2025 AC Photo Competition

The Alpine Club is excited to announce a Members’  Photo Competition, culminating with a special exhibition of the best submitted works at our Charlotte Road exhibition space. The competition is open to all Alpine Club members.

^{Michael de Csilléry traversing pinnacles on the South Ridge integral of the Aiguille du Moine, Chamonix, July 2021}
_{Tom de Csilléry, AC 2022-23 Photo Competition}

Members can submit up to two images per category across three categories. Images that have been entered into other, non-AC competitions will be accepted and any image taken since 1 January 2024 will be eligible for entry.

The closing date for submissions is the 30 April 2025, with the winners expected to be announced by the beginning of July 2025. Entries should be submitted, in the format detailed in the 'Rules' section, via email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

The Club will reproduce the winning entries as high-quality framed prints for display at a celebratory exhibition scheduled to take place in November – December 2025. By way of a prize, these prints will subsequently become the property of the winning photographers.

A selection of the winning entries will also become part of an AC Calendar for 2026. By submitting a photograph to the competition, you are consenting to its use in the exhibition and calendar, but you will retain your copyright over the image.

The three categories and competition rules are below. Good luck!

^{Cold Camp -} 
_{Neil Pitts, AC 2022-23 Photo Competition}

Categories

1. Alpine Climbing/Mountaineering – Colour photos of alpine climbing/mountaineering from Scotland to the Greater Ranges.

2. Mountain Landscape – Colour photos of mountain landscapes from any part of the world.

3. AC Gatherings – Colour photos of AC members getting together on meets, at the AC HQ , at a base camp or an alpine camp – i.e. a shot that captures members in their environment.

^{Back in the jeep after a shop and a shave. Gilgit Balitstan, Pakistan. (Selfie). Yawash Sar I-IV Expedition 2022}
_{Photo:  Nicholas Hurndall Smith, AC 2022-23 Photo Competition}

Rules

a. The competition is open to all members – Full, Aspirant or Associate, either professional or amateur photographer.

b. Members may submit up to two digital images per category via email to the Alpine Club at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. not later than the 30 April 2025.

c. The images must be contemporary; i.e. taken since 1 January 2024.

d. Images must be submitted in digital format: they may have been scanned from film or transparency stock, or taken with a digital camera or mobile phone.

e. Photoshopped images will be accepted and will not count against photographers in judging. However, where technology has been used to radically and creatively alter an image, this should be noted in your submission.

f. The member submitting the images must be the author and the owner of the copyright.

g. Entries that have been previously published or entered in other competitions will be accepted, but members need to say when and where the entries appeared when making their submission.

h. The digital images can be in either Portrait (vertical) or Landscape (horizontal) format. However, any Portrait format images that win cannot be used for the AC Calendar as that format is unsuitable for use in a wall calendar.

i. The images must be in their final format as defined in these rules. The Competition Secretary will not perform any manipulations, resizing or other alterations to the presented images, other than to place all the entries into a single competition folder for forwarding to the competition’s judge, Ben Tibbetts.
j. The images should be submitted as flattened 8-bit RGB files in the highest quality JPEG - .jpg files. Images in other formats such as PSD will be rejected. Images will need a minimum resolution of 300dpi so that they can be successfully reproduced as prints and used for the calendar.

k. For each image, please include a short caption that details the ‘What, Where and When’ of the photo in question. All image files are to be named in the style: Competition Category, Image Number, Image Title, Location.

l. You may not enter an image previously submitted for an Alpine Club Photo Competition, or one so similar as to be almost identical, irrespective of the title.

m. There are prizes for the winners. Up to six pictures will be chosen from each category for exhibition and the resulting print(s) will be retained by the member who entered the competition. Winners will also receive a copy of the AC Calendar.

n. The Judge’s decision will be final. No discussion will be entered into.

Exhibition: Kangchenjunga - The Five Treasures of the Snows

^{Photo by Jakub Michankow (Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license)}

"There is no doubt that those who first climb Kangchenjunga will achieve the greatest feat in mountaineering, for it is a mountain which combines in its defenses not only the severe handicaps of wind, weather, and very high altitude, but technical climbing problems and objective dangers of an order even higher than those we encountered on Everest."

This is how John Hunt, the leader of the 1953 Mount Everest Expedition, summed up the challenge posed by Kangchenjunga. Yet, just two years on from his team's successful ascent of Everest, his deputy, Charles Evans, on what was supposed to be a reconnaisance expedition, would lead two parties to (just shy) of the summit.

70 years on from that ascent, our new exhibition, Kangchenjunga - The Five Treasures of the Snows, profiles that expedition team, chronicles their ascent using artefacts from the AC and Mountain Heritage Trust Collections and looks at the wider history of the mountain, including the early expeditions of Douglas Freshfield and Aleister Crowley, as well as its position as a holy mountain to local Buddhist communities.

^{The Second Ice Fall from Camp 2}

^{The summit spire viewed fromJoe Brown & George Band's lunch stop}

‘Kangchenjunga - The Five Treasures of the Snows’ has been curated by John Porter and will run at the Alpine Club's Charlotte Road premises from 8 April to 29 May 2025.

There will be an informal opening on the evening of 8 April, coinciding with that evening's lecture, at which a short film about the mountain will be shown. This event is open to all and can be booked by signing up to attend the lecture.

More generally, the exhibition will be open to visitors from 11:00 – 15:00 on Tuesdays and Thursdays, as well as on London lecture evenings.

Visitors are kindly asked to book in advance using the form below so that we can ensure the necessary level of staffing. Failure to do so may lead to you being turned away.