Love Poundbury Through Your Lens: Online Competition Now Open

Four Categories, 72 Days, Unlimited Perspectives, Which Poundbury will you capture?

Today marks the launch of 'Love Poundbury Through Your Lens'—the online photography competition inviting you to capture what makes this place special. Whether you're a seasoned amateur photographer or simply love taking photos on your phone, we want to see Poundbury through your eyes.

With four distinct categories and 72 days from today until the deadline on April 26, you have both time and creative freedom. And you don't need to wait. That photo already on your phone from last weekend? It could be a winner.

Enter today here.

Four Ways to See Poundbury

You can enter up to three photographs across any combination of categories—so if you see Poundbury in multiple ways, show us all of them.

Architecture & Urban Design: The Built Environment

Poundbury's architectural character is unmistakable, but it's the details that tell the story. Is it the classical proportions of a Georgian façade, the unexpected play of shadows across Queen Mother Square, or the juxtaposition of old and new materials?

This category celebrates what makes Poundbury's urban landscape distinctive: door knockers and weathered stonework, patterns in windows and rooflines, intimate courtyards and grand public spaces, light transforming a familiar street, human touches like a bicycle against ancient-looking walls or a lit window at dusk.

Landscapes & Natural Beauty: The Natural World

From the pocket parks and mature trees lining the streets, to the Great Field, Holmead Walk, and the allotments, nature is woven into Poundbury's fabric. This category celebrates our landscape in all its moods.

Capture the seasons in transition—February's bare branches, March daffodils, April's fresh green, or pick your photographs from other years to help us represent all the seasons. Consider trees silhouetted against the sky, wildlife moments, weather as character—morning mist lifting, dramatic clouds, sunbeams breaking through. Find those quiet corners: the bench under the beech, wildflowers in unexpected spots.

Community & Everyday Life: Poundbury's People and Pulse

This is where Poundbury comes alive—in the interactions, routines, and moments that make a town more than just buildings. It's the hardest category to capture well, but potentially the most rewarding.

Look for daily rituals: the morning coffee queue, school pickup, Saturday market bustle. Capture faces and hands (with permission), work and craft, gathering spaces alive with conversation. Find unexpected moments of spontaneous kindness or community helping community. Consider life's details: shopping bags bursting with flowers, bikes clustered outside the bakery.

Important note: If your photograph includes recognisable people (especially children), you must have their permission. You will need to tell them that you are taking their picture for a competition, and the image could potentially be used by Love Poundbury on their website, newsletter, cards and other merchandise. 

Creative Perspectives: Re-imagining the Familiar

This is your category for experimentation, artistic interpretation, and seeing Poundbury in completely unexpected ways. The familiar made strange, the ordinary transformed.

Push boundaries: reflections in windows and puddles, abstracts of patterns and textures, unexpected angles (straight up, directly down, from ground level), black and white revealing form and contrast, motion and blur capturing energy, layers and composites, macro photography revealing tiny worlds, light as subject, the surreal moment when reality looks almost unreal.

The judges will be looking for: Thoughtful composition, attention to detail, and images that reveal something fresh about Poundbury—whether grand or intimate. An eye for light and atmosphere, patience to capture the right moment, and images that reveal natural beauty often overlooked in daily routines. Originality, technical skill, artistic vision, and photographs that make them see Poundbury with completely fresh eyes. Authentic moments that capture the spirit of community, emotional resonance, and images that tell a story about life in Poundbury. Most of all, they want the images to be recognisably Poundbury, but not necessarily in an obvious way.

You have 72 Days from today

The competition runs until 26th April, giving you time to capture Poundbury through winter's transition into spring. But you can also enter right now with a photograph you've already taken during previous seasons.

Competition Details: • Entry fee: £2 for one photo, £5 for 2-3 photos • Deadline: 26th April 2026 • Exhibition: Winning and runner-up photographs at Art at the Duchess, 8th-21st June • Awards Ceremony: 8th June, 6:30pm • Prizes: Prizes up to £100 per category, plus a large canvas print courtesy of Minuteman Press Poundbury • Beyond the competition: Selected images may feature in Poundbury Good Things postcards, on our website, and in press materials

Profits support community causes through the Community Association of Poundbury and Art at the Duchess.

Your judges are : Jane Norman (designer and photographer), Chris Frost (professional photographer), and Jamie Clark (photographer and local creative).

Ready to begin? Click here to enter. Show us Poundbury through your lens—we're ready to see what you see.

Competition entries close 26th April 2026. Full terms and conditions here.

Thanks to our generous sponsors Minuteman Press in Poundbury, Your Local Printer, and the Duchess of Cornwall Inn