation on his sports photography accompanied by a number of his images. This was a first for me where we have had a judge that is not on the NEMPF circuit and it would be interesting to see how he scored the images presented to him along with his critique. There were two categories for Ben to judge, the Open category and the Themed category which in this instance was “Sport”. We had a fantastic response to this competition and there were 36 entries in both the open and the themed.

February is the start of the Nottingham Outlaws photographic competition year and the first competition is a projected digital image (PDI). Over the course of the year there will be a further four PDI’s, these are interwoven with a separate print competition on a bi-monthly basis.

This month’s competition had more entrants than we had experienced in recent times (many new entrants) and that resulted in over forty entries in total in both the themed category as well as the open. This is indeed refreshing news and it shows the popularity that the club has. This should make for an exciting competition year wanting to take the title of Outlaw of the Year off the current holder Lois Webb.

The judge for the evening was Dave Hollingsworth Stephan from Arnold & District Camera Club.

January is traditionally the start of the Outlaws competition year and “Members Choice” is the first competition of the year. It is a stand-alone competition having both PDI and Print sections. It is open to all members and the contributions especially in the DPI format are quite significant with forty-six entries in total. 

The judging is carried out by the membership on the night and the DPI images are projected onto a large screen with several run throughs allowing members to make notes and each choosing their own individual top six entries.

The Print competition takes part in the second part of the evening with prints being displayed allowing all images to be placed side by side for direct comparison. 

Again, judging is carried out by the attending members on the same basis as the DPI competition, no voting for your own image and your top six in order of preference.

The David Cawthan Trophy is the final Outlaws competition of the year and its aim is to demonstrate a photographer’s competence across a number of photographic genres. There are two formats, a Projected Digital Image (PDI) and Print format, both are run as separate competitions. Members can enter six images and they must embrace four genres and that is of their choice.

The judge for this competition was Stephan Nicholson from Newark & District Photographic Society. 

Congratulations go to Chris Houldsworth & Malcolm Nabarro who were both victorious and share the prestigious Print Outlaw of The Year title for 2025. 
After a closely contested series of competitions across the year it all came down to the final event and just a few points separated both entrants. 
 
The judge on the evening was Phil Newman of Bolsover Camera Club and he acknowledged that the quality of the images entered by The Outlaws was extremely high so we didn’t make it easy for either of them
 

EVENING CITYSCAPE by Chris Houldsworth
 

And the 2025 PDI winner is……………..

Congratulations go to Lois Webb who has won the Nottingham Outlaws Projected Digital Image (PDI) Outlaw Of The Year (OoTY) competition for 2025.

A portrait image of Lois

Lois is a respected club photographer (as well as NOPS Chairman) and she approach’s all genres of photography with a level of competence and confidence. Her images are creative and imaginative and she enjoys subjects such as Street, Travel Photography, portraiture and creating composite works.