For our next photography contest, we want to see the best Landscape photos you have ever taken!
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
Prizes
Fstoppers is excited to be giving away some amazing photography related gear for each of these critique the community contests. For October's Landscape Photography critique we are giving away the following prizes:
First Place: One lucky winner will receive Tamron's brand new 28 - 300mm F/4 - 7.1 Di III VC VXD all in one travel lens for Sony. This full frame lens has an insane focal range that will allow you to capture both wide angle shots as well as details far off in the distance. Weighing in at just 21.5 ounces and measuring only 5 inches long, this is the perfect landscape lens for the photographer looking to travel light but unrestricted. This prize is valued at $900.
Second Place: This month's second place winner will receive a free copy of Acdsee's brand new flagship photo editing suite Photo Studio Ultimate 2025. Acdsee has become one of the top raw editing software for those who want to break away from the perpetual subscription model other companies offer. Photo Studio Ultimate 2025 is a substantial upgrade with a brand-new Ai-Super Resolution upscaler, new non-destructive Ai selection masking, and GPU processing that makes batching files faster than ever. Whether you're looking for a great alternative to Lightroom or you just want a single piece of software for all your photo cataloging and raw editing needs, Acdsee's Photo Studio Ultimate 2025 is the latest version of this highly acclaimed software. This prize is valued at $150
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.
Each month we also offer our own special sales, and for the month of October, we have three unique deals for the Fstoppers community.
This Month's Best Deal
Fstoppers and 5 Day Deal have teamed up again for the biggest and best photography deal of the entire year! For the next few days, 5 Day Deal is offering their annual photography bundle worth over $3000 and you can buy it for just $166. This year Fstoppers is offering our Photographing the World II - Cityscape, Astrophotography and Advanced Post-Processing tutorial in the Complete Charity Bundle. We normally sell this landscape tutorial by Elia Locardi for $300 but for just $166 you can get this tutorial along with dozens of other photography products all together in the Charity Bundle. Sometimes the sales page for 5 Day Deal can be a bit confusing, but if you want the most bang for your buck as well as Photographing the World II, scroll down to the bottom and find the Charity Bundle.
You can watch the promo video for Photographing the World II above and also use this link to check out every tutorial, plugin, preset, and digital asset included in this year's 5 Day Deal.
This year's 5 Day Deal ends March 11th so make sure you grab this before the deal expires!
Second Fstoppers Deal
On October 1st, Fstoppers released our newest travel adventure series with Elia Locardi, Photographing the World Japan 2: Discovering Hidden Gems. This tutorial follows Elia throughout Japan as he searches for new locations he has never photographed and includes some amazing locations many photographers might miss if they were to visit the land of the rising sun for the first time.
If you buy PTW Japan 2, you will automatically get a second Photographing the World tutorial absolutely free ($300 value). To sweeten the deal even more, Elia is offering a free copy of Radiant Photo for 6 full months ($90 value). Elia has partnered with Radiant Photo to produce the ultimate editing software to help him streamline his complex landscape workflow and make it simple for anyone to replicate his colors, tone, and overall style quickly and easily
Third Fstoppers Deal
If you already have Photographing the World II or the 5 Day Deal package is more than you want to spend, to promote this month's Landscape Photography Critique the Community, we are running a flash sale on yet another installment of Elia Locardi's landscape educational series, Photographing the World III: Advanced Cityscapes. For the month of October, you can get PTW III for just $100. This tutorial is normally $300 and it's one of the most advanced tutorials Elia has ever produced on cityscape photography. You can check out the promo video for Photographing the World III below.
Good luck to everyone who enters this month's contest and we look forward to seeing all of your amazing images!
Featured image by Shumon Saito
Is the abstract landscape style allowed and does it fit the current theme?
To me landscape is horizontal ... portrait is vertical :0
A landscape photograph, one of a scene of nature, can be vertical or landscape orientation. I actually like the way a vertically composed landscape image looks on a wall. They are often less commonly taken that way too unfortunately.
Not sure what this means exactly but if it's a photo of a natural piece of land, you can submit it. I actually prefer more abstract images over fantasy style landscapes.
Interested to know everyones opinion on how different generations view photography.
I find that the older generation say 35+, prefer a more clinical style of photography particularly with landscapes. The focus is on sharp photos corner to corner which are judged on how good they would look printed as well as on a screen.
I find with my generation (I'm 22) we prefer more stylised work, particularly a vintage or film look, with halation and you know the rest. Im fairly sure a lot of people may view this as gimmicky but I much prefer more stylised work. I'm not particularly into the traditional style of landscape photography.
That being said I will submit some images but I'm fairly sure this community may not like them. Interested to know others opinions on this topic.
In terms of landscapes, for me, it needs to look clean and interesting. The interesting part is most definitely subjective. However, the looks clean part of it is mandatory. I have no interest in blurry/soft or overly grainy and boring images.
--- "I find with my generation (I'm 22) we prefer more stylised work, particularly a vintage or film look"
I highly doubt you can speak for your generation. Maybe people you follow and those who follow you. Even that's a big maybe.
--- "Im fairly sure a lot of people may view this as gimmicky"
Yes, that is true. :) I see people misconstrue what vintage / film look is. They think it's all dingy, dark, detail less, overly grainy, and soft/unsharp.
Below are just a random small sample of some pretty old film photos. I'll bet it's not what you pictured as vintage/film look.
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54053808704_6bcfb18921_o.jpg
Sometimes I feel like when the younger generations say they want worse looking photos for that vintage aesthetic, they really do mean worse looking images. That flickr link has some amazing looking vintage photos, but like you said, I bet that's not what they mean.
Are you saying I should have saved my first 10,000 images? Was Henri Cartier-Bresson on to something?
I definitely get what you mean and think you make some great points!
For me personally I don't like photos that look too much like real life, I take big inspiration from movies which often have their own grade to create a certain mood or theme. I like when photos almost allow you to 'escape' reality and be brought into the photographers world.
Obviously film is the easiest example as it captures images with its own character rather than digital cameras which provide a very true to life look to images straight out of camera.
I work professionally as a wedding and event photographer so I'd like to develop personal work that is separate to that as is stylised in a completely different way, with good quality photos that also have their own style.
Appreciate the convo!
I doubt that age is much of an indicator of how one perceives what is good or bad photography. I have friends my age who love wildly abstract and conceptual images, and others who make much more conservative true-to-life images. I've always thought photography was special because of its capacity to unite people of different languages, race, culture and, yes, age too.
How do you delete a photo if you uploaded it twice by accident?
Click on your photo then click the 3 dots in top right corner.
Thank you, I did that before and I didn't notice that it asks you if you are sure you want to delete the photo.
Can I leave my little signatures on the bottom or do they need to be removed? Thank you for having a free competition. I think it's a great initiative even though my work is really good. I never enter competitions that are paid. I do not trust them whatsoever. they are just money making racketeers to be honest so if this is 100% free I'm gladly happy to enter.
Me, personally, I hate watermarks. They are very distracting and they look like litter on the image. And, they either make you look narcissistic or overly paranoid someone might steal your images.
I get where you're coming from. I did remove them but mine is very small anyway and nothing like narcissistic or anything like that. I actually do it for a very simple reason is that it reminds me that I've saved it and I know that sounds silly but then I know I've saved it to the file that I want to saved it because it's got the signature on it. It's a simple process that works for me but I get where you're coming from no problems.
Can we try a snapshot contest next ? If it gets voted with a 3 star or above its disqualified as its obviously not a snapshot or can you actually have a 3 star photo or above voted as 1 star or two making that amazing shot in the wrong genre if snap shot is an actual style ? Just thinking the haters would be so confused.
Isn't 1-⭐ considered First Place?
Sounds like a form of reverse psychology for people having trouble coping with reality, "I meant to do that! I wanted a 1-Star".
James, I agree and do recognize “Snapshot” as a legitimate genre of photography. However I cannot recall the last time I ever made one other than for personal use or as a reference shot. That is until my first CTC/“Most Unique Photo” and 85 community member rated an image (Badwater Pool Death Valley, California) of mine as a “snapshot”, proving me wrong.
However from a comment either Lee or Patrick made recently on a similar type contest category suggestion due to low participant numbers.
Or what if Lee and Patrick selected the best of the lowest rated images or are least a 50/50 split between lowest and highest ratings ?
I’ve been thinking for a while what if a CTC/contest was for nominations of fellow members photos or even fellow members portfolios through nominations.
A snapshot can be a 3, 4 or even 5 stars, if you are on the right place, right time and only a phone, and take the photo! The combination of those elements with at least a photographic and composition knowledge can create a stunning photo. But usually the subject on the photo is so incredible that most people would not even think it was just a snapshot! Of course... Most of the snapshots (per the rule in here) are actually the quality you would assume a snapshot to be!
What are the recommended export Jpeg settings to upload pictures in Fstoppers? Whatever I do, the result looks blurry while the pictures are tack sharp before import on my computer...
- File format (Jpeg, Tiff...)
- resolution (it seems it has no effect, whatever the initial resolution it's aleays blurry the same at the end)
- compression
- ?
I just checked your images attached under your comment. They are tack sharp on my proffesional 4k screen..
All of your images are sharp. That also includes the ones in your profile. If they look blurry to you, it's possible you probably have your browser page zoomed in so the images are larger to fill the screen. The problem with that is you are stretching the images so they will look soft. Try resetting your browser to default zoom by Ctrl or Cmd + 0. Yes, the images may be small on a 4K+ screen. That's just the way it is on this site. The images uploaded are resized to have a max of 1200px vertical or 1500px horizontal.
Sometimes I see pictures that look a little blurry in the preview screen, but once you open them, they look quite sharp. Maybe the resizing of the image for the preview page is the cause?