The Fstoppers Discussion Groups Are Now Live!

For the last 5 years, Fstoppers has been an outlet for education, news, inspiration, and behind the scenes photography content.  Even with the amazing writers we have on Fstoppers, we have always wanted you,our readers, to have a voice.  Well today I am happy to announce a new part of the Fstoppers Community:  the Fstoppers Groups.  

The newly launched Fstoppers Groups is a section of the website where you our readers can post  images, lighting setups, gear reviews, business tips, and general photography questions.  With the Fstoppers Groups we are in essence bringing back an open discussion group similar to our previous Fstoppers Forum.  Along with the Popular Photos, Top Rated Images, Popular Members, and List sections, these Groups will help make the Fstoppers Community one of the best resources for amateur and professional photographers alike.  

During this launch period, we have opened up 15 specific groups to test out any potential bugs.  Once we have worked out all the kinks, the Fstoppers Groups will be open to the public meaning you can create and moderate your very own groups.  These groups can be built for any type of discussion so if you want to start your own group for something as specific as Micro 4/3rds landscape photography or build a group for photographers in your own city the choice is yours.  We hope photographers of all ages and experience will be able to use these groups as a way to not only network but to help facilitate your own photography growth and inspiration.  

Here are a few things we will be doing with the Fstoppers Groups:

Interactive Learning:  Sharing photography tips, advice, and helpful tricks has always been a huge part of Fstoppers, and these groups will help us make learning even more interactive and dynamic.  In addition to the articles on the front of Fstoppers, our writers will be actively participating in the most popular threads and discussions found within the groups.  So if you have a question about a particular light modifier or wish to see some examples of a specific photographic tool in use, we as a community will be able to help share our experiences in a systematic and organized manner.  

Photo Critiques:  Lee and I have produced a few Critique the Community episodes where we quickly go through 20 photographs from the community and rate them based on composition, lighting, execution, originality, and other important criteria.  With the new Groups section of Fstoppers, we will be able to organize future genre specific episodes of the Critique the Community so everyone can more easily participate.  If you want to give and receive critiques in your own group, you can launch your own community and receive opinions about your own photos too.  Reading and participating in critiques is an easy way to step up your own photography, and we think this is going to be a great way to learn from everyone on Fstoppers.

Fstoppers Contests:  One of the coolest things we used to do in the past was weekly and monthly contests.  After we removed the Fstoppers Forum a few years ago, it was pretty hard to organize and monitor multiple contests running at the same time.  Now with the Fstoppers Groups we can run contests much easier and have all entries public in a single thread.  So you can plan on seeing a lot more giveaways and photography themed contests in the near future, and most of them will be hosted on the Fstoppers Groups. 

We are excited to offer this new section of Fstoppers to all of our readers.  If you want to subscribe to one of the initial 15 groups or create your own group when we unlock that function in a few weeks, head over to the Fstoppers Community Page and create an account.  Once you have an account, you can then upload your own photos to your portfolio, build your gear list, rate other photos in the community, and participate in these exciting new discussion groups.  Staying connected with your discussions is easy as well; anytime someone responds to one of your threads or likes one of your images you will be notified each time you log back into Fstoppers.com.  We have been working hard to finally release this section of the website and I hope you are as excited as we are.