Excire has turned 10 years old, and to celebrate, we’re launching our biggest-ever photography competition: People in Focus.
The competition—which runs from June 1st through June 30th—invites photographers around the globe to submit people and portrait images of all types. And because a decade of building AI-powered photo-management software is a big deal (we think so, anyway!), we’re offering a whopping $7000 in prizes: a $4000 grand prize, a $2000 second-place prize, and a $1000 third-place prize.
In addition to cash prizes, we’ll be featuring our favorite entries on our social media platforms and newsletter as the competition continues. (For the best chance at being featured, be sure to share your competition entries on Facebook and/or Instagram and use the hashtag #excirepeople.)
People in Focus is free to enter, even if you’ve never purchased an Excire product. As a bonus, every participant also receives a 20% discount on our software, valid through the end of June.
Instant Judging With Our AI
Unlike traditional photography competitions, People in Focus will not be judged by a human panel. Instead, every image will be analyzed and scored by our proprietary AI model, which has been trained using input from expert photographers to evaluate photos based on aesthetic qualities.
Of course, the use of AI in photography is controversial, and we recognize that our AI doesn’t replicate subjective human taste.
But an AI judge does offer several significant benefits. For one, the results are unerringly consistent; Excire’s AI model won’t be influenced by environmental factors. An AI doesn’t have good or bad days, after all! If it likes an image today, it’ll like it tomorrow, too (and next week, and next month, and next year).
Also important: Our AI judge evaluates images in an instant. Upon submitting an image, you’ll receive your current competition rank. If you score in the Top 20, your image will appear on a live leaderboard. Top entries may fall over the course of the month as new photos are submitted and judged, but you can always use the leaderboard to track your top photos in real time.
We’ve run competitions like this before, so we know that our AI model does an excellent job of recognizing those compelling, beautiful, eye-catching, and powerful images that photographers typically label as “great.” If you want to see what we mean, we encourage you to view the live leaderboard or to submit an image into the competition!
How to Enter Excire’s Photo Competition
Participating in the People in Focus competition is simple!
- Visit the competition page.
- Scroll down to the Enter the Contest form.
- Upload your image and enter your details.
- Instantly receive your (current) competition ranking!
You can submit up to one image per day for the entire competition, for a maximum of 30 entries—so don’t hold back! We encourage you to bookmark the competition page and return regularly to submit images and view the leaderboard.
Eligibility and Entry Guidelines
The competition is open to photographers aged 18 and over from around the world. Entries must fall under the category of people or portrait photography (construed broadly) and may not contain AI-generated elements.
Participants may submit up to one image per day between 12:00 PM CEST on June 1 and 11:59 PM CEST on June 30, for a maximum of 30 entries. However, only the highest-scoring image from each entrant will be considered for the final prizes. (In other words, if you win first place, you won’t be eligible for second or third. We want to make sure that three different people are able to take home a prize!)
Top-ranking participants will be required to verify their submissions by uploading original image files, and we reserve the right to disqualify ineligible entries at any point.
Also, submitted photos will not be used to train our AI! This is meant as a fun competition for all.
For more details, visit www.competition.excire.com.
Need Help Choosing Which Photos to Submit?
If you’re unsure which images to enter into the competition, our software can help. Both Excire Foto 2025, our standalone program, and Excire Search 2024, our Lightroom Classic plugin, come equipped with an AI-powered aesthetic scoring tool. This feature is capable of analyzing your photos and outputs an Aesthetic Score, which can be a good way to pick out the most striking shots in your portfolio before submitting your work.
If you don’t yet own Excire software but you want to use the Aesthetic Scoring feature, you do have the option to download a 14-day free trial on our website (no payment details required). The trial gives you access to all AI capabilities, including aesthetic analysis, so you can check out your images‘ Aesthetic Scores before entering the competition.
Submit Your First Entry Today!
We’re extremely excited about the competition, and we’d love for you to participate! Even if you don’t consider yourself to be a great photographer or you’re not much of a people or portrait snapper, it can still be fun to enter a few images and see what the AI thinks. Maybe the results will be better than you expect!
So head over to the competition and enter your first image. We wish you the very best of luck!