In 1934 two men, the late Athel D' Ombrain and Wallace Fitness, founded the Maitland Salon of Photography. They approached the secretary of the Hunter River Agricultural and Horticultural Association Show Society, asking could they put some local photographs up in the Fine Arts Pavilion at the 1934 annual Maitland Show. Permission was given and so began the long history of the Maitland Salon of Photography.
In 1946 Maitland Salon became an Australian Photographic Society approved Salon and then in 1958 became an International Salon with approval from the Photographic Society of America and finally in 1982 the federation International De L' Art Photographique granted its patronage.
Headquarters for the Maitland Salon is the Fine Arts Pavilion at the Maitland Showground, all salon entries are processed there when they begin to arrive in October of each year.
Five sections of photography are contested at each Salon: Monochrome Prints, Colour Prints, Nature Prints, Pictorial Projected Images and Nature Projected Images.
Nine judges from most states of Australia and overseas arrive in January each year to judge this event. Over sixty eight awards are contested with gold, silver, and bronze medals, plaques and certificates of merit, ribbons and acceptances. These are then accredited to the entrants as points when they apply for their honours in photography. Close to 100 approved Photographic Salons are conducted worldwide each year and from these Maitland Salon has been rated 8th best in the world.
From small beginnings of a handful of postcard size prints on the wall we have progressed to this important position we hold today in the Photographic World. We now receive over 3000 entries from over 500 entrants coming from some 50 different countries throught the world each year. Maitland is the oldest and largest international salon operating in Australia.
In 1982 we were probably the first in the world to use a computer to help manage entries and provide printed lists to the printer. (The computer was a home built Z80 Big Board kit with 8 inch floppy disk drives and the CP/M operating system.) As personal computers have developed they have become more important to our operation especially in rapid production of notifications and the production of our catalogue and rapid posting of results on our web site.
In 2008 the Salon accepted electronic images in the Pictorial and Naure projected image sections. Almost 70% on the entries in this first year were electronic and the trend has continued to grow.