Congratulations to the winners!

Selected Contest Winner
Aerial view of a large curved marina with boat slips arranged in a horseshoe pattern surrounded by turquoise water
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2.3
Critique the Community: Random Winner
Yellow and white sphere with black spatter and organic markings against dark background
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3.2
Critique the Community: Random Winner
Runner's legs splashing through shallow ocean water in bright sunlight
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2.8

Last month we ran an interesting Critique the Community where we asked you for your best Personal Project photographs. The submissions were incredible and we were even graced with Mike Kelley as a special Critique the Community guest. 

Congratulations to the winners of our Passion Project contest! Gellert Kovacs takes first place with an aerial series documenting the harbors of Lake Balaton, David Dennis takes second with the soap-bubble "tiny worlds," and Taylor MacDonald takes third with underwater portraits shot from just beneath the waterline. Each winner gets a free tutorial, now added straight to your Fstoppers store account as credit.

Thank you to everyone who shared a personal project with us this month, and a special thank-you to architecture photographer Mike Kelley for joining us on the critique. For October, Mike's tutorial Where Art Meets Architecture 4: How to Photograph Luxury Architecture and Real Estate is on sale for $99.99, down from $299.99.

Our next contest is already open. The theme is Scary, and it doesn't have to mean Halloween. It can be anything you were scared to shoot, or an image that gives you an eerie feeling looking back on it. Head to fstoppers.com/contests to submit up to three images. It's free to enter.

Rules & Prizes

Welcome to the September installment of the Critique the Community! This month's critique theme is going to be "Passion Project," and we want to see your best photographs that come from a personal project. These should be something you shot for yourself rather than for a client, an assignment, or a paycheck.

We actually ran a similar Personal Project critique back in July 2022, and with so many of you shooting new bodies of work since then, we wanted to open it back up. A passion or personal project can be anything you've pursued purely because you wanted to make it: a long-term series, a single image you finally got around to shooting, or something you started just to keep your skills sharp between paid jobs.

This month's theme, "Passion Project," is intentionally broad and open to any genre, so don't feel limited by what you normally shoot professionally. Feel free to enter your best landscape, headshot, portrait, wedding, product photography, or documentary image so long as it came out of a personal project rather than client work. There are basically no rules on what the image can feature as long as it was something you pursued on your own.

Rules

  1. Each photographer may submit up to three images.
  2. This month's contest features a pretty broad theme, therefore any type of photograph is acceptable. However, the image must come from a personal project you initiated yourself, not a paid client assignment.
  3. 10 Images will be chosen by Lee and Patrick for the video critique.
  4. Finally, every image submitted MUST HAVE some written commentary on how the image was created, what gear was used, what challenges you faced, and why you started the project in the first place. Any photo with a single sentence description will not be included.

Prizes

Top 3 Images - The top 3 submissions will receive their choice of any Fstoppers photography tutorial found in the Fstoppers Store.

Grid of photography course and tutorial thumbnail covers featuring portraits, macro, fashion, and post-processing content.

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 "Personal Project" photographs!

Cover image by Justin Manders.

Wed, 09/30/2026 - 23:21

This contest has ended.

72 people have cast a total of 2,242 votes on 142 entries from 63 participants

19 Comments

User picture for Kyle Foreman
Kyle Foreman September 10, 2026 - 1:40 pm

Question. Should we post a file that has several photos from the project in it? Like a photoshop file with several photos in it. Or should we just post the images individually? If we posted a file that had 3 separate images in it would that count for our 3 entries? I have several projects I've done that I would consider submitting. Just want to know the best way to go about this.

Thanks!

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User picture for Edward Wayne
Edward Wayne September 20, 2026 - 2:20 pm
Kyle Foreman [Edited]

I think of a "project" as being a collection of related images, and a triptych as one image separated into three pieces.

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User picture for Justin Manders
Justin Manders September 12, 2026 - 9:11 am

My project now is taking my entire Canon R6 camera apart just to tighten the screws of the
hotshoe.

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