Critique the Community

Moody Lighting

Welcome to another Critique the Community contest! Each month, Fstoppers is challenging our community to submit their best photographs for our Critique the Community show, and three lucky winners will win a variety of photography related prizes.  

For the months of June and July, we want to see your best "moody lighting" images.  Your photos can be from any genre of photography including landscapes, portraits, architecture, or still life but it must portray a moody, smokey, mysterious, or fantasy lighting style . Each image featured in the critique will be picked based on creativity, lighting, subject matter, overall production, final edit, and overall "wow" factor. The community rating does play a small part in our selection but it's not as big as you might think so don't get too wrapped up in what others have to say about your image. 

Deadline

This month we are allowing each participant to submit up to 4 photos.  All images must be posted to this page no later than July 29th, at 11:45pm Eastern time.  

As always, every eligible entry must have at least 3 sentences explaining how the photo was taken, any valuable technical information including lighting, camera gear, lens choice, etc, and any background story that might help our viewers understand why your image is so interesting.  

The Prizes

Each month we are giving away a variety of different photography related prizes. Below are the prizes being offered for the 3 randomly chosen images featured in the next Critique the Community. 

First Place - One first place winner will receive $1000 cold, hard cash from Patrick and Lee.  Feel free to use this on your next camera or lighting purchase, or just use it buy Bitcoin, a pallet of fancy steaks, or a nice gift for your next door neighbor.

Second Place - Second place will win a Smoke Genie by PMI.  The Smoke Genie is an incredibly powerful, battery operated smoke machine that makes adding fog, haze and dry ice to your images a breeze. This powerful kit will allow you to add all sorts of smoke effects to both your photography and video productions and is one of our favorite new products in the photography industry. Valued at $690.

Third Place - One third place winner will receive a free tutorial from the Fstoppers Store.  We have full length tutorials on a wide range of genres such as architectural photography, headshots, landscapes, product photography, and of course portrait photography.  Valued at $299

Added Bonus!

And finally, to help celebrate the month of July, Fstoppers is having a massive sale on The Well Rounded Photographer. It's normally priced at $300 but for the entire month you can get it for just $59.

This 13+ hour long tutorial is unlike any other tutorial created because it features 8 different photographers and covers a wide range of photographic genres.  For many photographers just getting started, it's not always clear what field of photography they want to pursue. This tutorial allows you to get a taste of a bunch of different photographic styles in different genres like headshots, architectural and real estate, swimwear, product photography, fashion and editorial, and landscapes. Each of these lessons are taught by some of our most popular instructors we have worked with like Peter Hurley, Mike Kelley, Elia Locardi, Clay Cook, Joey Wright, Dylan Patrick, and Brian Rodgers Jr.

Once you learn some of the tricks these photographer use to make amazing images, photographer Monte Isom shares some of the most tightly guarded business secrets in the photography world. In this section, Monte interviews Liz Miller Gershfeld, a senior executive art producer at Energy BDDO based in Chicago about what she looks for when booking a photographer, comparing bids, looking over treatments, working out production costs, and pulling a team together.

Even if you are already an established photographer specializing in your own field of photography, this tutorial was designed to offer you the chance to see how other photographers work and hopefully teach you some techniques that you can then bring into your own style of image making.

Good luck to everyone entering and we look forward to critiquing your best "moody" images!

Featured Image by John Rowland