What is a Battle?

A battle is a competition between two or more clubs. Some are just between two Clubs; most of those which Devizes take part in involve several Clubs. At the other end of the scale are inter-club competitions which are regional or national in scale – the annual Digital Projected Image Competition (DPIC) held by the Western Counties Photographic Federation (WCPF) is open to all of the 100+ member Clubs of the Federation and around 50 of them typically participate.

Devizes also have a special Battle internally – between the lady and the gentlemen members of the club. It’s often the most fiercely contested of the lot!

The format varies from Battle to Battle in terms of the number of images each Club needs to put forward, and whether these are Projected Images or Prints. Most Battles these days are Projected Images only – which simplifies enormously the logistics around selection delivery of the entry and management – but there are occasional ones which involve Prints; the annual Battle Devizes are involved with between 7/8 other Clubs at Warminster is print only.

The host club or event organisers will appoint a Judge for the occasion. For Battles, the judge has to award each image with a mark – usually out of 10 or 20. There is no absolute scale for the marking – so an 18 from one judge isn’t necessarily equivalent to an 18 from another – but the marking is a means for the judge to express his or her views on the images relative to one another in that Battle. The winning Club will be the Club with the highest aggregate score across all of the images they have entered.

How are images selected to represent the Club?

All members can put forward images for consideration to represent the Club.
Normally a request will be sent to all members a few weeks before the Battle giving them the opportunity to submit images.
We will also select from the images that have been submitted for recent competitions.
If you enter a competition therefore your images will be deemed available to represent the club unless you specifically confirm otherwise to the Competition Secretary or the Battle Secretary.
Some Battles have specific rules as to what is eligible in terms of subject, number of images per author, age of the image or whether it has been used by the club in a previous year’s version of the Battle.
We keep detailed records of what has been used before – but it is also very helpful if individual members do the same and if an image has been selected to represent the Club previous, draw attention to it; images with similar names or similar subjects from the same author can sometimes cause confusion
Selection is done by the Battle Secretary assisted by 3 or 4 other club members.
We like to select the best images to represent the Club and achieve the best result possible – but selection is also done so as to include work from as many members of the Club as we can, so as to be as inclusive and representative of the Club as possible.
It does not follow therefore that only work from members in the General section will be selected.
The normal procedure on selection is that the selection panel view the images selected by each member, member by member, to reduce the images from that member to a shortlist.
Normally that will be 2 or 3 images maximum from each member depending on the maximum number per author that is permitted for the Battle concerned.
Once we have completed that process for each member, we then reduce the overall shortlist further to the number needed for the battle, striking a balance between including as many members as we can, and the best set of images to represent the Club, while also complying with the rules for that Battle.
It can be quite a complicated process!
However, Devizes have been very successful in inter-club competitions over many years, including reaching the national finals of the Projected Image competition in Warwick about 4 years ago.   Frank Collins - Battle Secretary