The Guild of Photographers Awards 2025

Each February, The Guild of Photographers hosts its much-anticipated Annual Awards Ceremony — a true highlight of the photographic calendar. The 2025 celebration once again brought together outstanding image-makers to recognise excellence across multiple genres, awarding titles such as Image of the Year, Photographer of the Year, and the prestigious Photographers Bar in each category. To be recognised at this level is a significant professional milestone.

I’m incredibly proud to share that 2025 has been my most successful year to date.

Going into the awards, my goal was to continue building consistency within the Natural World category — and I was honoured to achieve my Photographers Bar, marking my sixth bar overall. The Guild describes the Photographers Bar as a mark of sustained excellence. To qualify, photographers must submit a portfolio of four images, each scoring 70 or above through the Guild’s rigorous judging process — a true test of quality and consistency.

Alongside this, I was thrilled to be named International Top 10 Photographer of the Year in the Natural World category — an achievement in itself.

However, the biggest moment of the night was discovering that I had been awarded Overall Runner-Up in Natural World Photographer of the Year. Achieving this not only placed me second internationally in the category, but also earned me my first piece of Guild glass — something I’ve worked towards for years. Holding that award on the night was an incredibly special and emotional milestone in my journey as a wildlife photographer.

Seeing my work featured among the very best in the Guild’s official awards book was the icing on the cake.

These achievements have given me huge momentum and motivation heading into 2026. I’m more driven than ever to continue pushing my wildlife storytelling further and raising the bar with every image I create.

Top ten image of the year

Had some great news recently that one of my images has been selected by The Guild of Photographers as a top ten image of the year in the wildlife catagory. The final is in February where I will find out if I have won image of the year, but just to be shortlisted is an achievement in itself! See below a statement fro the Guild themselves;

The Guild is a highly respected UK based association for photographers, which has members from overseas as well. Each year it runs an online monthly photographic competition, judged by internationally respected judges, with awards given to the best entries. 



During 2023, the competition attracted c12,000 entries from the most talented of photographers.



It has recently been announced that from all the entries across the year, the Guild’s Judges have selected no more than 10 images in various genres to go forward to the annual Image of the Year Final. Those selected really are the best of the best, and an image(s) by RKS Images is one of those selected as a Finalist!



Guild Director Lesley Thirsk said “One of the Guild’s aims is to drive standards and creativity amongst photographers. Our competition certainly does that, for the standard of the entries we see each month is quite staggering. To have an image recognised by the Guild in the monthly competition is difficult enough, so to have an image selected as being one of the best in a category for the end of year Final is without doubt an incredible achievement, and shows just how talented photographer, RKS Images is.”