Critique the Community

Natural Light Architecture

With Mike Kelley
Show Us Your Best Natural Light Architecture Photographs
  • Submission Deadline: Sat, 12 Sep 20 06:00:00 +0000

    This contest has ended.

  • Voting is closed.

  • Congratulations to the winners!

    View Results

World-renowned architectural photographer Mike Kelley, made light painting buildings mainstream but sometimes, natural light is the best choice. For this next critique, we want to see shots that were taken without any additional strobe light.

Heavy retouching/Photoshop is allowed in this critique, but we want to know how you captured the shot. Is the image basically straight out of the camera or did you blend 5 different exposures together in post? Maybe you blended time together by compositing images together taken over the course of minutes or hours. Make sure you explain how the image was achieved in the description box of each upload. 

Mike Kelley will be a guest judge for this critique and unlike past critiques, the highest-rated image WILL NOT win a free tutorial this time around. Instead, Mike will be able to give out two free tutorials to images that he really likes. 

Each photographer can upload a maximum of three images, and images without descriptions will be disqualified. 

  • Submission Deadline: Sat, 12 Sep 20 06:00:00 +0000

    This contest has ended.

  • Voting is closed.

  • 188 people have cast a total of 11,980 votes on 323 submissions from 154 contestants.
  • Congratulations to the winners!

    View Results

20 Comments

The image above looks like a 3D render.

Are interior shots that are normally lit with artificial light (say a church or subway station) allowed? The rules mention no strobes, but I take that to mean no intentional addition of artificial lights...thoughts?

Lights built into the structure are fine, I just don't want the photographer adding their own lights into the shot.

Some cracking shots here already, i would have zero idea how to start rating them though,

4 minuets after posting and have already got a 1 star rating on my submission for an image which is obviously not a snap shot.

Someone rated a portfolio-image of mine with 2 stars. A shot awarded with a nomination at the International Color Awards.

Some people really don't know how to rate images properly.

Steven, you’re being overly generous / gracious suggesting the issue lies in knowing how to rate an image. The value to be gained is to build a community of peers who you respect and trust and rely solely on them for constructive criticism. The balance you can chalk up to lacking personal integrity and as Stuart suggested <paraphrasing> ignore.

First of all, who cares? Congrats on the award. Second, looks like a 2 star image to me. Too much post work done as far as vignette, contrast and lighting. Notice how the lighting on the structure gets brighter/whiter on the shadow side. This is not how light works. Also when comparing to grid, the crop seems off. I think a stronger comp would have been to center the structure. Twilight would have been better too.

Its just how it is, dont let it bother you.

Hi!
It is always pleasure to follow any article or contest related to architectural photography and to participate.

Even more if Lee and Mike are involved!

Guys, are you preparing some tutorials for natural light shooting? Or maybe even better, we are missing some yours competitions like Amateur vs. Pro? :)

Regards!

The thing that’s interesting about rating architecture photos is a lot of it comes down to the subject. If you take a great image that really helps you understand the space, that’s well composed with great lighting but perhaps it does not fit the viewers taste in architecture, does it loose its value? I guess perhaps it’s like a headshot portfolio of random people vs one filled with celebrities. So to me I guess the answer is yes.

It seems like there are a lot of shot's whose prominent source of light is not natural, but artificial. Unless you count interior lights as "natural"

Lee Morris answered that in a comment above two days ago.

does anybody know when the live will be held ?
Many thanks,

The suspense...

Is there a fixed day/time when the live is usually held?

I have no idea ;(

Sorry, we were working on a big project. Comes out tomorrrow.

Darn...I missed this. Nice shots everyone!

Contest Submissions

Click on the thumbnails below to comment and vote on each image.

Click here to learn about the Fstoppers rating system and what each star value means.