Critique the Community

Your Best Photo of 2022

Critique The Community Is Back! Upload Your Best Image of 2022
  • Submission Deadline: Fri, 06 May 22 17:45:00 +0000

    This contest has ended.

  • Voting is closed.

  • Congratulations to the winners!

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Six months ago we dismantled our studio but we are finally back in business again. Submit your favorite image that has been taken this year (2022) and Patrick and I will critique them live next week. Each photographer is allowed to submit up to three images. Make sure you write a little bit about the image in the description. We want to hear about how the image was conceived, lit, and edited. Submissions without a description will be disqualified. 

As always, the highest-rated image, and one random image will receive a free tutorial from the Fstoppers Store

Featured image by Mark Rowe

  • Submission Deadline: Fri, 06 May 22 17:45:00 +0000

    This contest has ended.

  • Voting is closed.

  • 121 people have cast a total of 6,536 votes on 211 submissions from 107 contestants.
  • Congratulations to the winners!

    View Results

22 Comments

Lee Morris If you could change the deadline to May 6, we could upload some submissions. :)

Whoops! fixed now

:) time travel machine is a requirement ;)

sorry fixed

Damn, I’ve been out all of 4 times in 2022 with my camera, good luck to the entrants.

Too bad if you're an outdoor photographer. It's not even spring yet where I live! How about making it "during the last year" instead of "taken in 2022?" I hate to sit this one out!

Unless I'm reading the rules incorrectly, you guys can still submit photos if you took them between today and May 6. Technically, they were taken this year (2022). :D

It’s a fair point Eddie, my trouble is the light is flat here for the next week and I’m also snowed under with work right now (the part of the company I work for has been outsourced and we are also moving to a new system) so I’m struggling to find time atm.

I might just post one of the fairly average shots I took as it’s only a bit of fun.

These are some awesome entries so far.

Interesting how you can see who gave a an image a positive review; negative reviews remain anonymous. Seems a little cowardly.

lol good ol' critique the community. a photographer could sell a print for $1million and then post the same image on this contest and will get less than 2 stars on it. people are cutthroat around here.

Maybe contestants shouldn’t be able to vote - there’s an incentive to give everyone else 1 star.

There are clearly the occasional trolls out and about . :-)

6 months of no critique didn't change the format and the usual complaints of 1 star votes.

Are you new here? :)

Damn we've got some great submissions for this one!

So glad the series is back!

Please do everyone a favor and disable the community voting next time. It's ridiculous.

That would defeat the purpose and the fun of the contest.

If they need to disable anything, it would be whiny crybaby comments. Since you're new to these contests, just an fyi, on some past contests, the whining got so bad they would disqualify entrants that complain about the voting.

Or just don’t get your knickers in a twist over it, I posted a photo and i couldn’t really care less what people voted it… on a list of 100 things to worry about in life, that sits about 101.

why? that's the whole point this. that's why you upload an image, to get honest critique. It's called critique the community, not "praise the community". If you want "praise" show them to your family.

and honestly, your images are rated more fairly than most.
Maybe learn how the voting system works? Because most shots will get a 2 in this rating system. 4 or 5 ratings are pretty rare.

Your images are all rated above a 2. Meaning. they're not seen as snapshots , but some might not be "portfolio ready" or "commercially viable" , which seems absolutely fair for your images. And something most would be more than happy with.

The pregnancy shot for example. It's a fine image, thought went into it, timing went into it. So it's not a snap shot. But, there are elements to improve before I'd say they'd be "portfolio ready". Pose of the couple, composition (tree in the background, sun not in the middle of the couple), clothing (could have done more instead of jeans and a sweatshirt), etc.. It's also a little cliché and the "standard" pregnancy image, the only way to make it more cliché is to have the husband kiss the belly. Which I bet was done in the shoot as well.
So, the 2 is a fair rating.

The shot with the watch is great, that's why it's a 2.8. So on average, people think it's portfolio ready. I can see why. A watch in the sand or in the frame is done a bit too often as a "time stood still" symbol. but it certainly is made better by the background.. But I'm not going "holy cow! what an image! I will remember this image for the rest of my life" in order to rate it a 5.

The northern lights, great image. Again, not sure how commercially viable it is, because if you type "vestahorn northern lights" in google, you get far better and impressive examples of this exact shot.. So I rated it a 2, it clearly isn't a snapshot and it's a fine image. But not portfolio ready as it's a well shot (or too often shot) location, and there are better shots out there.

Ok 😊👍 fair enough. I got your point. Personally I see a lot of 5 star pictures here that are rated why too low in my opinion. As said in my opinion. For me it feels like a lot people throwing around 1 star ratings. But we'll it's just my thoughts.

Thanks everyone for your feedback on my comment. It really made me thinking.

I know most of my photos aren't up to the level of most photographers here, so the low scores don't get to me. But I do wish there was more encouragement toward providing feedback instead of just voting low. Like for every 5 or 10 1-star votes, you have to provide at least 20 words of feedback on one of those 1-star votes.

Contest Submissions

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

Click here to learn about the Fstoppers rating system and what each star value means.