It's time to see what the community thinks of your automotive photography. Submit your best three images now and receive feedback from your peers.
In our next episode of Critique the Community, we will be selecting twenty automotive images to provide feedback to. The highest average community rated image will receive a free Fstoppers original tutorial of their choice. We will also give one tutorial away to a random entrant.
Once you've added your images to the contest, scroll through the rest of the submissions and provide some feedback of your own. Use the Fstoppers rating system below to assign a numerical rating to each photo. Then, as this contest is meant to help each other grow as photographers, take some time to leave comments on images when you notice areas where they could be improved. Please keep your comments encouraging.
Thanks to David Fulde for the featured image.
I think the reason these contests have such low ratings on photos across the board is that people misunderstand the 2-star rating of "Needs Work." It simply means that the photo needs work in order to be put into your portfolio. All photos "need work" except for 5-star images but not all images need to have issues fixed before being portfolio worthy.
Nah they do that every contest. Just to low ball everyone as trolls. Winners should not be chosen based off troll votes.
why would anyone listen to Fstoppers about automotive photography critique after the fiasco of the last one?
nvm
The last one was incredibly painful to watch
I see what you mean by trolling ...
I believe Fstoppers should demand that - for a score below 3 - some comment should be given about what could be improved !
just my 2c
Edit: and 'I don't like it' does not count ;-) -- just don't rate it then.
as I thought Ian. Let people give some critiques. If someone thinks it needs more work, make them to write it down. That would be a good one, to learn from it.
I like that Idea!
Yeah minimum 12 letters in that case :)
I love when people rate pics as need work. It's an action shot. What needs work? Have the cars go slower? Maybe Photoshop some fake sun light in? Add the roadrunner racing next to them? I nailed the focus, captured the action, job done. Rules to voting should be that you have to have uploaded pics of your own because the troll accounts are getting out of hand here.
I say ditch the content and just have a "Share your (category) pic" because I think that's why most people upload to a contest, to share. And why have someone guest star to judge only to let trolls choose the winners?
if you take an action shot, or a paddock shot unless you go crazy with the edit in post it will never look like a studio/advertising shot. Not to mention the fact that light modifiers big enough to work for vehicles are beyond the price range of most pro photographers and you can't use them at a race track during an event.
Maybe the problem is having the contest be the very generic Automotive which could mean a ton of types of images.
People should still realize panning isn't snapshot territory.
I would consider panning shot snapshot, when subject is totally out of focus. When it's tack sharp its at least 2 in fstopers scale.
Disagree, unless the photographer used an iPhone. Panning shots imply artistic vision and intent to capture a moment in time. By definition that is at minimum a 2.
Every photo has an intent to capture a moment in time. Does not matter it's iPhone or A7RIV. I shot 200-300 panning shots in 1 session to get only 10 razor sharp. 80% those sharp photos are wrongly exposed, got boring subject, bad composition (some of those could be fixed in post). So I do not post them cause for me they are poorly executed=snapshots, even though I put some though and effort into them.
Or it could be somebody panning simply to follow the subject and not understanding how a camera works...
It isn’t when done properly but most don’t do it well enough to warrant anything but a 1
I've never entered any contest like this before and kind of felt like my action shots wouldn't garner many points but it sure feels good to post some type of shots that are little different.
I think it is great when people make the effort to leave feedback. I think more people should. As a moderator of one of the fStoppers groups, I try and foster participation all the time. So - thumbs up for effort to those who are doing so.
As a suggestion, if you are going to make this effort, slow down and think about providing something balanced and constructive. Flitting through the entries dropping a one sentance "don't like this" isn't really the goal of critique.
While I get that it stinks to get 1s without comments, it is even stinkier to get a one sentance "I don't like the color" or "Should have used different light".
There are a lot of entries and the contest and voting period is open for a long time. I usually watch the field first and add comments to those I think I could actually provide help. Not that that is often in the contests! There is amazing work in these challenges. They haven't been in my wheelhouse yet. ;)
Perhaps voting shouldn’t be available until the entry time is over and if you have an entry then you’re excluded from voting in order for the voting to be more objective. That said, there’s probably no perfect system, if the current system bothers someone too much the best option for them is not to participate
As long as people can vote without showing their names, trolls win.
everyone is down voting everyone so that they dont win.. i bet if there was no prize, people would've been more honest
what prize? the tutorial? does anyone even care about that?
The prize for most is just winning. So post a pic and then spend the rest of your time down voting everyone else. Nice community. If people weren't happy with the image, they wouldn't have posted it anyway. And someone telling me they don't like my pic or it needs work isn't going to change how I feel about it so it's pointless.
When people leave a comment on my social post saying what they think should be done to make the pic better for them, I respond "It looks exactly how I wanted it to look." Done.
I feel like people complain about the voting every single critique. From what I’m seeing, a lot of these are rated pretty close to what I rated them. Are some low? Sure. Art is subjective. Something that looks amazing to you, may look mediocre to others. There are some great vehicle shots in this critique. Anything over a 3 with this rating system is a really solid shot. You’re never going to see a 5 star image. It would be nearly impossible since everyone would literally have to rate it a 5. Even getting 4 stars is going to be extremely unlikely. You need to keep in mind that the scores are an average of all the votes. Just with that, the scores are going to be lower. I agree that leaving feedback is helpful, but if it was forced, no one would vote. Can you imagine going through 200 images and having to leave feedback for even half of them? Do you really have time to do that??? It’s up to us, the community, to vote honestly. Maybe Add a 3rd winner chosen by the guest critic.
I agree with you Tyler, I'm pretty new on here and found the voting to be a bit hit and miss in the previous category (Real Estate) and it would be very difficult to get a 4 never mind a 5. However some images, very clearly not up to technical standard of the CONTEST were getting numerous votes where some obviously superior images (in the context of the contest) were not getting the required attention. Clearly a case of entrants not wanting to jeopardise their own entries.
How you would manage a better system I don't know, too many internet variables! Maybe a knock out system, after two days the images with X votes are gone then again in two days we lose X amount etc until at the end we're left X (the top twenty?) and the voting begins again?
All good fun though.
That’s an interesting idea. Unfortunately leaving it up to the community to vote (especially against their own competition) is going to be a somewhat broken system. Not everyone gives a 5 a 1 star vote to benefit themselves, but a few bad apples can ruin the integrity of the contest. As long as the majority votes without prejudice, you can still get a good idea of how good the photo is. Again, it’s really just up to us as a community to be fair when voting. Nice work by the way.
Thank you, I like your portfolio as well.
Another thought - perhaps the last twenty are not allowed to vote?!
Taher Jivanji is a THIEF!!! Stealing images from the web and posting them in this contest as his own work. I posted links in the comments on each of "his photos".
https://fstoppers.com/entry/395981
https://fstoppers.com/entry/395980
WoW!!! Say it aint so. Nice catch.
Good job catching it !
Good job Jay, I had my suspicions.
I can't stand people like this, did anyone report him? Because this takes away from people like us who work our asses off!!!
He blocked me from his page, lolhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roCkRu3QI_E
oh ? I was in the assumption he was blocked/disabled by fstoppers ?
You (unfortunately) cannot block someone on fstoppers. They removed him.
Ahhhhh I seeee. Well I'm sure he'll come back with a different account. There's so many of that type on here. BUT....There's way more great peeps on here so I should just stfu haha. Cheers!
Yes I think so. He'll coming back. But you're right, there good people here.
*duplicate comment*
Just remember everybody; if you’re getting a rating above a 2.5 in the FStoppers world, you’re doing something right.
Over a three - the image is damn good.
Over a four - you might have paid in blood
A five - you majestically caught a unicorn pissing
Photography is subjective and you can always find something you don’t like in an image 👌
Lol ikr, I went in with the mindset of anything over 1.0 for mine would be good, I got 1.6 so far 🤣 Pretty much what I expected, I've only had a "real" camera since June.
One thing I have observed that I find interesting is what the initial few votes are compared to what the score averages out to be. When there are only a few votes recorded, you can work out quite easily what the other numbers had to be in order to give the value shown (i.e. if I am the third person to rate an image and I give it a 3, and the resultant rating is a 2.0 average, it means one vote was a 1 and one vote was a 2). What I have seen is, on a number of photos, even those (especially those in some cases) that are clearly excellent images, the first 6 or so votes will be 1's. Thereafter, the images tend to stabilise towards an appropriate rating. It suggests to me that after people post their photos they immediately go and downvote other people's photos, and start with those adjacent as they're next in view in the layout. Or, similarly, there are a few bad eggs who are just militantly rating everything ones and twos, especially images they see as "threats".
While I can't see a way to combat this effectively, I just want to express my thoughts to the community and say I don't feel that that is the spirit of this community, and you should not let your greed in competition be to the detriment of building up other photographers around you. We can all clearly see, at the least, the vast majority of these images are not snapshots, and rating them 1s to boost your own rating relative to theirs is dishonest.
I have given a few 4s because a few of the shots in this contest are outstanding, and I always try to leave comments about what I like and dont like in shots. I would love to see more of the same from others because we have a unique opportunity in this community to get valuable peer feedback from others at a similar level.
Thanks Fstoppers for the contest 😁
Unfortunately that would never happen, unless fstoppers ban those users. But since photography is very subjective topic, anyone got their right to vote something they want to vote. So censorship do not seems to be good solution either. I guess we have to live with it, since those users downvote everything. I wonder if there are some with multiple accounts just to boots their work.
Agreed - at the end of the day, meritorious photos are still winning, its just a shame that some forgo the spirit of the community in order to try and win.
625 submissions 😳 Wow, I don't think I'm gonna make this one 😬
I'm laughing so hard seeing the ratings for most of these photos
I voted all the submissions. And I think (my humble opinion) there were less than 20 snapshots in total. But most of the photos are graded below 2 ...