5th Monthly Competition Results

Monday 16th March 2026
Judge David Hughes ARPS, CPAGB, BPE5*

Thank you to everyone who submitted images to the competition. 22 members took, part each entering two images. It meant there were 44 images for us to look at and enjoy and for the judge to critique.
David as always was a superb judge and gave us all lots of really useful advice, that will help us to become the best photographers that we can be.

David was genuinely impressed with the quality and variety of the images in both competitions and held back 15 images that he eventually gave a score of 9 or above.

Congratulations to all those members who had their images held back and that were subsequently given a score of 9, 9.5 or 10.

INTERMEDIATE

DOROTHEA - GHOSTLY CHRISTMAS ROSE - 10
RATAN - NIBBING GIRAFFE, TANZANIA - 10
RAJ-INDER - WATER IN MOTION - 9.5
DOROTHEA - NIGHT DECENDS ON THE CITY - 9.5
ANDY - REFLECTIONS PAVED COURT RICHMOND - 9.5
JAMES - LIFE IN THE SLOW LANE - 9.5
RAJ - ANGEL - 9
KATHY - SPRING SHOOTS - 9

ADVANCED 

DAVID - FALLING GENTLY - 10
SATISH - WALKING THE DOG - 10
DAVE - A DIFFERENT VIEW OF A FAMILIAR LANDMARK - 9.5
SAM - MELANISTIC BARN OWL WITH REWARD - 9.5
ANDREW - DAWN DEPARTURE - 9
PRADHEEP - DOMINO EFFECT - 9
SAM - TIGER PATROLLING - 9  
 

Our First Ever AI Judged Competition RESULTS - Monday 24th November 

Thank you to everyone who took part in this experimental AI judged competition. 

Apologies that one members images got missed on the night. I have now run those through the Chat GPT software and added them to the results.

Stephen Wilder created the competition using the standard SPA 15 point scoring system and with no separation of our usual intermediate and advanced classes. All images from both classes were mixed together.

The AI critique given was very detailed, and was split it into the following categories:

Composition and framing

Lighting and Exposure

Technical Quality

Creativity and originality

Emotional impact/atmosphere

Presentation

It gave scores for each, followed by an overall score and a Judges Summary.

Theoretically it could give scores from 1 to 15. Fortunately, nobody scored a 1. The lowest score it gave was an 8 and the highest a 14

Congratulations to Dorothea and Andrew who had the two highest scoring images of the night, both scoring 14 marks.

Dorothea with a beautiful minimalist abstract

Andrew with a superbly captured Migrant Hawker in flight.

There were a number of images that scored 13 marks

Andrew Great Crested Grebe and Perch

Dave Coloured light from inside the cheese grater

James Late Night Laundry

Dave Back flip dive into the sea in Brighton

The majority of images scored 10, 11 or 12

Only a handful of images scored 8 or 9

Generally, the critique seemed accurate and comparable to the sort of comments an actual SPA judge may make.

(Although Elspeth disagreed on some and told AI her opinion.)

AI judging used the word" POTENTIAL" a lot in its critique summaries for each image.

So one of the big takeaways from last night is that We ALL have the POTENTIAL to produce GOOD/GREAT and successful club competition level images.

As Stephen Wilder suggested last week, AI critique can be an excellent learning tool and it also has great POTENTIAL itself, if it is used as a "mentor" prior to entering images into competitions.