Images from our latest Monthly Competition held on Monday 16th February 2026. The judge was Tim Clarke LRPS.

1. A Colourful Night Out in Piccadilly Circus. - Dave - 10 ADV.

2. Exit Following the Light. - Dave - 10 ADV.

3. Echoes of Iron. - Pradheep - 9.5 ADV.

4. Lacework on the Moon. - Rajinder - 10 INT.

5. Reflections. - Kathy, - 10 INT.

6. The Shard with a Glowing Crown. - Dorothea- 10 INT.

7. Fairly Swordfish at Duxford Airshow. - Andy - 9.5 INT.

8. Jaguar Resting on Branch of a Tree. - Ratan - 9 INT.

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.