The Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society (FRPS) recognises distinctive and highly resolved photographic achievement.
At Fellowship, you are expected to present a distinctive body of work. Your intention, photographic approach, editing and presentation should work together with authority, assurance and depth.
Your work should demonstrate a distinctive photographic voice and an informed understanding of the context in which your practice sits. Originality at Fellowship does not mean making work that has never been seen before. It means bringing an individual and convincing approach to the work, in which your own ideas, judgement and photographic priorities are clearly evident.
Fellowship recognises distinctive and highly resolved photographic achievement. It is characterised by authority, depth, originality, assurance and a distinctive photographic voice. The work demonstrates a sophisticated relationship between intention, approach and presentation, supported by critical and contextual understanding appropriate to the work.
In plainer terms, Fellowship asks you to demonstrate a mature and distinctive photographic practice in which the purpose, development and presentation of the work come together convincingly.
Highly resolved means that the work has been developed, edited and presented with sufficient depth and rigour for its elements to work together convincingly. The decisions you have made should be purposeful and integral to the work, rather than provisional or insufficiently developed.
Your submission should show that you have developed the work with depth and independence, and that the decisions you have made are assured, purposeful and recognisably your own.
The work should also demonstrate critical and contextual understanding appropriate to your practice, and show how this understanding informs the work.
Fellowship may be right for you if you have developed a sustained photographic practice and are ready to demonstrate distinctive achievement through a complete body of work.
If you already hold ARPS, you may continue developing the same area of practice, subject or project. Your Fellowship submission must, though, provide new evidence of achievement at Fellowship level. Work submitted for an awarded Distinction cannot simply be resubmitted as evidence for a higher Distinction.
Your Fellowship submission is formally assessed against six criteria.
These criteria help Examiners consider different aspects of your photographic practice and decide whether your submission demonstrates the Fellowship standard. They are considered together and are not scored individually.
Assessment criterion: Intention and purpose
Examiners consider the clarity and appropriateness of your photographic intention.
At Fellowship, the intention should provide a compelling and clearly developed basis for the work.
Examiners consider whether your photographic, technical, editorial and presentational decisions work together with authority and depth to realise that intention.
Your Project Statement also helps Examiners understand your intention and the critical and contextual considerations relevant to your work.
2. Is the work realised with assurance?
Assessment criterion: Photographic and technical realisation
Examiners consider how effectively your photographic, technical and material decisions realise the work.
The skills, techniques and processes that matter will depend on your photographic practice.
At Fellowship, decisions should demonstrate assurance and command appropriate to the work. Technical accomplishment is not an end in itself. What matters is how effectively your choices contribute to the work you have developed.
Assessment criterion: Visual communication
Examiners consider how the work communicates, engages and creates meaning for an audience.
At Fellowship, they consider how fully the visual language of the work supports its intention and how effectively the work creates the experience, ideas or meanings it sets out to explore.
The work may communicate directly or ambiguously. It may describe, document, question, evoke, challenge, express or operate in other ways appropriate to your practice.
Assessment criterion: Coherence and development
Examiners consider the relationships between the different elements of the submission and the depth of its development.
At Fellowship, coherence goes beyond visual consistency. The work should demonstrate sustained development and a convincing relationship between its intention, approach and individual elements.
Assessment criterion: Editing, sequencing and presentation
Examiners consider the selection, order, form and presentation of your submission.
At Fellowship, these decisions are an integral part of the photographic achievement being assessed.
Examiners may consider whether every element is purposeful and contributes to the work; whether the editing demonstrates rigour; how images and other elements relate to one another; whether sequence or structure contributes meaningfully to the work; and whether the chosen form of presentation strengthens how the work is encountered.
Assessment criterion: Independence, context and voice
Examiners consider your judgement and independence, your awareness of relevant context and the distinctiveness of your photographic voice.
At Fellowship, the work should demonstrate confident and authoritative photographic judgement. Examiners should be able to recognise a coherent set of ideas, decisions and photographic priorities that are demonstrably your own.
They also consider your understanding of the contexts relevant to your practice and how that understanding informs, rather than simply accompanies, the work.
Assessment is holistic. Examiners consider your complete body of work and Project Statement against the Fellowship standard, guided by the six assessment criteria.
The criteria are not scored separately, and you do not need to demonstrate each criterion through a particular photograph or part of your submission. Different aspects of your work may contribute to several criteria at the same time. A weakness in one area does not necessarily prevent an Award, unless it is significant enough to affect whether the submission demonstrates the Fellowship standard.
For FRPS Photographic Practice, you submit:
For image-based submissions, your body of work consists of 20–25 images.
Submission requirements depend on the form of your work.
Digital images must:
Your files should be numbered in the order in which you want them to be viewed and named using the following format:
Firstname_Lastname_Year_F01
Firstname_Lastname_Year_F02
Prints do not need to be mounted. They should be no larger than 16 × 24 inches.
If the nature of your work requires a larger format, please contact the Distinctions team in advance. Larger work may be accepted by prior arrangement.
You should provide clear instructions showing the intended order, sequence or arrangement of the prints.
Moving-image files should be submitted in MP4 format at a minimum resolution of 1920 × 1080 pixels.
Moving-image submissions must not exceed 10 minutes in total duration unless different requirements are specified for the relevant form of practice.
Submissions may take other forms, including photobooks, multimedia and expanded photographic practice. Where your work does not fit the requirements above, please contact the Distinctions team before submitting so that appropriate arrangements can be agreed.
Your submission should provide sufficient evidence for Examiners to determine whether you have met the photographic achievement expected at Fellowship level.
