Critique the Community

Macro Photography

Submit your best macro photo for your chance to win a free Fstoppers tutorial
  • Submission Deadline: Thu, 12 Jul 18 03:45:00 +0000

    This contest has ended.

  • Voting is closed.

  • Congratulations to the winners!

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This week's Critique on macro photography ended up having some of the highest rated images we've ever had. There were some incredible photos to choose from. 

Congratulations to Andres Moline for submitting the highest community rated image and to  Richard Cederfjärd for being the randomly chosen entrant to win a free Fstoppers original tutorial. We will be in touch with both of you through your Fstoppers profile to claim your prize. 

If you didn't get a chance to upload your photo to the last episode, join us by submitting your images to the next Critique. We have chosen a very broad theme of "water" so any image that can be associated with the topic is eligible. 

  • Submission Deadline: Thu, 12 Jul 18 03:45:00 +0000

    This contest has ended.

  • 411 people have cast a total of 26,830 votes on 489 submissions from 256 contestants.
  • Congratulations to the winners!

    View Results

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14 Comments

Thanks for the slaughter, really cracked me up when Lee started wondering if it could be the eyeballs of a fly ;)

I really love the feather one and the ice ball, some great shots this time.

Ha, nice guess on the frog being in a zoo Lee! The "wood" frog was shot in a studio type style and the black is the falloff from the flash. So Patrick was right this time!
The frog is a borneo eared frog. and it is a pet indeed.

Yeah Lee was like "I've never seen such frog". Well that's exactly this little wood-looking-frog's point, isn't it 😄

There is much I would like to write but I don't have so much time. :)
So to wrap up, I think there is one big lesson from this episode. I think You should never critique genre which You never seriously tried for Yourself and know nothing about.
If Lee says that he does not even know what is considered to be a macro shot and still he is trying to be smart about what he thinks was done in the photos and especially what he thinks is impossible and must have been fake or dead or whatever, then I don't know how to treat this seriously. :)
There were many fantastic shots in this critique but essentially I think it was one of the worst episodes I've watched, if not the worst.
My feelings are so bad that even though I have a lot of respect for You guys and I love what You are doing, I think You should consider making a rerun of this critique. ;)
But this time You should leave it to someone who knows something about the genre. Someone who would be able to appreciate those great works and critique them correctly. :)

Piotr, I agree with your sentiments. The work these guys do and fstoppers as a whole is great. I read it daily and have learned a bunch. However, these weren't the guys to critique macro photos. The lack of knowledge about the subjects of the photos completely swayed judgement.

That said, I look forward to the next critique.

Its important to remember that the vast majority of film critics don't make films. A solid citique does not require knowledge of how what is being critiqued is made. In fact, the "how" is largely irrelevant compared to the end result.

Imo, we often overemphasize the process. The question should be: "Is this a great image, why or why not" That's it.

Hey guys, I took the bubble shot, shown at 25:33. I took it 4 years ago and I cringe at some of its drawbacks, but overall a great success for being an unplanned moment.

Copy/Paste from my profile:
I was taking photo of my nephew blowing bubbles, and a bubble landed perfectly on this leaf. I didn't know about the reflection until later on my computer. Bonus!

The swirls are real, the house is real, the colours are real (boosted, however). Yeah you can see me and my Nikon in the shot, and my optically deformed nephew at the bottom right.

50mm - ƒ/2.8 - 1/800s - ISO 100

😃 Thank you guys and the fstoppers community!!! The spider is a Phidippus jumper about 12mm in size, the spider is alive. The image is a hand held stack using twin flash with an external battery and the camera in burst mode, the picture was taken at night, (makes it easier as jumpers have poor eyesight at night and most jumper spiders are diurnal so at night they dont move as much)
in this video my friend Michael Doe demonstrates the technique https://youtu.be/VY372kdwQnc

omg hand held stack

Wow, unbelievable!

Amazing technique. Thanks for sharing.

This is the first time I take the macro photography competition, really thanks a lot to the supporters and the admin. I learn from this video.

In case of the spider, to my understanding you can freeze the spider in the freezer and it would hibernate. The next day you can take the photo while it's still warming up and it's not moving. You can focus stack too. But then when spider is warmer, it will come back to live and can move away.

There is no need to freeze the spider, they can die if you freeze them., as it was shown in my friends video, with the right set up you can get the image. I photo stack many arthropods in the wild with out having to manipulate them, like all other animals, arthropods sleep too, that's the best opportunity to photograph them

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