Critique the Community
Drama
Enter Your Best Dramatic Photos
Congratulations to the winners!
Congrats to all our winners in last month's Critique the Community photo contest! You can watch the video above!
First Place: Congrats to Rio Nakayama who will receive a full Smoke Ninja Pro Trident system. These powerful battery operated smoke machines let you add haze, smoke, fog, and even bubble effects to any of your photo and video productions without the need for electricity. The built in remote control can be used to wirelessly trigger the Smoke Ninja Pro or you can even tether them together and fire multiple units as one single unit. The Trident Kit comes with 3 Smoke Ninja Pro units, bluetooth Haze Nossle, bubble nozzle, and remote control handle. This prize is valued at $799.
Second Place: Congrats to Oliver Tan who will receive an unlocked copy of Skylum's latest flagship photo editing program Luminar Neo. Luminar burst onto the photo editing scene back in 2016 and was praised by photographers who wanted to edit their photos quicker with simple slider and single button effects adjustments. In 2022 Skylum updated the software with Luminar Neo which added AI effects such as relighting, sky replacement, background removal, powerline removal, and atmospheric effects. So whether you are a photographer simply looking to edit your raw files or you want to begin adding different skies, changing the lighting, or developing a more robust color palate to your images, Luminar Neo is a the perfect editing tool. This prize is valued at $347
Third Place: Finally, congrats to Paal Lund who is our final third place winner will receive a free copy of any photography tutorial from the Fstoppers Store. This prize is valued at $299.
Rules & Prizes
For our next photography contest, we want to see your best dramatic photos ever taken! The theme is dramatic but the genre of photography can be anything. If you have a photo that you feel is a dramatic representation of a landscape, product shot, portrait, wedding, architectural shoot, or any other genre of photography, you are free to submit it to November's critique the community.
Rules
- This contest is 100% free to join
- Each photographer may submit up to 3 images
- Each photograph must include a small description that includes details about how the photograph was taken, what post processing was done to it, where it was taken, and anything else useful for us to discuss. Simply writing a single sentence that doesn't explain much of anything will disqualify you from being chosen!
Prizes
Fstoppers is excited to be giving away some amazing photography related gear for each of these critique the community contests. For November's "dramatic" critique we are giving away the following prizes:
First Place: One lucky winner will receive a full Smoke Ninja Pro Trident system. These powerful battery operated smoke machines let you add haze, smoke, fog, and even bubble effects to any of your photo and video productions without the need for electricity. The built in remote control can be used to wirelessly trigger the Smoke Ninja Pro or you can even tether them together and fire multiple units as one single unit. The Trident Kit comes with 3 Smoke Ninja Pro units, bluetooth Haze Nossle, bubble nozzle, and remote control handle. This prize is valued at $799.
Second Place: This month's second place winner will receive an unlocked copy of Skylum's latest flagship photo editing program Luminar Neo. Luminar burst onto the photo editing scene back in 2016 and was praised by photographers who wanted to edit their photos quicker with simple slider and single button effects adjustments. In 2022 Skylum updated the software with Luminar Neo which added AI effects such as relighting, sky replacement, background removal, powerline removal, and atmospheric effects. So whether you are a photographer simply looking to edit your raw files or you want to begin adding different skies, changing the lighting, or developing a more robust color palate to your images, Luminar Neo is a the perfect editing tool. This prize is valued at $347
Third Place: Our final third place winner will receive a free copy of any photography tutorial from the Fstoppers Store. This prize is valued at $299.
BONUS NOVEMBER FLASH SALE!
Each month we also offer our own special sales, and for the month of November we are marking down one of our best photography tutorials ever produced, The Hero Shot by Brian Rodgers Jr. For the next 30 days only, you can get this 13 hour long product photographer masterclass for just $100.
In this course, Brian teaches you everything you need to know to produce jaw dropping, highly polished looking product shots from start to finish. Regardless if you own fancy studio strobes or just have a couple of cheap LED lights, Brian shows you everything you need to craft dramatic and beautiful lighting on all sort of different products, surface materials, and mini product photography sets. He shows you all the settings, all the lighting and light modifier tips, introduces some of his favorite tools, outlines how to tether and shoot from a computer, tricks for exposure and focus bracketing, and using single items to make larger multi product display images. Once every frame is taken, Brian then takes you into Photoshop where all the magic happens. And to make following along super easy, Brian has included each high res file in this download so you can copy his workflow and achieve the same results real time.
We can't wait to see all your submissions to this contest and look forward to seeing your dramatic images!
Featured image taken by the incredible Win Mag
Fri, 11/29/2024 - 18:00
This contest has ended.
275 people have cast a total of 17,449 votes on 541 entries from 275 participants
Contest Submissions
Click on the thumbnails below to comment and rate each image.
Click here to learn about the Fstoppers rating system and what each star value means.
29 Comments
Yeah, fair enough. It's not an easy line to set, as it depends on the photo, I guess.. In my case, I thought the couple of things added, took too much attention from what was actually real in the photo, if that makes sense (I later did a new edit on that photo, but with no ai tho) But again, I guess it all depends, on the style and genre :)
What would you do with the first prize, mean any exciting project in mind where it could be used?
For me I'm off to Scotland and the highlands to do some hiking and landscape with a little street
Just visited the Scottish highlands a couple weeks back. Absolutely gorgeous....
That’s one opinion. The fact is the Scottish Highlands is in most parts a desert landscape ruined by landowners who persecute the wildlife within an inch of its life. It’s actually one of the poorest areas for wildlife and natural habitat in the world and that’s a testament to how badly managed it has been. There are a number of projects trying to turn this around but there is a long way to go. I’ve lived in Scotland for over 70 years and have witnessed its decline as a place for wildlife. It’s been an ongoing crime against nature and the natural world . This is not just my opinion but a fact.
https://www.kenilgunas.com/post/the-scottish-desert
This is very sad to hear. I am from California (true desert) and only got to spend a few days in Scotland. Hope the projects work. Still was one of the most beautiful places I've been. And the people I met were great too.
Most will likely make more fake photos seems to be what photography is all about now days.
I think there is place for every type of photography, though in some occasions photography is really secondary for the final result, a mere tool; should that be considered still photography or just digital art? As others point out in other comments, it's hard to draw a line for it.
It’s not just AI that’s the problem but images such as the guy in the boat on the lake surrounded by mountains at the top of the article. If that’s not a total managed setup with a whole bunch of photographers paying to take the same brainless shot then I’ll eat my 200-600.
Standing where you are told and not having anything to do with the actual setup and handing over cash for the shot is worse than AI in my opinion. It’s widespread, pretty disheartening and it’s not real photography.
If this was a photojournalism contest, I might agree with you. This is just a photo contest, though.
That image of the man on the boat might be an environmental portrait. Or, it might be a lucky Human Condition shot that was perfectly timed and exposed. What difference does it make if it's a good photo of an actual person and setting?
In my opinion, AI generated images and heavily Photoshopped images that include elements that weren't originally photographed by the person submitting the piece should fall under the category of either graphic art or digital art.
The skill and art of photography should involve mastering the tools used to create a winning photograph. Namely, the camera and the darkroom and/or computer used to adjust elements within the image (color, tone, etc.).
Someone using AI to help them create a good image and calling himself a photographer is like someone using a 3D printer to create a statue and calling himself a sculptor. Skill and an artistic eye are still involved in a mechanically generated work of art, so we can still give credit where credit is due and appreciate visually stunning images, but there's a difference between a photographer and a graphic artist.
Even if the photo above was a set up shot, a dozen photographers would process it a dozen different ways. I go to photo meet ups several times a year, where you'll get 4-5 photographers shooting the same model getting similar shots, but they all look different since we all have different post processing styles.
I'm also fine with using AI tools to help clean up, or enhance an image. Its not like dodge and burn weren't used in the darkroom originally to enhance images, this is just an evolution of that.
The theme is drama... but the most submissions are not drama, in my humble opinion. Some are good, but still not drama. What points do you give if the photo is good, but has no connection with the theme (in your opinion)?
I guess a second 5-star rating option of "hitting the theme in my opinion" would do this justice in the best way. But yes, I miss drama in a lot of the submissions, too.
Yeah, true true. Good one. Why I didn't think about that Hahaha. I'm in a curator group for exhibitions and use that also. We give points for Artistic quality and relevance.
I understand your question. The same popped up for me. Missing the target - would mean 1* or no rating. Better: not qualified for the contest. Just not to destroy good photos. Cost effort to filter out at the beginning.
Themes are usually vague in these contests. It allows room for creative interpretation. The word drama or dramatic rely heavily on context. It's fun to see everyone's take. I can see that your photos, in my opinion, hit that theatrical/story telling type drama. But someone else might go for an unscripted approach, catching something a bit unexpected that evokes emotion, even if it only evokes the emotion of the photographer that captured it.
I tend not to rate those photos. As someone said, they may be very good photos, so rating them one star may give the wrong impresion.
Drama is really open to interpretation, but I agree that some photos there aren't any drama. Honestly, ratings really don't matter. I won 2nd place a few months ago with a rating of 2.8 and none of my images aren't rated highly this time around either.
Even though voting is closed you can still leave a comment, I'd and other contestants would appreciate it :)
What is delaying the announcement of the winners?
It's been available for several hours on youtube and listed under latest tab here.
They don't have the Results tab up yet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1DO8jLm4mE
You jump to timestamp 53:00 for the winners.