The LRPS Panel

The Licentiate is the first of the Royal Photographic Society’s three Distinctions. It requires a panel of ten images demonstrating technical competence and range: variety in approach and technique rather than a single subject, assessed as one cohesive body of work by a panel of RPS judges. The panel is judged as a sequence, not as individual images, so the order and flow matter as much as any single photograph. Even the layout itself is scrutinised, sometimes called the eleventh image, since how the ten are arranged and how they speak to one another matters as much as any single frame.

This panel earned my Licentiate in 2026. It moves between colour and monochrome, architecture and ritual, close detail and wide scene, across Singapore and Thailand. The range is deliberate, but the panel still needed to read as the work of one photographer, not ten unrelated good photos side by side. The feedback I received was detailed and genuinely useful: two images were flagged as too similar in style and content, another for an unclear focal point, along with several technical points still needing correction. But the panel represented a serious step up in my photographic skill, knowledge, and intent, and remains a marker of where that shift began. For me, earning the Licentiate was proof I could approach mastery of my camera, and the beginning of formalising my photographic eye alongside my technical skill.