Critique the Community
Soft Light
Submit Your Best "Soft Light" Images!
Congratulations to the winners!
A few weeks ago we wrapped up our Critique the Community contest for August, and you, the community, had some unbelievable submissions. This episode is long but hopefully you enjoy the images and our rants as well.
Below are the top 3 images from this critique. Each of the top 3 images have won a free photography tutorial from the Fstoppers Store. Please private message Lee Morris to claim your prize.
Congrats to each of the winners and we look forward to seeing your best images in our September Contest featuring Clever or Outside the Box images!
Rules & Prizes
Today is a new month which means Fstoppers has a new Critique the Community contest! For the month of August, we want to see your best images featuring soft lighting. Anyone can enter up to 3 images with details below!
This month we want to focus on one of the most important aspects of photography, lighting! For the August 2025 edition of Critique the Community we are asking to see your best images featuring soft lighting. Soft lighting is often described as having gentle, diffused shadows with gradual transitions between light and dark areas. Soft lighting is often less vibrant and shows less contrast when compared to direct, hard lighting. Your soft light images can be completely naturally lit or perfectly crafted in the studio using flash, and any genre of photography is acceptable including landscapes, portraiture, weddings, still life, and conceptual photography. Each community member can submit up to 3 images for this contest.
Rules
- All images must be submitted from now until August 30th at 11:30 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. 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 primarily feature soft lighting in some way. There can be other forms of lighting included but the overall theme and mood of the image must be soft.
The top 3 images win!
This month we are rewarding the top 3 winners with a full photography tutorial from the Fstoppers Store (Prize value $300)
Good luck to everyone who enters and we look forward to seeing the best soft light photos from the Fstoppers Community!
BONUS DEAL!
For the month of August we are giving our readers the chance to purchase our fashion tutorial, The Fundamentals of Fashion Photography with Shavonne Wong, for only $49! This tutorial is normally priced at $179 and for this month only you can get it for the cheapest price it has ever been sold.
Shavonne Wong is an incredible photographer based out of Singapore, and this tutorial explores some of her best tips and techniques for making jaw dropping fashion inspired images. In this course, Shavonne teaches you some of the most misunderstood aspects of fashion photography such as how to assemble and work with a team, how to cast the right model, how to correctly style a high-end looking shoot, and what poses look most flattering and fashion forward. If you are more interested in lighting techniques, don't worry, as Shavonne explores some of her favorite lighting setups as well as some of the pitfalls many photographers experience when designing clean, but interesting, fashion lighting.
If you have an interest in fashion photography or simply want to learn from a successful photographer based in another world market, The Fundamentals of Fashion Photography is a great asset for photographers of any skill level.
Featured Image by the talented Irina Jomir
Sat, 08/30/2025 - 23:45
This contest has ended.
255 people have cast a total of 17,074 votes on 483 entries from 234 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.
74 Comments
I am excited to see everyones work. Soft light is really difficult for me so it will be great to watch others fantastic work!
the taylor switft shot could just be a cellphone....I agree with Patrick that there was no flash used. Plus remember how tall they are, how tall Taylor is alone (5'10'). The photographer if not using a tall tripod, could not raise the angle, unless extremely prepared to keep the back-lit trees out. It looks like photographer was shooting close to the couple, probably not even using a tripod or concerned about bokeh or anything.
Many thanks for including two of my images in the critique, but I promise, I didnt tried to trick you Patrick.
To Lee's question if those golden gate images were drone shots, they were not.
I captured these images on my sony a7Riii with a canon 70-200 f4 lens using a 10 stop ND filter. Both these pictures are a 65 seconds exposure.
Also, I posted three images, and the third one was actually m,y favorite.
This is going to be a fun one!