Critique the Community

Unedited Photos

Submit your best unedited photos for a chance to win a free Fstoppers tutorial.
  • Submission Deadline: Tue, 08 Jan 19 04:45:00 +0000

    This contest has ended.

  • Voting is closed.

  • Congratulations to the winners!

    View Results

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. 

  • Submission Deadline: Tue, 08 Jan 19 04:45:00 +0000

    This contest has ended.

  • Voting is closed.

  • 760 people have cast a total of 65,831 votes on 780 submissions from 484 contestants.
  • Congratulations to the winners!

    View Results

182 Comments
Previous comments

lolwut? I'm almost always using "average" metering and sometimes I use shutter priority. Suppose I should restudy the basics.

Don't sweat it, Ryan; he's trying to have a go at me.

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Sorry Ryan. Wasn’t trying to call people out, just trying to remind people the cpu in the camera doe a hell of a lot so where do we draw the line on what a “real” photographer is.

Given that you do not understand at this point it is entirely reasonable to assume that you will never understand. I'm thinking you have a room temperature IQ at this point.

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No, you absolute moron. I've already presented the answer to the question. I'm not going to keep repeating myself.

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You have monumentally missed the point; which interestingly, is precisely why I think you are a complete moron.

So, have you shot any images that are not completely boring?

Edit: that awkward moment when you bring people's work into the conversation, without the understanding of your own skill level.

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Oh, come on, you wanted to provoke an argument, out of some vague sense of indignance.

Don't you want to play anymore?

But remember, you wanted to imply that I can't shoot because I hadn't entered my photos. Dude.

Now, all of that said, it simply hasn't occurred to you that I deleted my original account because of a small subset of people that I find frustrating (that's on me), nor does it occur to you that I no longer feel I have anything to lose by not being restrained.

So, feel free to continue.

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See, this is the problem, you people go out of your way to provoke arguments and to be generally annoying, and then you try and twist things around by crying 'he was mean to me'.

You simply don't get it, do you? I am not insulting you 'just cos', I legitimately thing you are not particularly intelligent; I have drawn this inference owing from the fact that I have clearly stated my position more than once, and you have misrepresented my position, and repeatedly demanded that I address your strawman (look it up).

As to your "work", again, I'm not "insulting" you, you were in bright daylight, you had a long lens, and you took bland and uninspiring images of animals. Seriously, there was no real skill involved in those images at all, anyone going for a walk in whatever location, who had the gear, could have shot those.

In any case, coming back to the point, you don't understand my point, which I have stated multiple times, and this is why I call you a moron.

And just an FYI, I have gone out of my way to provide positive feedback to entrants, so don't play the 'it's easy to insult people's work' card.

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I'll just make that point again,for those who did not get it.

Anyone who is incapable of producing a publication ready image, without the benefit of post-processing, is a digital artist, not a photographer.

Now that is fine, but who on Earth (short of a beginner) enters an image that shouldn't be seen into a competition?

Yeah, really hated that Ansel Adams with all the darned dodging and burning...

Another who can't understand and therefore creates straw men.

Are you trying to assert that Adams was incapable of producing an excellent literal image? His large body of colour work would suggest otherwise.

Nowhere did I state or imply digital artists are inferior to photographers.

True, in the end it's all definitional.

In Adams's case it's more that an artist will use the available tools to create the best work in line with his intentions. I would, however, guess that despite the post-shoot manipulation, he would have considered himself a photographer.

Perhaps some of the disconnect is between landscape photographers (my shtick) who are stuck with the lighting that nature provides and studio / portrait photographers who have the opportunity to set and light their subjects and, therefore, should have much less need for post-processing (other than blemish cleanup, etc.).

For the record, I primarily shoot landscape and nature.

Then I tip my hat to your ability to get it all in camera on the landscape images; I generally have to deal with over extended dynamic ranges at a minimum, and with mis-placed "stuff" in the natural environment that I edit out. Beyond that, I often do more artistic edits that could be called digital art I suppose, though I tend to think of that as part of photography these days. I've got a few examples in my Fstoppers portfolio if you're curious.

For wildlife, I'm closer to taking it the way the JPG conversion gets it but still do some cropping (in lieu of a long enough lens).

BTW, I guess that I’d blame the contest setup for all of the angst here. The contrast between the contest title (Unedited Photos), the particulars in the more detailed writeup that allowed a fair amount of global editing, and the description of the contest in the prior contest review video that basically allowed for any global edits (i.e., just no photoshop spot edits) was bound to create “discussions” based on which each participant relied upon.

Realizing all of that, I didn’t want to get involved, but I do feel that I’m a photographer even though I do use post processing so I’m afraid that your comment got my goat a bit. Nothing personal…

In any case, feel free to critique my submission, which had enough global adjustments to bother some people but not enough to be a finished work. My brief experience here is that the evaluations here are a bit all over the map and generally harsher than on 500PX, which seems a bit more reliable (your thoughts?).

My entries (from my now deleted account) had zero post. That said, I saw a large number of images that will be nothing short of spectacular after post-processing, I mean seriously spectacular, but as they stand should simply not be displayed at all.

My point stands, any competent photographer should be able to produce a competent image, which requires no post capture edit, for display. And in theory, any such photographer should have a large number of such images in their archives.

Re the competition, I made the effort of rating every single image, and critiquing a significant number, and I was frequently struck that images that were visually arresting, perfectly composed, perfectly exposed, and technically without fault, were being rated as being snapshots. It is the most extraordinary thing, and it is corrosive to those who have some considerable talent.

I was going to walk away from this site entirely, hence I deleted my account; however, I think I'm happy to give freely of my time to new photographers, but I really don't want my images anywhere near this place.

I already commented on your landscape, with the mountains. I still feel the reds are clipped (maybe oversaturated is more to the point); however, you are happy with it, and that's perfectly OK. There is nothing saying that you are not permitted to over or under expose, or increase or decrease the saturation, in the pursuit of your vision. That said, the subject choice is exquisite, and the composition is excellent, I just don't like the reds - this is something of a thing with me, and Peter Lik's early work gets on my nerves for that exact reason.

Thanks for the thoughtful response and kind words. I also at times feel that I'm pushing the saturations, but find that the current "taste" seems to expect that and, since most of my shots are taken in the desert southwest, I guess that I'm becoming a bit de-sensitized to strong reds.

FWIW, hope you stick around and just ignore the comments that you know are BS.

A pleasure, Ron, and thank you.

Re my own (colour) work, I tend to the natural; I know that vibrant colours, and high contrast, and increased vibrance, and composited in starry skies are absolute winners, but it's just not what I'm interested in doing, which means my work is not hugely popular. But I enjoy it.

And yes, reacting is a significant fault of mine, and one that I am constantly trying to improve. These thing take time.

Peace :)

William, as you said at one point, we each have our own artistic sensibilities and I appreciate that you're not unduly swayed by popular trends.

Peace to you as well.

Must be a very loose definition of "Unedited Photos" in this competition. I am not a regular on this site, but as someone who grew up shooting film and slides, many of these images would be impossible straight out of camera and into the developer.

I think their use of the word “unedited” was just a poor word choice, as they go on to say that some global adjustments are ok. It should have been titled something like “no local adjustments” if they wanted to avoid this mass confusion and endless bickering.

Can't we all just get along?

Hi guys. After briefly looking at the discussion here, I’ll preface by saying that I come in peace... could anyone let me know when the video goes up/winners are announced? Thanks.

I believe its on Thursdays. Once they close the voting. Could be any time now.

Any idea when the winners will be announced?

There are so many images that just scream "5 hours of retouch"

Contest Submissions

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