British Photographic Exhbitions (BPE) exists to encourage photographers to enter exhibitions and recognizes successful entrants via the issue of the Crown Awards photographic distinctions. There are currently 15 Exhibitions which are part of the BPE circuit. I entered my first British Photographic Exhibition at the end of 2016 and was very pleased to get an image accepted on my first attempt. My first accepted image was “Sands of Time”. This was an image I had put together for a Club Set Subjects competition, the theme being Glass. I used my kitchen clock an hour glass ornament and an interesting sky taken at Cleveleys. This was my first successful composite image. I set myself a target of getting to BPE 1 Crown within a year, which needed 25 acceptances. I was really pleased to achieve this target in 11 months with 13 images.
My journey to achieving BPE 2 Crowns. 50 acceptances, was a little quicker and I managed to reach this goal in March 2018. I did this with a further 10 successful images. I continued my journey and in November 2018 I achieved 100 acceptances to gain my BPE 3 Crowns. I was really pleased to have done this within my target of 2 years. I reached my goal by getting a further 13 images accepted. . The thing that surprised me in the journey to this point was that I was most successful with my composite images. I was really pleased to have had 2 Nature images accepted as the standard in this section is always very high. During this second full year of entering exhibitions 5 of my images received awards.
At the beginning of 2019 I continued on my BPE journey, the next step being 4 Crowns, requiring a total of 200 acceptances. It took me just under two years to get my first 100 acceptances so I really wanted to get the second hundred in 18 months or less. I was delighted to achieve this goal in just over a year. The journey from 3 to 4 Crowns meant that a further 21 images were accepted. I also achieved 14 awards during this time.
The first result of 2020 from Solihull Exhibition continued my journey onwards to BPE 5 crowns, requiring a total of 300 acceptances. My tally in 2020 was 72 acceptances from 11 Exhibitions, leaving me needing 28 more acceptances. I had been hoping to get to my 5 crowns by the end of 2020, however four exhibitions were cancelled due to the Corona Virus pandemic, so my journey to BPE5 was a little longer than I had hoped. With the results from Vale of Evesham in March 2021 I passed the number of acceptances required for my 5 crowns. The journey from 4 to 5 Crowns meant that a further 24 images were accepted, and I also received achieved a further 11 awards.
To summarise my BPE journey to achieving 5 Crowns; in just over 4 years I entered 63 exhibitions, gained 305 acceptances from 81 different images and achieved 31 awards. with the following 18 images.
After some deliberation I decided to continue to the next step which is Associateship, this requires a further 100 acceptances plus 20 awards from 10 different images. I hoped to achieve this goal in under 2 years. With the first 2 salon results of 2023 from Clay Cross and Southport announced at the end of February I am happy to say that I achieved my goal. In the 23 months since achieving BPE5* I gained a further 143 acceptances and 22 awards from the 11 images shown below.
After achieving my ABPE I took a short break from entering BPEs and embarked on entering international salons but I found that I missed the BPE community and also find the British Exhibitions more of a challenge. So I started to enter BPEs once again and in January 2026 I finally achieved the goal of the BPE Fellowship, this required a further 100 acceptances and 30 awards from 15 different images. It took me 221 acceptances to get to the required 30 awards with the 17 images shown below.
To summarise my BPE journey, in the 9 years of entering I received a total of 692 acceptances and 88 awards.