Critique the Community
Shallow Depth of Field / Bokeh
Submit Your Best Bokeh Images
Congratulations to the winners!
Last month's bokeh themed Critique the Community was a huge success! The entries were really beautiful, and the winning images are absolutely stunning!
For this specific contest, first place wins lenses from Lensbaby and second and third take home a free tutorial of their choice. Congratulations to everyone who made the episode and to all the other amazing images that simply weren't chosen. If you want to participate in the next critique, stay tuned to Fstoppers.com/Contest and good luck to everyone who enters!
Rules & Prizes
Welcome to a new Critique The Community! October is here which for many conjures up memories of football, autumn leaves, and of course Halloween. But for this month we want to focus on shallow depth of field and that obsession photographers have with Bokeh.
Bokeh is simply that cool aesthetic you get when parts of your image go out of focus. This can be achieved with wide open apertures like f/2.8 or f/1.4 or it can be forced by shooting with longer telephoto lenses and focusing on a closer subject. No matter how it is achieved, everyone loves a nice creamy bokeh effect on their images.
For the entire month, we want to see your best images taken with super shallow depth of field and interesting use of bokeh. It can be subtle or it can be over the top; we just want high quality images that use a shallow depth of field in some interesting way.
This contest is open to any genre of photography including landscapes, portraiture, weddings, still life, portraiture, conceptual photography, and any style that showcases super out of focus bokeh effects. Each community member can submit up to 3 images for this contest.
Rules
- All images must be submitted from now until October 30t at 11:45 PM Eastern Time.
- Every image submitted must include a short story on how you took the photo, what were the challenges, how you used natural or artificial lighting, what gear you used, and any other interesting insight on the image itself. Since this critique is focused on bokeh, you probably need to explain the lens you used as well. Photos that do not include some backstory on how it was taken will not be picked to be featured in the Critique the Community episode.
- Each image must show some form of bokeh or out of focus effect in the image.
PRIZES
This month's contest is sponsored by Lensbaby. Lensbaby first made their splash in the photography community decades ago with their affordable Lensbaby Original which allowed photographers to replicate a tilt shift type of effect by adjusting the focus plane of the lens. Nearly 20 years later, the company has expanded to now offering nearly a dozen lenses aimed at producing unique and specific effects.
For this contest, Lensbaby is giving away two of their most popular prime lenses, the Velvet 28 ($549.95) and the Composer Pro II w/ Edge 35 ($449.95). The Velvet 28 lens offers a creamy, dreamy effect when shot wide open and can also focus extremely close for near macro quality shots. The Composer Pro II + Edge 35 allows photographers to achieve that tilt shift lens look that Lensbaby has been famous for all these years. With nearly twice the tilt angle of traditional tilt shift lenses, the Composer Pro II will allow you to create wildly shallow depth of field images you simply cannot create with normal lenses.
Both of these lense are available in a variety of camera mounts and the winner will be able to pick their preferred mounting system.
Total Prize value: $1000.
All Fstoppers readers can get 10% off any of the Lensbaby collection by using the code "LBFstoppers" directly on the Lensbaby store.
Second and Third Place - This month both 2nd and 3rd place winners will receive a full photography tutorial from the Fstoppers Store Total Prize value: $300
Good luck to everyone who enters and we look forward to seeing your best Bokeh filled images!
Featured image by the talented Lilia Alvarado
Thu, 10/30/2025 - 23:45
This contest has ended.
242 people have cast a total of 16,276 votes on 496 entries from 251 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.
26 Comments
Epic lighting! lol. I live in Wales where it is always raining.
I expect we're going to see a lot of birds on sticks and a lot of macro shots this contest.
As I get ready to add another bird to the mix, I viewed your entry wondering if you too had entered a bird or macro, only to be pleasantly surprised you had not.. at least not yet :D
I was wondering though, where all the "Bokeh balls" were, anticipating seeing a lot of those in the images submitted. Alas, perhaps like me, a lot of photographers, (people who take pictures, not necessarily professional photographers), don't have many images taken of subjects with lights behind that would yield the those. (?)
I don't have many pictures of birds. I have a few, but nothing special lol. Yeah, I'm also surprised I haven't seen the stereotypical "bokeh balls" shots yet. I'm also going to the mountains next week, so I'm holding off to see what I get there.
These "birds on sticks" you mention, are they barbecued or frozen?
Hopefully smoked and bbq...or fried.
The problem with photography these days is (Perfection). The cameras are doing all the work to give perfect images. Creativity is becoming a thing of the past. I see so many beautiful bird images, showing off the technology of new cameras. Have not seen one that shows movement. A little slower shutter speed or just something besides having to be perfect. Photography has become so symmetrical that its boring.
Sure, I recently upgraded from the Canon T7 to the Canon R10, and the difference is astounding. While out with the Canon T7 I might shoot 25% photos that I'd keep for memories, and maybe 2% that I felt were worth sharing. With the R10, both of those numbers slid up a whole lot more.
I think the answer lies in pushing the limits of what is a challenge then. Now that I have a magic wizz-bang camera, the plan is to go try to catch puffins in flight. "Now that we're here, how do we push the medium farther" feels like it will be the distinguishing factor between the artist and the hobbyist (like me, I'm a hobbyist)
I'm finding I'm doing the same with my photos. I don't shoot wildlife, but I took photos of my daughter and her friends for homecoming last year and one of her friends asked for "less perfect" edits of the photos. She was also shooting with her mom's old point and shoot she found in a drawer circa 2005.
As for wildlife photography, especially birding, if you're shooting 120fps, that perfect shot is instantly less impressive than if you did it with an older camera.
I hope you edited them well, lol. I was referring to the original shoot being more creative.
hmm... "instantly less impressive?" Just because the user in theory had more difficulty using the older camera. However, what you may not think about is the trick with the newer camera is that you have to spend gobs of time finding the right shot in a sea of toss-away frames. Still, I would rather be that guy than the former. I certainly believe in spraying and praying! haha. My camera is way slower than 120, but has some speed for birding, and I use it to the full. In the end, its the results that gets the ratings. I realize that particular saying could justify 'AI', not that AI is ever completely ruled out of FStoppers. As long as it is stated how they used AI. But that's a different subject altogether, and not really the point of my discussion. I just mean, that people on here work so hard sometimes to justify why working harder is so much better for their Photo lives. When sometimes there is no need for it. It's ok to justify tech too.
I agree. People that don't shoot wildlife have no idea in the time spent looking for the subject, and then hoping that said subject is in a spot that's pleasing to eye. I'll be spending the next month and half in the woods photographing deer during the rut. When the rut is over, I'll be spending the next month in the woods trying to find owls, and where they will be nesting. After that, a month or two of shooting swans in an area of open water on a frozen river, or eagles fishing just south over open water of that frozen river, Then I'll head back to the woods to find the owl nests with owlets. It all takes a lot of time, in my case, a lot of warm clothes and patience.
I don't think creativity is a thing of the past. I think in today's world where nearly everyone on the planet with a cellphone in their pocket is a photographer, there's just more of everything else that's not creative. Coupled with the fact that new technology will shape how pictures are made, people change their way of seeing that reflects new features... frames per second in the case of birds. The whole pie is getting larger and I see a lot more creative photos as well, although what defines creativity is another question. Not much is totally unique in a world of billions of pictures made every day.
Yes, the increasing technical abilities take a lot of pleasure away for me, but still I also like the speed of the Z9 and the ability to not use 8 flashlights to freeze the action. In 2002 I shot hunting kingfishers on a Rollei 6008i, it was very costly and took much more effort and time to get everything right, but the reward was great. But triggered by the contest I couldn't resist to give it a try again with my current equipment. Just uploaded my result, not a bird on a stick, but just returning to her stick :-)
One of my chief contentions about photography period. Digital not withstanding. People want the latest and greatest technology, and that's the case from when I was given my first Canon TLb, which is the lowest tech camera of all time - maybe. The lust for the latest electronic gadget when the real creative device is between the ears. And most never use it. The greatest challenge for me has always been to show something in a way that hasn't been seen before, or at least not commonly seen. That is a never ending quest.
Wow I actually got in this time 👋
Okay. My mistake for entering the contest. I shoot because I enjoy the process from beginning to end. Enjoyment is what I pursue, not the perfect image. And I have no problem doing so shooting locally with my old camera and cheap lens. In my opinion, chasing perfection has gotten too easy to be worth much these days. Still I like the challenge of taking the best image that I can under the limitations that I work with. Have a nice day everyone!
Ive really enjoyed these submissions. Beautiful work everyone.
Is it possible to provide the option to hit the "Highest rated" button, so we can see where we ended up in the placement? Always interesting to see :)
they do that later when the winners are announced. In fact they are two contests behind.