Natalia Bobrova wins Bedford Park Festival Photography Competition 2026

Natalia Bobrova with her winning entry, top left

“We were really impressed by the standard of the entries – the variety and depth” – Kelvin Murray

Natalia Bobrova has won this year’s Bedford Park Festival Photography Competition with this photograph of the clock at the Musee d’Orsay in Paris.

The photograph has a ‘Spielberg’ quality to it, said Kelvin Murray, who judged the competition.

“It’s a lovely image and it feels like it has a story behind it”, said Kelvin, an advertising photographer who lives in Bedford Park with his wife Julia Fullerton-Batten, a fine art photographer.

Kelvin Murray – kelvinmurray.com

READ ALSO: Julia Fullerton-Batten, Fine Art photographer

They both looked at the entries together and came up with their favourites, and Kelvin came to St Michael & All Angels Church on Friday afternoon (19 June) to present Natalia with the prize – a £100 voucher for printing and framing at Snappy Snaps Chiswick.

Natalia, an artist, will be showing her work at this weekend’s Artists At Home open studios, at Studio 47 at Fauconberg Road in Grove Park.

Natalia Bobrova’s winning photograph

“I was lucky with the light”, she told The Chiswick Calendar. I managed to get a clear shot but there were about 100 other people just behind me. It’s a lovely old industrial building which was converted into a museum”.

The building is the former Gare d’Orsay, a Beaux-Arts railway station built from 1898 to 1900.

Runner up was Nigel Spanton, whose pink gnome in the passenger seat of a car was entered in the Serendipity category. He wins a £50 voucher from Snappy Snaps.

Nigel Spanton – Pink Gnome

“We loved his expression and the colours in the shot – the flowers and the people in the background”.

Kelvin singled out a few of the other photographs for honourable mention.

“What stood out for me and Julia were the dolphins. There’s a calmness about it and we liked the colour palette and composition”.

They liked the black and white photograph of two children, which he likened to the kind of documentary photographs of 1950s.

“There’s something of that quality to it. It has total authenticity. It could have been a National Geographic photograph.”

They also commended the composition of the landscape with Kakhetinskaya wild donkeys:

“Again we liked the colour palette and the symmetry of it, with the mountains in the background and the way they’re grouped in the middle of the shot, all looking at you”.

Dolphins by Juliette Kerton-Johnson; Two boys by Antonio Romeo; Kakhetinskaya wild donkeys by Alicia AJ

“It’s really what turns you on about a photograph”

There was no easy way to describe what makes a winning photograph, said Kelvin.

“We were really impressed by the standard of the entries – the variety and depth. There is no book that can tell you what is a good picture, it’s really what turns you on about it”.

The photography competition is an annual event as part of the Bedford Park Festival, organised by St Michael & All Angels Church in Chiswick, which opened with Green Days last weekend and continues for a fortnight of music, theatre, walks and talks. See the full programme here:

Bedford Park Festival events

READ ALSO: A lovely sunny weekend for Green Days 2026

A professional photographer always judges the overall winner of the photography competition, while members of the public pick the winners in each of the eight categories: Animals, Landscapes and Seascapes, Portraits & People, Chiswick Life, Built Environment, Natural World, People in Motion and Serendipity.

They too receive a £50 voucher from Snappy Snaps.

There was a certain amount of overlap in the public’s judgement and that of the professionals – Alicia AJ won three categories: Portraits & People, Natural World and People in Motion, while Natalia Bobrova won the Built Environment category and Nigel Spanton won Serendipity.

Here all all the winners of the eight categories.

Animals

Owl in flight by Karl Benzie

Landscapes and Seascapes

Buddhist monks looking out over the view by Steve Shotton

Portraits & People

A tie between two photographs, both by Alicia AJ 

Chiswick Life

Autumn tree by Juliette Kerton-Johnson

Built Environment

Staircase by Natalia Bobrova

Natural World

Kakhetinskaya wild donkeys by Alicia AJ

People in Motion

People on a motorbike by Alicia AJ

Serendipity

Pink gnome by Nigel Spanton

The exhibition in the church is being taken down today, but you can see all the entries in each of the categories on The Chiswick Calendar website here:

READ ALSO: Bedford Park Festival Photography Competition 2026

The competition was organised by Win Mensah-Larbie and Marnix Van Kampen-Brooks and sponsored by Snappy Snaps Chiswick and The Chiswick Calendar.