Critique the Community

Dogs

Submit your best dog photo now for your chance to win a free Fstoppers tutorial
  • Submission Deadline: Fri, 31 May 19 03:45:00 +0000

    This contest has ended.

  • Voting is closed.

  • Congratulations to the winners!

    View Results

Pet photography can be a huge business and there are some among us who make their living photographing man's best friend. Do you think your pictures of dogs are good enough to be in a professional portfolio? 

Between now and May 30, 2019, we want you to bring on the cuteness and submit up to two of your best pictures of dogs. We will be selecting a total of 20 images to give feedback to and will be giving two lucky entrants a free Fstoppers original tutorial. The first winner of the tutorial will be based on the highest average community rated image. The second winner will be chosen at random. 

Once you've submitted your pictures, we invite you to scroll through the rest of the submissions and rate your fellow community members' images. The easiest way to do this is to use your number and arrow keys on a keyboard. In addition to providing numerical ratings, feel free to leave encouraging comments when you notice an area where an image could be improved. 

  • Submission Deadline: Fri, 31 May 19 03:45:00 +0000

    This contest has ended.

  • Voting is closed.

  • 972 people have cast a total of 84,725 votes on 894 submissions from 598 contestants.
  • Congratulations to the winners!

    View Results

88 Comments
Previous comments

works like a charm :)

I actually expected mostly photos with cute puppies :) It is kinda interesting that it isn't the case here.

Yay maybe I will be the worst!

Fstoppers please create keyboard shortcuts so that we can rate the images by just pressing the number on the keyboard. It would speed up voting so much!

Edit: Nevermind It turns out it already does that :D
Edit 2: At least some of the time it works ^o)

It works already. And when it stops (for example you clicked around or commented), just exit the full screen mode, if enabled, then click in the comment field, and finally double click outside of the comment field.

I don't like so much pictures where just the eyes are in focus. IMHO for animals the nose should also be in focus. Moreover, if there is no human in the frame, there shouldn't be a floating leash

Oh lort these comments are a crack up. I derp'd a little and maybe could have selected better, but I thought we could do 3 because I was not paying attention. Hello. Oh well. #dogs

Dogs have masters, cats have servants.

True...so I wonder since 'dogs' were a thing, will 'cats' be next?

Hope not!

Here is a thought on the grading system. To grade something a 1 star you would be required to leave a comment. It would be forcing CC but would make people back up their rating. Then when you are rated below your personal expectation you will know why. Seems like it would curb some of the discontent over the rating system. In my oppinion the only reason to submit to these contests is to hear from photographers of differing viewpoints, not just my wife who will always say "how nice dear"

I really like the thought of a rating 2 or below having to leave feedback in a comment. Always better to grow than to stagnate. Great idea! Wink wink fstoppers....

Comments would be nice but currently there are 762 entries and it's safe bet that at least 25% of those 2 or below............that's a lot of commenting. Respectfully, those rated below 2 should comment on why they submitted their image....

Why would you assume what I did not say? Of course there are statistically going to be a certain amount of 1s, 2s, etc. I really doubt everyone is going to vote on 765+ photos and I highly recommend not doing that. You can analyze a photo in 3-5 seconds, think for 5-10, write a nice criticism in 10-15 and move on with life and get maybe 10-12 solid photos in a small amount of time and feel good knowing you helped rather than upset someone with a rating that sucks and matching lack there of commentary. You're just trying to stir a pot sir. Just because someone gives someone a 2 doesn't mean that photo is a 2 by Fstoppers "law".

Sorry if I hurt your feelings........and I'm not stirring anybody's pot. Again, respectfully submitted.

I'm with Daniel here.
Few people will rate all 765 photos. It's an active choice to award a picture a 1 or 2 rating.
Looking through the entries I've been quite shocked at the low marks awarded to some extremely powerful images.
Many of the most skilful and well-composed 'journalistic' images here have been rated as 'snapshots,' when clearly they're not.
So I think if you're going to make an active choice to single a photo out to be marked down, it's only right to say why.

I'm saying the same thing and I am being called a child and that my photos are rubbish but it's just hilarious that people go out of their way to rate decent photos super low.

I'm saying the same thing and I am being called a child and that my photos are rubbish but it's just hilarious that people go out of their way to rate decent photos super low.

I, too, have been critical of the rating system. It gives you three choices(3, 4 & 5) for a great image only two for the lesser images. As far as receiving bad ratings..........this had been a complaint amongst the Fstopper members since I joined and it's never going to stop, nor can we change peoples opinions or prejudices. Early on I tried to comment/critique on the images but found that they were #1 ignored, #2 too time consuming, #3 not even close to being a photograph or #4 I realized that the poster of the image has no idea that if I know what talking about.

Final point, my instructor many, many years ago passed this comment on to me. "I you can't accept rejection of your work, you have no business being a photographer"

Respectfully submitted.

Yeah there's just a lot of cellphone photographers on here giving out random ratings so it really doesn't mean anything.

Hello FStoppers Team! . . .while I was just editing some pictures of Florence / Italy, I had an idea for a new contest topic: Monuments (manmade).

I agree on not understanding the rating system. I am at 2.64 and I had a couple of nice comments but no real critical ones. Being at 2.64 means some subset of people rated 3 or higher but it also means than more than that rated it 2 or lower. I don't think it's the strongest image at all but I don't think it's terrible either. If I rated it myself I would rate a it 3 to 3.5 but what I'm really missing is comments from people that obviously thought there was something wrong with it but didn't say what. To be fair I rated pictures below 3 as well and didn't give critiques so I guess I'm reaping what I sow. I wish there was a forced comment on votes below a certain level or above a certain level as well.

Exactly...oh but when I say the same thing some idiot calls it a "meltdown" hahaha

Perhaps it's in how you say it. Paul's comment comes across as genuine and helpful, yours come across in a similar fashion to a child stomping its feet and throwing a fit.

Not sure, but is it 5:45 there yet? See submissions are closed? Thought it was like 2:45am there now?

I don't understand all the fuss about the rating system. You have to take into account that 5 stars is an absolute world class image ready for a national geographic print. So if you have 2.5 it means you are half way there and you did a terrific job. If you are shooting dogs as a hobby, or just a one-off, you should not expect to get anything higher than a 3 plain and simple. There are people who dedicate their lives to this, and those get the 4 and 5's. Just as in any genre, amazing photographs don't just happen, it's a life's work. Many years of training both photography and dog communication skills. Just because you caught your dog doing something amazing, doesn't mean it's a 5 star image for someone else, who doesn't know you, or your dog. Just my opinion.

The problem with rating system is that some of the people rate every image 1star, to have a better Chance of winning. I saw a lot of people with amazing pictures, that had the first 5 votes 4,5 stars and after a while, they were dropped to 3 stars and only after a day recovered to be above 4.
Overall i still think, that it's better, if the rating is harsh, because how much information we can get out of that. It's much better than like's on Instagram.

I'm new to the site, so I didn't know about that problem. But I wish to believe that most of the voting has been done honestly. I don't think downvoting every other image has much of an effect, being there are so many votes on each image.

Also, I think you'll have to take into account a percentage of haters with anything you do. Those with 5 star images will also have a-holes that rate it 1 star, so my guess is it equals itself out?

I completely agree that this is way better than instagram. I like how you are judged just by your picture, not by how many followers you have, or on how good you are at playing the "social media game".

I like it here :) Cheers!

There are alot of harsh comments about pictures on here. Its sad that people just cant simply give advice on how to make a picture better, give pointers, give encouraging feed back. This isnt about who is good or bad its about people just wanting to put a picture in a contest just to see what it will do. Im not the best photographer and i know my photos are not the best in the world but I just have fun doing them. Wanna criticize my work feel free, go to Instagram look up 6zero8photography and bash them all you want cause it wont change what i like doing.

Does anyone have a clue when the video is to be released I thought they were weekly but if anyone has any news it will stop be refreshing like crazy 😂😩

Let's do sports photos next

I'm positive there are way too many people in this community that have no idea when it comes to rating. Someone just rated a photo I have with a 1 star. I would accept 2. It's not anything special but I think it's solid and it does well with my other photos. But it's a portrait and you can clearly see a catch light in the eyes that was made using a soft box. It's obviously not a snapshot haha. It's mind blowing really.

That's what I've been trying to say but no wait! I am a "cry baby." If you want to rate an image 1 or 2 stars then justify that rating with a comment at least.

Yeah, I'd like to have the feed back if something I've put work into looks that bad haha. I do feel like this community puts a little too much into post processing. For my stuff I do very little retouching and what not. My photos are focused toward the extreme sports community. It's kind of a grungy in appearance community. If I made everything sparkling it would look very weird. My stuff needs to look real and the people I shoot are far from being paid models.

This community is still better than the salty online gaming community.
Imagine that on all the pictures some peeps would say: Uninstall Adobe please! :')

Delete your camera please.

ZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZzzzzzzsnork,snork,hmmmmmzzzzzzZZZZZZZZzzzzzzz...........

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.