October 2025 Fifth & Final PDI Competition
The Outlaws are undertaking their fifth round of their Projected Digital Image (PDI) competition of the year and it’s a close thing at the top of the leader board. As we head into this the final round, Lois Webb, Malcolm Nabarro, Lester Woodward, Sue Jackson and Nigel Stewart are all contenders for the title.
The judge for the evening was Robert Falcolner from Clay Cross Photographic Society
Robert offered detailed & constructive comments on composition including image cropping.
There were two categories for Robert to judge on the evening, the Open category and the Themed, which this month was “Alley Ways”. There were approximately thirty-two entrants in both the Open category and the themed.
The Open competition attracted many genres of photography from portraiture study, wildlife, sport, and landscape images to name but a few.
The themed competition equally had a wide variety of images with many different visual interpretations of Alley Ways and a selection of them can be seen later in this report.
Theme – Alley Ways
The Themed PDI had Alley Way images ranging from local Nottinghamshire locations, through to European destinations and some tenuous interpretations in between. A selection of these images is incorporated in this article so please take a look and you will see how our photographers’ imaginations really got to work.
Robert commented that the images on display this evening were of a very high standard and made his job of judging very difficult. He managed to whittle them down from thirty-two but still held sixteen back for a second viewing, that is 50% of the entries, quality indeed. When down to his final few he awarded four images a score of nineteen, but announced that the winner was Sue Jackson with her image titled “Alley Cat”.
Winning image “Alley Cat” by Sue Jackson.
I asked Sue about her winning image and she told me that this was taken whilst on holiday in Dubrovnik. “It’s a pleasant surprise that my image did so well on Thursday, It was one of the many alleyways leading off the main walk through the old town, and the town was full of street cats”. Sue obviously seized the moment and caught the local moggy as it posed nicely for her camera.
Below is a gallery of the Alley Way images.
Open category
The Open category had many different genres of photography, a military aircraft set against a setting sun, landscapes, macro style and nature images, images taken on location in Berlin and a lighthouse seascape, to name but a few. Ten images were held back for final judging and the winner was declared as Lois Webb with her image “Which Way Now”.
Open category winning image “Which Way Now” by Lois Webb.
Lois told me that his image was taken when the Outlaws visited Berlin during October this year.
This is her story, “Which way now, was taken inside the Jewish Museum in Berlin only a few weeks ago. Sally and I had only just entered the Libeskind building which houses the permanent exhibition when I was intrigued with the play on light and shade, colour and tone. The building zigzags and features underground angled walls and bare concrete voids. Designed by American architect, Daniel Libeskind, the building allows for many interpretations and many people are left with a feeling of disorientation. I wanted to capture this uncertainty. In one of the rooms was a huge screen showing an emotive, artistic film. A lady was stood watching and the blue light from the screen lit her but the space I was standing in was lit by warmer light. By just focusing on the figure and the walls it looks as though there are many choices of direction to go in. The final image was flipped so the figure looks forward, rather than back at where they have come from.
The image was handheld ISO 3200, f5.6, 24mm, 1/8 second (I was leaning against a wall to steady myself).
Below is a gallery of the Open category images.
Following this round of the DPI competition the final scores revealed how close a competition it had been as there was literally one point that separated Lois from second place Malcolm Nabarro.
The overall winner of the NOPS Outlaw of The Year was announced and congratulations go to Lois Webb.
The Outlaws would like to thank Robert for providing everyone with constructive comments, giving the image authors positive suggestions on ways to enhance their images and also having an appreciation of the Outlaws creative works.
Author Nigel Stewart