Critique the Community

Top-Down

Show Us Your Best 'Top-Down' Photographs
  • Submission Deadline: Sun, 06 Sep 20 17:15:00 +0000

    This contest has ended.

  • Voting is closed.

  • Congratulations to the winners!

    View Results

"Top-down" photographs are taken directly above the subject matter. We don't just want to see you shooing from a high angle, we want the ground to be completely perpendicular to the camera.  

Each photographer is allowed 3 submissions and for an image to be valid, it needs a photograph taken straight down on top of a subject and it must include a quick paragraph about how the image was taken. 

The photographer with the highest-rated image and one random submission will win the tutorial of their choice from the Fstoppers Store

Featured images by Jabi Sanz and Mohamed Abdel-Hady

  • Submission Deadline: Sun, 06 Sep 20 17:15:00 +0000

    This contest has ended.

  • Voting is closed.

  • 250 people have cast a total of 9,939 votes on 270 submissions from 157 contestants.
  • Congratulations to the winners!

    View Results

39 Comments

Instead of doing the highest rated image by the community, you should just pick a favorite. That will get rid of the incentive to maliciously downvote. Plus, the community is wrong like 90% of the time.

Agreed

yep

Spot on

Is the random winner considered a favorite?

Only in the sense that the highest rated image gets into the critique by default, whereas every other image is selected by one of the editors. The ones they pick aren't necessarily the best, a couple of really lackluster images have made it into past critiques.

I'll try this next time

This could also get rid of the incentive to vote. Why bother then.

I say leave it as is, except, maybe instead of having a random winner, have Lee/Patrick pick their favorite. Though, I can almost guarantee folks are still going to whine and cry about it.

Well, I don't know about that. People still vote on photos in people's profiles and in the community. But, also, if they vote and don't leave any comments, it's not really a critique anyway. I don't know if there's a perfect way to incentivize people to vote, but also vote accurately, but the current system is not the best.

Well, voting on profiles is not related to voting on these contests.

If it's been said 3 times, it's been said 3 million times, no one is going to leave a comment on every image they voted on. I'm not talking about the folks that vote on only 4 or so images. Seriously, can honestly say you've left comments on every single images you voted on? Last contest, there were over 400 entries. Even if you voted on half, I seriously doubt you've left 200 comments.

As long as there are sour grapes submitters, no system is going to be the best.

I did not realize people were maliciously downvoting but it does explain some of the low ratings.

Would it help to show WHO voted HOW? i.e. if you click the 1*, you can see who all voted 1*?

Degree of Anonymity = Permission some people give themselves to affect an outcome that favors themselves deserved or not.

Why not pull back the curtain and force some personal responsibility?

There are people who don't take constructive criticism very well and will seek revenge.
There are even some who have specifically asked for CC and been unable to take it.

The contests are a great way for the community to interact on Fstoppers. It sure has for me.

To battle the tendency of unfair / unnecessary down voting. Why not just get rid of the 1 and 2 star options for contests. If your photo is not suitable to the theme or if your photo is not at least 3 star worthy in your honest opinion. You should think twice on submitting it in the first place.

If you submit a bad / unrelated image, then you will most likely not get any votes.

This will also inspire the voters to vote only for worthy images according to the standard voting system on this platform.

That’s an even better idea.

Great "out of the box" thought. Like it!

Maybe think about relabeling the 1 star rating, too. It's fine if people don't like your photo but it's insulting to get 1 stars on something that isn't a snap shot because people aren't voting subjectively.

For those who complain about their raiting. Can you attach a link to the photo in your comment? Dont make us dig through submissions.

I didn't notice this until the last critique, but under a person's profile picture is an icon that looks like a stack of photos. Clicking it will bring up their submissions for that critique. If they submitted, that is, if they didn't the icon won't be there.

That doesnt show up for me. Or if it does, It glitches everything. You also cant vote under that. The whole point being is that they believe they deserve better. So the link helps.

You should divide this by drone and non-drone or maybe aerial/non-aerial catagories.

I think the work in this contest are possible the best I have seen here, great work everyone.

Thanks. I submitted one and boy, are people brutal in their rating. I never expected to win but entering a photo is not for the sensitive!

Brutal and ignorant.

Not sure if this is one of those things that's been suggested 1,000 times too, but what about lowering the maximum submissions per photographer to 1 instead of 3? There are already 102 unique photographers who have uploaded to this contest, and there's still 4 days to go. I think this will 1) Allow people more time to rate/review and prevent "review fatigue", and 2) prevent the same photographer from ending up with more than one photo in a critique.

Another suggestion would be to have people vote for the top 3-5 photos and have the fStoppers' editors choose the winner.

Just new here but it appears to me that those who submitted earliest get the most number of votes??

It would stand to reason. However, after the submission ends and only voting is allowed, the number of votes more or less evens out.

Its a top-down landscape vs top-down food vs top-down portraits. Its aa pretty diverse range for this contest.

Basically every contest is. Look at the past few. Emotion, blur, luck, design and smoke just to name a few. I prefer it this way as more people have a chance to enter. Some of the ones that are very specific, nude photography, instantly eliminate a lot of people.

It is me or have submissions stalled?

Not sure what you mean. I'm seeing new submissions in the 34 mins of this post.

At the time I said that (I think it was Friday) it seemed like there were no new posts for hours. But overall I was expecting lots more submissions. They've been ticking up since. Holiday weekend?

Kind of related Bruce, but in this and a few recent contests I swear that some images disappear and then reappear later at a different time. I generally have a quick scan through and then do my voting when I have time to properly sit down and look at people's work and sometimes images that were memorable from my quick scan are not there when I do my voting. But then I'll look again the next day and they have reappeared. I think that it is batches of images that were uploaded around the same time that this happens to.

Just had my theory confirmed, did voting on new images since yesterday (I had voted for all the images that I could see at the time) and there were a whole bunch from 2nd Sept there too and I always click the 'You haven't rated button' to filter prior to voting.

It's possible they deleted and resubmitted the image(s). That's the only time I've noticed this.

Also, when click on the 'You haven't rated button', you have to refresh the page when you've gone through that set and click on it again. Sometimes, there are multiple "pages" sets.

I know its a little late now but is anyone able to help me. I am having an issue with the quality of my images once uploaded. On my computer they are clear as could be but once I upload them the resolution seems terrible. Any help is appreciated.

Hey, try using 3000x2000 resolution, must help. And on other sites liek facebook they cant store all ur 100mb images so try to have it max on 1mb

You are uploading small images 827/837 x 628. However, they look sharp to me, if you don't try to expand the view. My advice, don't overthink it. Just upload the full-res or even hi-res so long it's < 15 mb. Fstoppers is going to resize and compress anyways.

Contest Submissions

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

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