Critique the Community
Submit Your Best "Moody" Image
Critique the Community: Moody
Congratulations to the winners!
Lee and Patrick have given feedback to 20 of the community's "moody" images. Do agree with their and the rest of the community's ratings?
Congratulations to our two winners. Martijn Hermans submitted the highest rated image and Daniel Cordero was chosen as the random winner. I will be in touch with both of you via your Fstoppers profiles to claim your prize.
If you'd like to participate in the next episode, we invite you to submit your long exposure photographs to be critiqued.
Rules & Prizes
It's time for another Critique the Community and this time we are going with the theme "Moody." Submissions can be anything from moody landscapes to dramatic portraits to upset children from a recently family portrait session. Whatever qualifies as your best moody image, we want to see it.
Submit up to two of your best photographs that capture the essence of moody for a chance to win a free tutorial from the Fstoppers Store.
The deadline to submit your images is October 31st by noon eastern time. Good luck and we hope to see some amazing image from everyone in our photography community!
Thu, 10/31/2019 - 11:00
This contest has ended.
753 people have cast a total of 59,198 votes on 1,059 entries from 662 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.
145 Comments
If you are handing out 5 stars ill definitely take one lol but sometimes people hand out weird rating. I had a studio image before that got abunch of 1 stars which by itself is impossible by the grading system.
DONE! You get a 5!, and YOU get a 5!, and YOU get a 5!... weeeeeeee
Big smile
Guess who just got a 5? RUTH!!!
That makes 2! NICK!!!
Personally, I find it interesting to see where my photos fall relative to other folk's submissions.
I'm done posting my images to these contests. Could care less about rating, but why are people so damn lazy to actually critique the photos is beyond me.
I hand picked all these myself and just picked ones that stood out to me. Moody is def a subjective category and I might have left one slip by just so we could make a joke about it not being moody.
I agree, if you’re going to rate “needs work” then put in the comments what you think it needs. If you don’t know what it needs then rate it a 3
Why not select the top 15 rated community images, and your personal top 5 favorite images or something? If you just and pick all of them, it's what you're drawn to or stand out to you.
Agreed. The rating system on this site is an utter joke and is totally useless.
I don't want Lee, David, or I to ever just pick the top 15 images mainly because we want some variety in skill and community rating. By picking images that are well below the top 15, we also equalize all the crazy voting people are doing here. I thought the random photo winner was pretty cool and it was only a 2.4 rating. I actually liked that image a lot more than hundreds of photos above it and I"m glad we included it.
The problem is not the rating system is the people who rate. If you put an image on your profile, not in the contest, you get rated higher. As soon as you put an image in a contest it becomes a bitchfest! “That image is better than mine so I’ll mark it low”
Example is the image I’ve put into this months contest is being marked as a “3” but on my profile it’s a “4”
Agreed. I have a few images on my profile that are a solid 3.5 and here I barely got a 2. I'd love to know who rates them so that I could ask why they rate them so low. I noticed a few people don't have a single photo in their profile yet they are allowed to rate other users. Kind of odd.
I am glad to see you posting more in these threads. It is really helpful to hear your thoughts.
Perhaps at the beginning of a new contest you could pose a question to get a focused idea of your stakeholders' thoughts. You could even pose it as a pole rather than opened ended and just ask "would you prefer option 1, 2 or 3?" Get a quick touch base for a tweak.
Personally, I would prefer that the two critique providers ( you, Lee, David, mom, ...) Each picked your top 10 and explained why. Give us something to shoot for - both in skill acquisition and actually 'winning' by nature of being selected due to quality instead of "a joke about not following the topic."
Your rationale here contradicts what you posted in the main contest comment thread too. There you said that the voting seems to identify the top images in the end. Here you state that you are selecting images to equalize crazy voting. It would be worth considering either going with the actual votes and calling this process a contest or picking the images based on your preference and calling this opportunity "critique the community" and drop the contest bit. The "winners" in the current format are not the vote winners but rather win by means of subjective selection. Voting in this scenario would be more about critique since it would not be about selecting a "winner" and this might neutralize the voting issues.
My comments are not to be complaints. I am invested in this site, as are many, and this is a good thing. You and Lee have created something great here. One way to keep it growing is to periodically pause, evaluate and tweak - critique the process - based on the end-user feedback. It's a win-win.
Thanks for providing the opportunity to share these thoughts.
I think you are failing to understand what Critique the Community is actually about. We aren't aiming to pick the top 20 images. We never have and never will pick only the top images the Community has rated. The community rating is there to add perspective to what the two critiquers on the video say. It seems like you think the community is voting to determine which images make the video but that's never been what the scores are about.
Imagine if we had 20 world class images submitted. What good would that do to show only 5 star images? I'd love it because I want to showcase the best images but from a learning perspective, I think it's best to have images from 1-5 represented (although 1s are usually so bad it's hard to critique what would make them better).
Perhaps the issue lies in the Critique the Community posts falling under the "contest" header. It's truly not a contest in the normal sense of the term but we put it there because it's easy to find. My goal is to have many more contests that have truly random winners, but the CTC only has free tutorials just because Lee and I thought it would be nice to give something away as we film. In no way are the votes and ratings supposed to qualify someone for entering in the contest. Again, they are their to see if our own critiques are way off base or closer to what a larger group of people think as well.
Great response! Thank you for taking the time. I agree that the "contest" and "winners" might create a different perception. I understand your goal and I think you are achieving it. Cheers!
Thank you for your response, it's clear now, "Contest" is not the good word and it's probably better that you and Lee choose the finalists. I hope being chosen one day :-)
Yes, now I understand better that it’s kind of meaningless for me to spend so much time voting. As you can tell from my username, I’m just here to vote.
I still vote on the ones that really stand out to me, if only to indicate to the photographer I appreciated their art.
I have an image in my portfolio that is rated 4 and has 60+ votes plus is image of the day I submitted here now and the first vote was a 1 lol
Hi Patrick, of course moody is quite subjective but for example the surfing one is not definitely moody. There is a lack of mystery and melancholy in some of them, and this is what makes a photo moody or not.
See I read the surfing one as moody in the sense of impactful or bold and intense. It's not moody in the sense of soft dark lighting but it is moody in another way. Plus I really liked that photo and we don't see enough stuff like that in the community sometimes. I didn't want all the moody photos to just be dramatic landscape photos and Dan Winters style portraits.
Appreciate your response! Impactful or bold are not moody Patrick. That could be for another contest called Action, Sports, momentum...but mood is about drama, atmosphere and low light. You won't say that a sunny sky is moody, so someone surfing during a sunny day doesn't make the photo moody. I guess it's a different point of view or understanding of the meaning of mood.
I think the issue is "moody" is just too subjective of a term to actually mean anything. It's why I gave Pye crap when he suggested it.
I've been looking up definitions on the word moody and while some do use words like "gloomy and depression" to describe it, others use "temperamental" and "expressive of a mood". If it's to be read as "representative of a mood" and a mood can be anything, well all photos can be moody. The surfer photo def doesn't have dark and dramatic lighting but the fact that it's contrasty and the surfer is failing to land the trick or ride the wave, could most definitely be categorized as a "mood". Moods can be cheerful, gloomy, melancholy, whimsical, romantic, ominous, hopeful, angry, fearful, tense, and lonely. I'd classify all the photos in this critique to have one of those mood qualities.
I know it's not the answer that you want but it was the main reason I felt Pye's category for "Moody" would be very subjective.
My taser photoshoot images are a great example of what I'm trying to say. They were shot bright and almost airy yet they are the epitome of what temperamental is in a photograph. They are literally changing moods in the moment the photo was captured. Some look like they are in pain while others look like they are in pleasure. Would they be "moody" images? I'd say so.
I was thinking...have you guys ever thought about requiring a certain ranking on the personal portfolio to be able to vote on the contests? As you do limiting the number of posts you can upload until you receive more than 3.5stars with 5 voters, I think it would be great to avoid the huge amount of trolls you have around here.
donc les votes sont totalement inutiles finalement puisque le choix final revient à Patrick et à Lee de manière subjective, je ne conteste pas les choix mais la façon dont les concours sont présentés, si nous passons 1h à voter et commenter pour que cela ne serve à rien au final n'est pas très agréable.
Thanks for the critique Patrick, appreciate the feedback 👍
Because it’s a contest not a critique.
I ain't even mad. I got 1 *'s within a minute of posting hah!
There's some great work in there!!
Great subject idea.
Which one got a 1? Thats crazy? I cant wait till I get some votes. im curious. Every photo I love is voted super low, ones I think are okay people love. I love the one image I posted so far. So i believe it will get 2...
Both of them! I'm not even mad, just find it hilarious that they both got 1* right off the bat hah even though the black and red one won me some money! :P
You gotta remember that they may be low scores but, everyone is getting low scores so it evens out anyway
Exactly. I don't mind low scores. The system is what it is. 5 stars is 'world class'. I'm aiming for an 3 - one day!
1 star? People were scared. I've seen a kid (actually 12 of them) from your photo in a dream.
In fact, they were not that evil... Just normal kids - always try to kill themselves or somebody around...
I got some ones too right off the bat but thank god for the fair people that even me out a bit by voting fair and one of the photos is even photo of the day so I know is not an accurate representation and is just people hating lol
I think some rate everything 1 and they are quick to do so!
So far mine has a rating of 2.08, need some work done on it. I'd really like to know what needs to be done on it but they don't leave comments so there you go!
1 star for everyone! Only Patrick and Lee can get 5 stars!
I went from 3.4 to 2.9 in the past 8 votes. I feel abused. ;)
The only thing that may happen with your rating after a start of a contest - it drops :)
Send Patrick back to Charleston the sun must be going to his head down there.
Hmm, this doesn't seem right. Voting should not open until all submissions are in, and submissions should be hidden until then. Then, once all submissions are in, the gallery should be made visible. The way it's set up, images that got in earlier have more time to collect votes than images that came in later. I'm sure this has been brought up before, but I'm new to the contests.
And? It’s all about average number, not sum of votes.
sum of votes matter because if 2 people rate something a 4 it gives average rating of 4 versus an image that was rated by 100 people so is not really an accurate rating people with less votes are bound to have higher ratings than those with more votes as the more votes that are in the more it thins out the average.
Yeah but it would take too long to wait for all the shots to be in and then have a voting period. Its an imperfect system but its fine for what it is.
I don't understand how moody is volcano picture
Wow! amazing shots... congrats for everyone!
In Patrick/Lee's defense - that was the only picture that they didn't pick; the community did.
Is it possible to see a breakdown of votes on a post? How many 1's 2's or 3's you get?