- Annual Print and Digital Image Competition, Fort Worth vs. Dallas Camera Clubs
- Entries due at the Sept. 7 and Oct. 5, 2023 meetings.
- Competition scheduled Oct. 24, 2023
The annual Bird Competition will be hosted by the Dallas Camera Club this year. Independent judges will review and score 15 digital images and 15 prints from each club. The club that receives the most points wins. Fort Worth has been the winner since 2007.
To win again this year, we need our members to bring their best prints from this year’s competitions, winners or not. We already have all of this year’s digital files.
We will begin accepting your prints next meeting, 7 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 7, 2023. All your submissions are due by the first Thursday Oct. 5, 2023 meeting.
Our Competition committee will select the images we think will do best in the competition. All classes are eligible and in the past, we have selected images from all three classes. We will keep this year’s first, second and third award winning images for entry in our year end competitions and will include October and November winners.
The Emily Guthrie Smith Award, affectionately referred to as The Bird Competition, has been held since 1964, except 1975 and 2016. The competition is held in October or early November and the location rotated between the clubs each year.
- View The Bird competition rules.
- View a list of annual club winners.
History
Despite the name, the contest is not about bird photography. The competition began when Emily Guthrie Smith suggested that an annual contest would be fun for both clubs. Smith was a Fort Worth native and nationally known artist and teacher. Her works are in private collections, museums and the Archives of American Artists in the Smithsonian Institution.
She donated and carved the trophy, above, a wood sculpture engraved with the winning club’s name, but the reason she chose a bird is not known. The trophy is often perched on the podium at our club meetings.
Bird image courtesy of Dallas Camera Club. History courtesy of Fort Worth Camera Club Lifetime Members Robert Chura and Becky Scott.