The best cameras, lenses, retailers (and photographers) feature strongly in our annual awards but we also honour photographic communities, exhibitions and events that have really stood out over the last year.
Readers’ Choice Community of the Year – SheClicks
It’s been said on many occasions, but photography can be a solitary pursuit at times. And this is why community can be so important. It nurtures, encourages and lifts. It can generate confidence where previously there was little. And a good community can take us places – both physically and creatively.
The winner of AP’s Community of the Year Award will be familiar to a lot of readers, not only because many are already members but also because this is the third time it has won the award since it was launched in 2022.
SheClicks, the group for female photographers, was founded by former AP technical editor Angela Nicholson in 2018, and continues to go from strength to strength. The group’s Facebook members now number more than 14,000 – but its reach goes a lot further than social media alone. There are regular online coffee mornings, as well as in-person meet-ups everywhere from Glencoe to Melbourne, and webinars from market-leading experts. The SheClicks ‘Women in Photography’ podcast is heading towards its 50th episode, and has featured the likes of Jill Furmanovsky and AP contributors such as Tracy Calder and Verity Milligan, among many others.
Readers’ Choice Exhibition of the Year – Challenge Accepted: A SheClicks Collection
Each month, the members of the women’s online photo community SheClicks are set a challenge with a theme – it might be music, instruments and musicians, multiple exposures, waterscapes or winter colour, and the photographers are encouraged to interpret these subjects in any way they wish. The entries are always varied and creative, and demonstrate high levels of skill. Angela Nicholson, founder of SheClicks, then selects the best 25 of each month’s submissions to display on the SheClicks’ website’s gallery page.
As a mark of the quality of the work submitted to these monthly challenges, an exhibition of the best images submitted between January and July 2024 was held at London’s Fujifilm House of Photography in 2024 – and this show is the winner of this year’s Readers’ Choice Exhibition of the Year. The exhibition ran from early September until mid-October, and the images on display were selected by photographers Emily Endean and Emily Renier, a former and current Fujifilm X Ambassador respectively. The images they chose covered a wide range of genres, including macro, landscape, portraiture and more.
All prints in the exhibition were available to purchase, with proceeds going to the Disabled Photographers’ Society. Congratulations to SheClicks on scooping both these reader awards at this year’s AP Awards!
Readers’ Choice Event Provider of the Year – Creativity Hub Events
Launched in 2017, the Creativity Hub set out with the aim of helping photographers to update their portfolios by hosting exciting model-based shoots that encourage originality and creativity – all backed up by support and guidance from team members.
Attendees work in small groups – no more than three per model – and get the chance to photograph between eight and ten models per weekend experience.
As for the themes, there’s everything from 1950s sets (complete with mid-century diner, retro garage and classic cars) to film noir lighting to creative lighting for dance photography. There are also tantalisingly entitled weekends such as the Fairytale Kingdom and Avant Garden. The locations are carefully picked to be as surprising and photogenic as they can be – all of which enhances the experience and, most importantly, the resulting images. It’s no wonder that Creativity Hub has been voted Readers’ Choice Event Provider of the Year by AP readers in this year’s awards.
Lead image by Keith Bridle.
- Make sure you have a look at the other AP Award winners!
- Tell us what you think on social media, using the hashtag #APAwards2025
