POTY 2010 Themes

This years 10 rounds are taken from last years “Amateur Photographer”, magazines POTY competition

Link to Amateur Photographer Gallery


Entry Rules

o All Prints should be up to and including A4 in size
o All images must have been taken within 12 months of the themes month
o Voting will take place, unless otherwise stated in the programme on the 2nd Thursday of the following month.
o Scoring will be as per this last year, total 15 points (five each for impact, quality and composition)


Round 1: Leading lines
Use leading lines to draw the viewer's eye through the photograph. This is an especially powerful technique to draw the viewer's attention to one or more intended subjects or a single focal point

Round 2: On the Street
Street photography is one of the most exciting genres you will ever tackle as a photographer. The flurry of activity on your local high street or the joyful faces in the park on a warm day offer immense possibilities for compelling portraits of our fellow inhabitants.

Round 3:H20
Water is one of the essential elements of life, and as it turns out, it's also one of the building blocks for great photographs. There are countless ways in which you can use H20 as a compositional element to add colour, drama or motion to your pictures.

Round 4: Plant Life
The possibilities in this round are almost limitless. The number of species of plants and ways in which you can show off their interesting qualities means there is no right or wrong picture to be taken. Perhaps you are drawn to still lifes and get great afternoon light streaming through your kitchen window. Or maybe a wider view of your local garden centre appeals. It could be a close-up of the texture on the cabbage leaves at your allotment, or even the base of a tree looking up.

Round 5:Outdoor Portraits
Mention portraiture to most people, and they immediately think of gold reflectors, light stands and white backgrounds. The truth is, though, that you don't need a spare bedroom and a hefty salary that can pay for lots of equipment. All you really need is an enthusiastic subject. With a bit of ingenuity and creative thinking, you can turn the world outside your door into your very own photo studio. By experimenting with different angles, backgrounds and focal lengths, you will find you can capture portraits that are just as dynamic as those shot by professional studio photographers – and you won't need a team of assistants to help you, either!

Round 6:Looking Closer
Beneath our feet and beyond the naked eye are some of the most dazzling subjects one can imagine, and yet we walk by them (or worse, on them) every day without taking any notice. In our sixth round of APOY, Looking Closer, we want you to think small. We want you to look close at the smaller worlds around you and study the colours, textures and structures that make them special.

Round 7:Bold Colour
Black & white photography may be timeless, but nothing reveals the world more as it actually is than capturing the vibrancy of its many colours. The first modern colour film was Kodachrome, launched in 1935, and only recently, some 75 years later, have we learned of its demise. It is somewhat fitting, then, that this month marks the launch of our Bold Colour round of APOY, and we ask you to celebrate the richness and diversity of the many colours around you - at this time of year, more than ever.

Round 8:Reflection
Reflection offers you the opportunity to slow things down and examine the world around you more closely. Those angles and perspectives you walk past and step over every day on your way to somewhere else may hide beautiful patches of reflected light. It could be a stand of trees, clouds in office windows, or perhaps something more abstract. Capturing a reflection adds an extra element to your photograph, transforming a snapshot of commuters at the bus stop into a powerful portrait, or the curvature of a swan's neck into something more surreal

Round 9:From a low angle
In this year's APOY we've asked you to shoot a number of subjects in a variety of ways, and in our penultimate round we now challenge you to experiment with perspective and the position of your camera. Nothing seems to put a subject in context quite like framing it from a low angle, and the possibilities for dramatic images are limitless. Most of us stand upright to take pictures, but the moment we think more closely about how we see our subjects and change our angle of view, the better we will be able to show our subjects in new ways and create unique images.

Round 10: Low Light
As the year winds down and the days become shorter, it seems only fitting that for our final round of APOY we should ask you to explore the magical qualities of low-light settings. Longer exposures and soft, glowing light have an inimitable way of transforming even the most average scenes into otherworldly delights.