Summer time is here which means it's time to see your best outdoor images! For our June contest, we want to see your best images taken outside, and the winner will be rewarded handsomely.
With school now out and everyone itching to get those summer trips planned, we thought it would be great to open up this month's critique the community to any image taken outdoors. This theme is up to your interpretation but in a perfect world your image would be outside, or look to be outside, and should definitely incorporate nature or a busy city scene in some way. Although the featured image is an eye catching image of a dog, your subject could be anything from a friend, your family, a professional model, or just a beautiful landscape. Each community member can submit up to 3 images for this contest.
Rules
- All images must be submitted from now until June 30th at 2am Eastern Time.
- Every image submitted must include a short story on how you took the photo, what were the challenges, how you used natural or artificial lighting, what gear you used, and any other interesting insight on the image itself. Photos that do not include some backstory on how it was taken will not be picked to be featured in the Critique the Community episode.
- Each image needs to incorporate something related to the Outdoors. This is a subjective theme but do if an image does not appear to fit the outdoor concept, it will not be picked.
1st Place Prize: Godox AD600 Pro II
We are happy to have Godox sponsoring this month's contest. With the recent release of the brand new AD600 Pro II, this powerful 600ws strobe is the perfect companion for adding beautiful light to any photograph. This new update to one of the industry's most loved studio strobes offers a greater power range from 1/1 down to 1/512 power, an improved bi color LED modeling lamp, and even faster flash durations for freezing fast moving elements in your photos. (Prize Value $899)
Recently Lee Morris of Fstoppers reviewed the top studio strobes for photographers and the AD600 Pro II ranked as one of his favorite strobes on the market today.
2nd Place Prize: ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 2025
The second place winner will receive a lifetime license of ACDSee's flagship photo editing and organizing software Photo Studio Ultimate 2025. This software doesn't just let you edit your raw files but you can also do some really exciting editing and organizing using AI and advanced masks. If you've wanted to break away from the grips of Adobe's subscription model, ACDSee's Photo Studio Ultimate is a great way to get the most out of your photos without the extra monthly fees. (Prize Value $149)
3rd Place Prize: Photography Tutorial from Fstoppers
As always, the third place winner of this critique the community contest will win a full photography tutorial from the Fstoppers Store (Prize value $300)
Good luck to everyone who enters and we look forward to seeing the best outdoor photos from the Fstoppers Community!
Featured Image by the talented Chris Van Riel
Ive been on here for a short while and my thoughts on these contests. The contest comments seem to start at about the middle of the contest, usually from a newcomer with a quality image getting low marks. Then it starts. I apologize in advance for being very analytical about this, but its not a hobby for me. I also noticed that everyone seems to be afraid to join the contest at the beginning. Maybe the photogs with seniority know that the images in the beginning get mostly 1s and 2s. If you wait later to submit, it seems to be more neutral and images start getting more 3s,4s and even 5s. That tells me that at the end of the contest people with no skin in the game start to vote.
They should have a place on here with photography workshops in different places around cities and countries. A good workshop can teach you a ton in just one hour.
For you younger peeps, why do colleges still charge over $100.000 for a photography degree? Is it worth the money? If so, please tell us what they teach these days.
I'm not one of the younger people here, but with the price of college, the access to information, and the low barrier of entry for photography, I don't see why anyone would pay for a photography degree. I've had people ask on FB groups about it and I always recommended getting a business degree and if they were set on getting some form of photography degree, minoring in photography.
in general I have a bit of faith in the crowd, in that, if it's getting low marks, there's a reason for it. Sometimes I don't even know what that is. It is true, that 'raters' may need to review what a '1' truly is supposed to be, and not that they just think it's yucky, but I have given '1s' when it doesn't seem to fit the contest category too. I'm not sure I agree with you so much about, whether it matters when a photo comes into the contest. The most divisive contest was the 'portrait' contest, and there will not be another like it until they do again next year. I think that is because some are so set in their ways on what makes for a 'good portrait', and everything else for some is a '1'.