Critique the Community

Adventure Photography

Submit your best adventure image for a chance to win a free Fstoppers tutorial
  • Submission Deadline: Sat, 15 Sep 18 03:45:00 +0000

    This contest has ended.

  • Voting is closed.

  • Congratulations to the winners!

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Although adventure photography is a pretty niche part of the photography industry, we want to give it the spotlight in our next episode of Critique the Community. Let's hear what the community says about your pictures. 

If you're unfamiliar with adventure photography, you're probably not alone. The genre largely includes the more strenuous types of outdoor activities such as rugged hiking, rock climbing, or kayaking; note Michael Destefano's featured image as an example. 

Between now and September 14th, you may submit up to three of your best adventure photographs for a chance to be both critiqued by the Fstoppers team and win one of two Fstoppers tutorials. The first tutorial winner will be the community member that submits the highest rated image. The second winner will be selected at random. We will select a total of 20 images to provide feedback to. 

After you've submitted your images, take a few minutes to scroll through the rest of the submissions to rate and comment on them. The easiest way to do this is use the number and arrow keys on your keyboard. Please keep any comments you leave encouraging and helpful as we're all growing in the craft together. 

  • Submission Deadline: Sat, 15 Sep 18 03:45:00 +0000

    This contest has ended.

  • Voting is closed.

  • 568 people have cast a total of 41,641 votes on 657 submissions from 345 contestants.
  • Congratulations to the winners!

    View Results

59 Comments
Previous comments

The problem may be in your own mindset and how others percieve your image.

You said you planned for weeks to get that image of the Milky Way but the “adventure” of getting the image is what the genre calls for.

Your image belongs in astrophotography.

The way he describes the image, it's very much like the sample image of a guy walking in sand, which is far from screaming adventure, and reminds me of many snapshots I've taken while on a walk. I just feel like this was a poorly structured contest.

I would call 10 miles at 12,000 ft at 3am an adventure... If I am totally honest it doesn't actually matter but I don't understand how that picture could ever be rated a 1 based on the definition of a 1. All my photos for this contest are under a 2 right now and none of them qualify as "snapshots" all 3 required a tripod which as stated in previous videos as soon as a tripod is introduced a 2 becomes the minimum. but then getting ratings of 2 aren't helpful unless there is some comment left, which is how I rate. anyway lots of weirdness in these contests it doesn't seem like most people are here to help each other and learn which is a bummer.

I'm new to Fstoppers and agree with your sentiments about the rating system and the lack of people wanting to help others. Regarding your and others thoughts of adventure images I would say that the composition would need to tell the story of adventure, rather than than the backstory of taking the image being adventurous. In this contest I think there's a couple of images of a paragliders and the like which are perfect adventure photography shots. An image of the milky way (while almost always requires an adventure by the photographer) would be classified as landscape unless there's some other compositional element that tells us about an adventure being undertaken. Great job spending the time to take images and get a shot you're wanting. As I you keep practicing and learning this willingness to be uncomfortable to get the shot will take you far in your journey.

The rating system maybe should be expanded and redefined for these competitions then haha your comment on composition would make it so that good pictures that would fit in adventure could do well but not as well as good pictures that make you feel adventure.

You can’t get mad about people rating your stuff poorly. That’s just this community and their lack of care in rating with no critique.

If your photo captured the “adventure” you keep saying you had to go about to get the image, then it would fit the genre. Since you can’t tell what you did or anything about the adventure to get the photo, in the photo, it’s just astrophotography.

Nobody cares about your adventure if we can’t see it in the photo. That’s as blunt as it can be put. You eating a cliff bar at 12,000ft while setting up your gear would fair better in this particular genre.

Well said Eric.

Dillion, I think what you're frustrated about is that you're taking the "1 being a snapshot" too literal, we know it says "snapshot" but don't take it that way, we all know it's not a snapshot, but most of us don't believe it fits the category of adventure because when we see your image it doesn't come off as adventure, comes off as landscape/astrophotography even though you explain the adventure to us the image doesn't capture that. But if this was an astrophoto contest I would rate it as a 2 because it does need a bit of work.

I think that there's a lot of discrepancy on deciding what is adventure and what not, and it will always be, since it is quite a subjective matter.

Bearing this in mind, maybe if some kind of "Doesn't fit" button appeared right next to the 1-5 stars, would give the community some kind of tool in order to mark some pictures as not apropiate for the contest. I think that this would be better than to actually "onestar" or "twostar" a beautiful image.

If, just to say a number, the 33% of the contestants/voters rate an image as not apropiate for the contest, some automatic email might be sent to the user to inform her/him that the image would be withdrawed from the contest.

Just my two cents, thanks for reading.

I couldn't agree more with the notion of a "doesn't fit" button. This is a community but it's also a community contest, and each contest has a theme. When we, the raters, don't think an image fits the contest, it's hard to rate it high - since the highest rated image in the contest wins. We, or certainly, I rate them low or don't rate them at all. People always interpret art and a genre differently, however, other will always submit pictures that simply don't fit the genre. A "Doesn't Fit" button would give people the option to still see and give a rating and benefit from peer review.

Contest Submissions

Click on the thumbnails below to comment and vote on each image.

Click here to learn about the Fstoppers rating system and what each star value means.