A slightly quieter week on the numbers — 684 captions from 43 captioneers, drawing 998 votes — but it produced the closest finish at the top of the leaderboard in nearly a year, and a breakthrough week from someone who has been quietly building towards one for a long time.
Breakthrough of the Week: @Lara_Holly
Lara has been captioning here since February 2024 and has reached the weekly top ten 128 times. This week she went past every one of her own marks at once:
- 96 votes — her best week ever (previous best 67)
- 3rd on the leaderboard — her best-ever finish (previous best 4th)
- 3 winning captions, the joint-most of anyone this week
Three personal records in a single week is rare, and none of them came from volume — 36 captions is an ordinary week’s work for her. Congratulations, Lara.
Caption Champion
@Stephen_Bean finishes top with 117 votes from 46 captions, taking the crown back after two weeks in @Al_Overy’s hands.
But he very nearly didn’t. @James_Lennox finished on 114 — three votes behind. That is the tightest top-two finish since October 2025, a gap of 47 weeks. James got there off 32 captions to Stephen’s 46. @Lara_Holly completed the top three on 96.
Top Captions
@James_Lennox took the week’s single best caption with 25 votes:
25 votes
@Lara_Holly, with one of the captions that set up her record week:
21 votes
And @Stephen_Bean, who managed the unusual feat of tying himself for third — two separate captions on 20 votes apiece:
20 votes
20 votes
Quality Award
@Al_Overy wrote just 8 captions all week and still finished 7th overall, at 5.88 votes per caption — comfortably the best ratio on the board, and a reminder that the quota rewards judgement rather than output. @James_Lennox was next on 3.56 across 32 captions, which is much harder to hold over that volume, and @Lara_Holly third on 2.67 from 36.
Most #1 Captions
@Lara_Holly and @Stephen_Bean took 3 photos each, with @Tony_S, @Phil_Swan and @James_Lennox on 2 apiece.
Across the 21 photos whose voting closed this week there were 14 different winners — one of the wider spreads we have seen, and a good sign that the field is deep rather than top-heavy.
Community Spirit
@C_CaMel was the week’s best finder by a distance: 42 finder points from only 5 discoveries. Being first onto five captions that all went on to beat the average is about as good a strike rate as the system can measure.
@Kathleen_Ralph approached it from the other end — 26 discoveries, more than anyone else on the site, placing 44 votes and still finishing well in credit. Voting widely and voting well is the harder combination.
Milestones
@KT_A crossed 6,000 career caption votes this week, landing exactly on the mark. That is two gold stars on the profile, and a total built one caption at a time over a long stretch.
A week decided by three votes, a spread of fourteen different photo winners, and a long-standing captioneer finally getting the week she has been chasing. Good luck to everyone for the week ahead.