MyPhotoClub provides websites and online services for Australian photography clubs. Each club has its own website and address, backed by personal support from Colin Woods.
MyPhotoClub helps clubs manage their day-to-day activities in one place, including:
A complete website tailored to your photography club
Membership applications, member records and club communications
News, events, calendars, documents and information for members
Competitions between your own club members, from entry and judging through to results and galleries
Ongoing support and improvements shaped by the needs of Australian photography clubs
National, international and interclub competitions, together with services for photography clubs outside Australia, are now provided by photoclubHub.com.
Following my announcement late last year regarding Kevin and Ricardo continuing the international competition and non-Australian club side of myPhotoClub, I wanted to share a brief update.
I’m pleased to say that having worked closely with Kevin and Ricardo over recent months, that the handover has been progressing well and things are now getting very close to launching. As a result, I thought it would be best for Kevin to provide an update directly:
Hi everyone,
I wanted to properly introduce myself and thank everyone for the patience and support shown over the last few months while we’ve been working towards launching the new platform.
I’m pleased to say that we are now aiming to launch photoclubHub on 1 June 2026.
Firstly, I’d like to publicly thank Colin for the incredible support, guidance and time he has given throughout this process. It’s very clear how much thought, care and diligence has gone into building myPhotoClub over the years. It has been built with the wider photography community at its core, and our intention is very much to continue building on those strong foundations.
Our immediate focus has been to ensure that when the new platform launches, it is stable, familiar, and ready to empower both photography clubs and competitions into the future.
We also understand that should you wish to join us, there may be data you would like to bring with you. We consider the privacy and security of your data to be extremely important. No migration of club data, personal information, or imagery will occur without the explicit permission and involvement of each individual club, and we (both Colin and I) will work through that process carefully and transparently together.
As part of our gratitude to existing MyPhotoClub customers for their support and patience, we would like to offer a discount for clubs and competitions moving across to photoclubHub, for no only this first year, but also into your second year on the new platform.
If you’d like to learn more, discuss the possibilities for your club or competition, or simply introduce yourself, I’d love to hear from you:
Please get in touch so that we can arrange a call or video-call to meet properly.
Should you decide to move across to photoclubHub, I’ll personally work through the transition with you, including onboarding, timelines, pricing, migration planning and platform access to help ensure everything goes smoothly.
Thanks again, and I’m looking forward to working with many of you soon.
Kevin Akers photoclubHub kevin@photoclubhub.com +64 021 830 570 photoclubhub.com – launching 1st June 2026
Thanks everyone.
I’m excited to see photoclubHub getting close to launch and I’m confident the platform is in very good hands moving forward.
I’ll also continue supporting Kevin and Ricardo throughout the migration and transition period, helping ensure clubs and competitions continue to be well supported while this next chapter gets underway.
After detailed discussions, I have come to an agreement with a party based in Auckland to continue all aspects of MyPhotoClub that I have previously indicated would be wound up. This party is Kevin Akers and Ricardo Grecco, which for the purposes of this email I’ll refer to as ‘KA+RG’.
The arrangements are:
I will continue providing MyPhotoClub services to all photography clubs in Australia. New clubs are most definitely welcome.
KA+RG will utilise the MyPhotoClub data structure and codebase to establish a separate instance of MyPhotoClub to provide:
International competition services worldwide, including Australia.
National competition services worldwide, including Australia.
Interclub competition services worldwide, including Australia.
Individual photography club services to photography clubs outside Australia.
To summarise our arrangement for Clubs and Competitions, the following table describes who will be responsible, for what, and in which country:
WHAT
WHERE
WHO
Photography clubs (including competitions between club members)
Within Australia
Colin
Photography clubs (including competitions between club members)
Outside Australia
KA+RG
International competitions
Worldwide
KA+RG
National competitions
Worldwide
KA+RG
Interclub competitions
Worldwide
KA+RG
WHO IS KA+RG?
A quick introduction:
Kevin is a very experienced digital product lead and producer who has been a passionate amateur photographer since buying is first camera in 1985. He is a long standing member at one of the larger photography clubs in Auckland; joining their committee around 4 years ago to help the club as it grows.
Ricardo is an extremely experienced developer and has a wealth of experience in the WordPress development world, which is the underlying technology upon which myPhotoClub has been built.
They have worked together as a team since 2015 and I can see that they’ll be a very successful team. They’re both looking forward to meeting you in due course.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU
To ensure everyone understands how this transition works, the following explains what the changes mean for each group of users.
It is important to note that no transfer of data or sharing of information will occur without the explicit approval of the concerned individual or group.
1. CLUBS:
Photography Clubs Within Australia
There will be no change to the service for Australian clubs.
I will personally continue to run and support all Australian club sites exactly as I do now.
Clubs can continue to add members, run competitions between their own members, and maintain their websites without interruption.
New clubs in Australia are also welcome to join under the existing arrangements.
Support processes and technical structures remain the same.
Photography Clubs Outside Australia
I am moving to a scenario where I will no longer support clubs outside of Australia.
Existing photography clubs outside Australia will continue to be run and supported by me until KA+RG have their separate instance of MyPhotoClub up and running which we are aiming to complete before the end of the year. Exact timings for this will be confirmed shortly as we are all aware that you will be wanting to set up your 2026 calendar shortly.
Non-Australian clubs will continue to be able to add members, run competitions between their own members, and maintain their websites without interruption.
With each club’s permission, their site (including the club, members and their data (including photos) will be transitioned to the KA+RG site. We will work with you to answer any questions you may have about this process in the very near future.
Both myself and KA+RG will work to minimise any disruption to you, your club and its members.
All new clubs located outside Australia will onboard to the KA+RG-hosted version of MyPhotoClub.
2. COMPETITIONS
International, National, and Interclub Competitions (including those based in Australia)
I will reach out to each affected competition host to discuss.
To ensure a smooth transition, I will continue to provide these services for the next round of your competition, should it look to launch in the first 3 months of 2026.
Once KA+RG has its separate instance of MyPhotoClub up, a transition will occur. With your permission, the competition site, members and their data (including photos) will be transitioned to the KA+RG site. We will work with you to answer any questions you may have about this process in the very near future.
Any competitions looking to commence after 01 April 2026 will be doing so on this new instance.
Entrants (Club, National, International and Interclub)
Entrants within Club competitions – where the Club itself is based in Australia – will see no change and will continue to use the current MyPhotoClub system.
Entrants within Club competitions – where the Club itself is based outside Australia – will be migrated to the new KA+RG instance.
Entrants in international, national and interclub competitions will eventually access these events through the new KA+RG instance.
While not all details are finalised, the process should be simple for the entrant to manage. Probably a password reset and they are away.
Competition Coordinators and Organisers
Coordinators for Australian club competitions will continue exactly as before, with no changes to tools or processes.
Coordinators for Non-Australian club competitions, transitioned international, national and interclub competitions will work with KA+RG for event setup, data management, competition workflows and judging support.
Judges
Judges working with Australian clubs will continue using the current system with no changes to access or process.
Judges involved in Non-Australian club competitions, national, international or interclub events may receive access to the KA+RG instance, depending upon who you choose to use going forward.
The scoring and judging interfaces will remain similar, with the potential for enhancements to be introduced through KA+RG’s development program in the future – which they are keen to get your input into BTW!
FOR BOTH CLUBS AND COIMPETITIONS
Technical Support and Feature Development
I will continue maintaining and developing the Australian club environment.
KA+RG will maintain and expand the separate global competition and non-Australian club instances.
Myself and KA+RG have an agreement to work with each other to share development of the system so that both can obtain feature improvements going forwards
Myself and KA+RG have an agreement where I provide technical support to both environments as required.
Data Separation and Privacy
The Australian club environment and the KA+RG non-Australian clubs and competition environment will operate as completely separate systems.
No club-level personal data from Australian clubs will be transferred to KA+RG once the transition has been completed.
Club-competition entry data for non-Australian clubs, and International, National, and Interclub Competitions will be stored by KA+RG only for the events they host.
What Will Not Change
The MyPhotoClub platform structure, and competition workflow remain consistent. The experience for Australian club members is unaffected, and I remain committed to supporting and enhancing the platform for clubs across Australia.
As KA+RG is using the same codebase, the user experience will not change, but I have no doubt that they will take MyPhotoClub much further as they look to support the photography community further in future.
What the future promises
Kevin and Ricardo are extremely motivated to take MyPhotoClub to a wider audience, improving and refining what is already a sound product. Australian clubs will continue to receive the support they have known will benefit from the cooperation outlined above.
More communications will follow as things progress.
In short, I’ve decided to not sell MyPhotoClub but to wind up the international, national, and interclub competition aspects. I will continue to support individual photography clubs myself for the foreseeable future. The support load for clubs is much less, which is the core reason I started this venture. I’ll still provide support for the international, national, and interclub competitions in 2026 but encourage these competitions to find another provider.
I can’t recommend a provider for international, national, and interclub competition . Try talking to the APS about the provider they have changed to.
Over the past few months, I’ve been in discussions with several parties interested in taking over MyPhotoClub. Several of these parties were very promising, as they had the skills and experience to continue such a product.
During these meetings, I’ve provided a detailed description of the system and explained the support load I encounter. It became evident that the complexity and variation in support calls stem from the international, national, and interclub competitions. These calls often required back-end adjustments or extensive research to resolve issues. In contrast, club support calls are typically predictable and straightforward to resolve. With a monthly routine of using MyPhotoClub, each club quickly develops its own rhythm and requires minimal assistance once it’s up and running.
I started MyPhotoClub to assist the club I belonged to. This vision expanded to encompass the entire journey of an enthusiast photographer, from club competitions to interclub, national, and international events. As a result, individual clubs benefit from enhanced features. The past year has been challenging for me personally, and I need to prioritise my health and well-being by taking more time for myself. Therefore, I believe the best course of action is to reduce the scope of MyPhotoClub to serve only photography clubs. I’m proud of what I’ve created and derive great pleasure from knowing that I’m making the workload of photography clubs less.
I will continue to fine tune the system for Photography Clubs, adding features where appropriate and welcoming new clubs who wish to join.
I want to sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused by the crash of MyPhotoClub.
After the site crashed I found that restoring the system files from backups failed as there was a corruption in the complete backup files that I was not aware of. It should have been a matter or restoring to a snapshot 24 hours ago and going from there. The site database and program files were OK, but not accessible due to system and third party components would not restore.
This of course is a complete systems management failure on my part. The site is large and complex and I don’t have the resources to have the level of redundancy large commercial operators have. If I did the fees to use the system would be beyond reach. I will do my best within my budget to reduce the risk of this occurring again.
MyPhotoClub has been operating for eight years and over this time it accumulated many third party components and was overburdened with complexity. At the same time it has grown so that there are 60+ clubs with 2500+ members using the system, with 8000+ account holders entering 30+ interclub, state, national and international competitions annually. For the last nine months I have been investigating and planning out a pathway to cleaner, more efficient version that can continue to grow. I had implemented some of the more complex pages that are used by large scale competitions to prove the efficiency gains the system needed. This was all quite successful.
My first step in recovery was to establish an updated framework of the system with all of the ‘overburden’ removed. This brought the site back online so that every club had information available to members to view. This occurred 3 days after the crash
The decision then was to either:
Work through the existing versions’ 100+ pages of code that make up the site and remove calls to the removed components. The interaction throughout the site meant the site would have to be completely down for several weeks while this was done.
Fast track the new version and gradually restore functionality.
I chose option 2 to allow the least amount of inconvenience. An International and a national closing ten days after crash, and a myriad of clubs had final competitions for the year mid stream. I have done my best to do what affects most in order to see clubs and comps finish their year out.
So this is the timeline so far:
Oct 23 – the crash
Oct 26 – site back up with all pages of information available
Oct 28 – club competitions could be entered and a download of a zip file containing the entered files was available.
Oct 29 – international and national comps could be entered – registration of new accounts turned on
Oct 31 – Judging of competitions available. Club pointscore tables available
Nov 6 – Online scoring of images available
Nov 13 – Most membership features available. Edinburgh International started successfully judging 3000 odd images using Live Scoring. Publishing of results available
Nov 16 – Posting to sites and members enabled
During the period above I was in Tasmania with my wife in our little van. She had teaching commitments around the island so we had to move constantly during this period. I purchased Starlink to enable reliable data access. On Nov 18 I flew back to be with my father as he had entered his final days. My siblings and I honoured his wish to die at home, providing palliative care for him. He passed away Nov 25 at the age of 98.
Nov 19 – zip file with presentations available.
Nov 21 – CSV files, print layouts and comments sheets made available
Duplicating collections for 2025 is in final testing and should be out by the weekend.
I have not posted an update since Nov 21 for obvious reasons. I have continued to respond to emails, restore functionality and somehow push on…
Generally the level of support and understanding that I have received has been greatly appreciated. I am a single person providing a big product to a niche group. I do this as an interest and treat this work as semi-retirement. I don’t expect great rewards – but it is reasonable to expect some revenue from my efforts. I hope to continue doing this for many years to come.
Of course there have been quite appropriate terse messages of disappointment in the failure of the system. I hope that this message has detailed what occurred and the methodology I have used to recover.
If there is an issue with any feature that is presented on the site please let me know – of course there will be issues that will need to be addressed. I can’t fix what I don’t know.
To answer some specific points:
When will full functionality be restored? – I just don’t know – all I can do is work through restoring the most needed first – if there is a feature you need then contact me. It may be something needed by many that I’ve missed. I am back living at home and my productivity is improving.
Will there be compensation? – No – Clubs and comps pay for system usage retrospectively. Last invoice was for the six months ending October 2024. I expect these to be paid – the vast majority have – and thank you. If you choose to not continue using MyPhotoClub just let me know.
A final point is to highlight that each club has their own responsibility to have a disaster recovery plan for their club to continue to function. Over last year I have had two groups come to MyPhotoClub where their solution provider simply walked away. My recommendations are:
Always download and store the finalised/publish zip and csv files. This gives you a complete archive of each activity.
Have generic email addresses for your position holders so that when one person leaves a role, the next person can use the same account.
Maintain a cloud storage area like DropBox for the club for the zips and a copy of all page content like constitutions, guides etc.
Regularly download membership data
These items would allow you to communicate with members, provide an upload location for members and have the images assessed, while you go shopping for a new or better solution. If you find one let me know.
