Photoshop is so prevalent in the industry that the line between photography and digital art often blur. With the theme of this weeks' Critique, we hope to focus only on photography skills.
Between now and January 7th, 2019 we invite you to submit up to two unedited images. In this case "unedited" refers to any picture that has not had any compositing, cloning, dodging, burning, warping, etc... Since some photographers prefer to shoot in raw, we are allowing images that have had color correction and tone curve adjustment. Obviously it will be impossible for us to tell for sure if you've stuck to these guidelines so we're trusting the community to be honest. We will be selecting to winners of a free Fstoppers tutorial. One will be based on the highest community rated image and the other will be chosen at random.
Once you've uploaded your pictures, we invite you to scroll through the rest of the submissions and give honest ratings of your own. The easiest way to do this is by using your keypad and number keys. For the sake of improvement, please leave encouraging, instructive comments if you notice how an image could be improved.
Me neither. I can't upload or select from portfolio.
I am having the same problem.
Same here. Tried Firefox and Chrome on 2 operating systems. I even downgraded the security on each to allow pretty much anything. The link to access your portfolio links to a bookmark obviously looking for some js which doesn't seem to exist...
Why can't I enter the contest? The page doesn't allow me to submit a photo.
I had that problem yesterday, but today it allowed me to submit. No clue.
I can't submit on mobile browser - is it a known bug? I can click buttons tonupload/choose from pf but nothing happens. (no prob, as I can do this later at home, but IMO worth checking)
You have some JS markup errors just after jQuery code - someone did push changes on Friday? I also like to live dangerously... :D
I can't submit to this contest the buttons don't work
So what are we actually rating on? The overall image as it would stand as an image in your portfolio (with your actual edited work)?
Or are we just looking at base image potential as it pertains to composition, posing, lighting, realizing that the final image is going to be cleaned up?
edit. fugedit.
I think people are missing the point of this contest completely. This is a chance to test your photography skills not your editing skills so ultimately it would be more beneficial to you as a photographer to take the best in camera shot you can which requires next to no editing if taken correctly. If you frame correctly there is no need to crop. If you light your subject matter correctly there is little need to adjust things like exposure and shadow. Just try and focus on getting an honest critique of your work instead of just winning the contest.
This!
While I agree with the intent behind your comment it’s not true for every situation. Based on your rules if the photo in my head requires a square crop, but my camera doesn’t have a built in crop feature, then I’m out of luck.
It also assumes that cameras see the same way our eyes do, which is not the case. In most cases the dynamic range isn’t enough to capture every detail without recovering the shadows.
That’s not a flaw of the photographer, it’s a limitation of their gear.
While I agree that people should upload unedited photos to the contest, I think implying that if you can’t take a perfect photo out of camera then you’re doing something wrong is an oversimplification.
For some reason the submit photo button is not working, is anyone else having this issue?
Same thing. I thought it was only me.
I'm trying to upload a pic for the contest. But it seems like the upload from the computer and portfolio aren't working? Is anyone experiencing this or is it just me?
Seems like everyone is. The contest has been stalled at 156 submissions since at least yesterday evening
I've joined today and trying to enter, but not able to upload for the contest - any tips how to do that? I've put the two pics in my portfolio for now.
just seen others comments...hopefully this is fixed soon
Upload links seem to be broken.
A lot of these photos are edited...did I miss something in the contest description?
Not mine. I even included Google Drive links to the original RAW file and Lightroom Screenshot in the description.
Of course some are. Absent requiring raw images it's impossible to tell. I'm very interested to see the ratings of the entries.
I guess most will land in "Needs work" area :P
This contest is a joke.
On nearly every second photo it says "only adjusted global exposure, contrast, shadows, highlights, crop but that´s all I did".
I´d love to see completely unedited photos here and more I´d love to see unedited photos from Lee and Patrick. They´re so fixated on PS and LR.
You see that in their critiques every time. It´s all about how to make money with a photo and not a single bit about aesthetics.
I´m done with this.
Yeah, I completely understand what you mean: everybody stretches the boundaries of the rules and makes little adjustments to their pictures (me included although it was just minor adjustments as I'm usually too lazy to rework my photos too much ;)). But to be honest the rules were too diffuse in the first place. What is an unedited photo? The Raw-file? A Jpeg with all the in-camera-adjustments? And who controls if really no adjustments were made? It's like no-doping with no one controlling it.
I feel this contest is a joke looking at the pics posted. Oversaturated, HDR-look, heavy contrast. I think there's no real clear winner here, it's all for the sake of entertainment or publicity.
Amen! Given the ongoing consternation about these contests and the laughable voting process, why would they go with such an extremely subjective theme as [minimally edited] un-edited?
"Thank you sir, may I have another?"
mine is completely unedited.
For what it's worth, I think, for the sake of thus contest, black and white either needs to have been shot on black and white film, or with the black and white setting. That said, the black and white conversions are really no different to the colour editing that is being entered.
This is a real interesting one...Some people have watched the vid/read here about the global adjustments, but it seems like a lot just posted straight out of camera pics, a lot of 2's that could be 3 if a bit of exposure/contrast/etc was adjusted
would multiple exposure on the same neg. would that be considered an edited shot?
No that’s an in camera process
Cool idea on this ctc, would love to see the next one be a "composite-only" critique
Just uploaded mine... no editing I think ... I imported my raw files from my Olympus into Lightroom and then exported it to JPG... hope this is ok
I think there must be quite a few definitions of "unedited" floating around out there.
Just an observation here, but it seems most of the quality unedited pics are recieving low marks while the "slightly edited" moderatly good ones are doing quite well.
I reflected upon that, Chris. Quite a few will be amazing after post, but I don't think people are seeing it.
I love the "needs work" votes for an "un-edited" contest. I get the point, but it's just ironic.
I totally get where you're coming from, John, indeed, your comment got a chuckle out of me; however, it occurs to me that there is still something to be said for getting it right in camera.
Yes, that's what I meant by, "I get the point"
I agree. I think voters should give the courtesy of leaving a comment on what they think needs work. Otherwise there is zero benefit for the photographer.
Careful what you wish for. I imagine 100 comments along the lines of 'this image has no redeeming features whatsoever. It demonstrates poor judgement in almost every respect' would be unpleasant.
I don´t see my picture anymore is it normal?
Next contest suggestion - self portraits
While I appreciate the intent, these contests are far too subjective, perhaps none more so that this one. I get that art is inherently subjective, but the rules should not be,
"Un-edited", but some editing is acceptable. What does that even mean?!
Absent requiring raw images, how can you possibly judge such a competition?
Until the FS team improves the voting process I will no longer participate. No sour grapes, for me it's just insulting to the craft.
Don't hold a contest where you can't even objectively enforce the rules.
"Submit your best [minimally edited] unedited photos for a chance to win a free Fstoppers tutorial."
Wow; the comments here are getting really hung up how much editing is allowed and, what editing is, and what about jpeg or Raw.
I’ve taken photos where I’ve relied heavily on photoshop to produce the outcome I wanted. I’ve also taken some where all I wanted to do was a simple tonal adjustments. I consider the latter unedited. Basically if you can do it in the darkroom - then it’s fair game (baring dodging and burning or mutiple exposure trickery). It’s probably safe to assume that what ever you think is considered unedited - is unedited enough.
That being said - this contest is definitely skewing towards landscapes in the judging. Perhaps this entire community skews towards landscapes/city scapes (judging by 4-Photographing The World releases; I think that’s a safe assumption). That’s a little disheartening for an open-genre call. But it’s probably also the case because cities and landscapes can be made very dramatic in camera. And in-camera portraits tend to be boring, and in camera product shots are so rare (cause they’re stupid to do in camera).
How much and what kind of editing is kind of key in an "unedited" contest. 😉
Well said!!! The way I see it is if you go back to film days each film had it's own tone curve and saturation properties, and you choose what film you wanted based on what you where taking a photo of. Then with JPEG there are picture control settings (Vivid, Neutral, landscape, etc) and you choose which one you want to based on what you're taking a photo of or personal preferences....
That's why the whole "You used [insert x global adjusment]" complaint seems so silly.
It's clear that by "Unedited" they mean no selective editing...The thing about global adjusts is there's side effects. You up the contrast and it's going to effect the colors, etc...That's why a lot of people do selective adjustments, so you can just try to adjust part of the photo without effecting the whole data. Then there's subtraction/addition on top of that...
At the end of the day the contest is always based on "Should you put that in your portfolio". I see this not "here's the best SOOC image i can take", but as "This is the portfolio worthy photo i can take without selective adjustments".
It's too bad that so many people are getting caught up on the contest title and aren't even reading the text or watching the last C&C video where they discuss this contest :(
Nice to see there are some other people here thinking this. It's just the downside of the critiques being quite popular, you're going to get a lot of new (to this site) people each time that come in and ask / complain about the "rules". I think if they had seen the previous videos, they'd know the rules, but they'd also realise this isn't some mega serious contest, it's just a chance for some critique, the winners (even the top spot) are going to be fairly random, you don't need to take it too seriously it's supposed to be a bit of fun and something for the community to enjoy.