Critique the Community
On-Location Flash Photography
Flash Us With Your Best Strobe Images
Congratulations to the winners!
Congrats to everyone who made the latest critique video and the winners. Please message Lee Morris directly to claim your prizes. We look forward to seeing everyone's submissions in the next Critique the Community!
Rules & Prizes
Welcome to the February Critique the Community! This month we are giving away an awesome Profoto Flash Kit, and so it is fitting that the theme is On-Location Flash. For this contest, we want to see your best images featuring flash photograph out on-location!
Rules
- Each photographer may submit up to three images.
- Every photo entered must feature artificial flash used out on location. Your image can be created with flash as the primarily light, it can be used as fill to help balance out the lighting, or it can be the only light source in the photograph. While we are not entirely discounting studio lit images from being "out on location," we really want to see scenes that utilize outdoor and unique interior locations. Photos taken on pure seamless backgrounds will most likely not make the final critique.
- 10 Images will be chosen by Lee and Patrick for the video critique.
- Finally, every image submitted MUST HAVE some written commentary on how the image was created, what flash, lens, camera, or light modifier you used, and some of the challenges that made the final image come together. Any photo with a single sentence description will not be included.
Prizes
First Place - One lucky winner will receive a Profoto A2 Connect Kit for the camera system of their choice. The Profoto A2 flash is a "Coke can" sized flash that not only gives packs a strong punch of light, but it also makes flash photography simple and lightweight. The A2 flash offers 100Ws of power with around 400 flash exposures per battery. The flash is triggered by the Profoto Connect and mounts to any of the Profoto Clic light modifier system. This prize is valued at $1095.
Second Place - The second place winner of this critique will receive a full copy of ACDSee's Photo Studio Ultimate 2026. This power photography editing suite gives photographers the ability to edit, cull, catalog, and retouch all of their images in one easy to use program. Packed with some of the latest Ai tools like Sky Replacement, Face Detect, Auto Selections, and Splotch Removal, Photo Studio Ultimate gives photographers state of the art editing tools that both save time and produce professional results. This prize is valued at $109.
Third Place - As always, our third place winner will receive their choice of any Fstoppers photography tutorial found in the Fstoppers Store. Our elaborate and exhaustive photography tutorials not only help photographers immediately start taking professional quality images, but most of our tutorials also share business and marketing techniques that can help make photography a full time income. With genres like Headshots, Landscapes, Architecture and Real Estate, Fashion, Macro, and Product Photography, there is something for every photographer no matter what genre you specialize in. This prize is valued at $299.
Good luck to everyone who enters and we look forward to seeing your best images using flash out on location!
Featured Image by: Steven Houle
Thu, 02/26/2026 - 23:30
This contest has ended.
126 people have cast a total of 3,912 votes on 195 entries from 96 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.
14 Comments
Are you referring to new photos added to the contest or new photos added to the community? I will look into it.
New photos added to the community. I have plenty of notifications that people I follow added new photos. But if I choose "Latest" in the photos feed it still says "Popular Images" and shows me like 1-2 photos a day. There are zero photos for same days even though I have like 5 notifications that person I followed added new photo.
It just seems that "Newest" does not work on community photo feed ...
Just following up about the tutorial I won I still haven’t heard back anything
I've asked it before, but what's the whole thing with voting if you completely ignore the stats?
My three submissions are the top three voted by the members and not even one of them is in the critique. Can someone explain?
I think the 4th was also not in the video ... Guess they both got bored with your Kingfisher photos. I have an impression that I've seen few of yours before. I guess I voted all of them 4/5 :D
Maybe there should be also additional reward for highest community score, but as you probably know there are notorious 1-givers.
I've asked the same question in the past. I seriously wonder how they see the art or impact in the photos they pick as winners.
My photo was in the running, which I was happy to see, but it didn't win the top 3 spots. It was the shot of the female officer at the beach. Yes, she was on duty, and yes, that was the sunset that night.
When I look at the winning shots, my biggest critique is the compositions and then the lighting. The 3rd place winner (in my opinion) cropped way too low. The "horizon" basically cuts across the middle of the frame, leaving a lot of dead space above the subject. This is usually considered a boring composition because it weighs down the image. I would imagine it would have looked way better as a horizontal with less background on top.
2ND place is just kind of... there. Tonal range is good, but there's nothing really dynamic or striking about it to keep my attention. Plus, the subject is basically the middle. A shift in perspective from a little more to the right would have let the fabric create leading lines.
With the 1st place winner, the subject is swallowed up by trees, snow, and a bright light. It's a good action shot, but the light IS the subject; not the skier.
I'm not saying my image should have won, but if you overlay a Fibunacci Spiral over the image, you see that both the officer and the truck fit within the golden ratio. That, historically, is what good composition, in my book, is all about and what I aim for when I frame up a shot.
Your images of the birds you took leave no doubt about what the subject is AND are so well exposed, I had to read the descriptions to see how artificial light was incorporated into them. That is both skill and talent, so I agree; your images should definitely have been considered as true contenders for the top prizes.
Thank you Ed for your comment and compliments, i only now just see your reply, haven't been on Fstoppers for a while because of this. Agree with your comments and love your portraits in the contest!
Does anyone know when you will receive your free tutorial…