Welcome to the April 2025 Critique the Community Contest! For this month's contest we want to make it super simple and inclusive by asking for your best portrait images. They can be full length, headshots, single person, multiple people, natural light or lit in the studio. Anything is fair game for this critique!
As always, please write a short story on how you took the portrait, what camera gear and lighting you used, any challenges you faced, and any other interesting information about the shoot in general.
Rules
- This contest is 100% free to join
- Each photographer may submit up to 3 images
- Each photograph must include a description that includes details about how the photograph was taken, what post processing was done to it, where it was taken, and what challenges you faced taking the image. Simply writing a single sentence that doesn't explain much of anything will disqualify you from being chosen!
March Prizes
1st Place
This contest is sponsored by the culling, editing, and retouching software company Aftershoot. Aftershoot is a powerful all-in-one AI based editing suite aimed at helping photographers shave off hours and even days on their photography sessions. Unlike other editing software suites, Aftershoot does it all by helping photographers quickly cull down their full photo sessions in minutes, batch complex edits throughout different mini sessions, and offers quick skin and face retouching with just a few clicks.
Fstoppers readers can get a free 30 day trial of this software, but one lucky first place winner will receive a full Annual Aftershoot Max Plan worth $720.
On top of that, Aftershoot is including a $500 Amazon gift card to help you produce better portraits on your next photoshoot! Total prize value ($1220).
2nd and 3rd Place
This month, both 2nd and 3rd place winners will receive their choice of any Fstoppers photo or video tutorial found at Fstoppers.com/store
The total value of this prize is up to $299
We are excited to see your best portrait photographs. Good luck to everyone and we will see you at the end of the month!
Bonus April Sale
For the month of April, we are offering up Clay Cook's Fashion and Editorial Portrait Photography tutorial for just $59. Clay Cook is an incredible photographer based out of Louisville, Kentucky who specializes in eye catching portraits used for marketing, advertising, and story telling. In this 11+ hour tutorial, Clay teaches some of his favorite lighting setups, shows you how to completely change your images by building and designing inexpensive sets, and explores how to set a mood with wardrobe, interesting color grades, and outdoor location choices.
This tutorial was design for photographers in both large and small niche markets looking to build a significant business around editorial and fashion portraiture. Normally this tutorial is sold for $300 but we are marking it down to $59 just for the month of April.
Featured Image by the talented Marc Olivier Le Blanc
what are the rules concerning ownership of the images uploaded? and what maybe done with them after.
They are all in our TOS. Basically we don't do anything with the images but by submitting them to this and our site you agree to let us use them for certain applications. The main one we do is make featured images like the one on this contest and in our videos sometimes we show a montage of the community and your image could be in a short clip. We just want to cover ourselves from being sued. We aren't licensing them out or using them in any other way expect to promote the contest, promote Fstoppers/community or give commentary which is already allowed under commentary laws.
They should make a new rule that says you have to provide an explanation for your decision if you give a photo only 1 or 2 stars.
Some of these ratings are ridiculous.
Ed, dont take this style of contest seriously. Many will give 1s and 2s because they think its a popularity contest like social media. Just add good shots to your profile, and you will get real and honest comments .
People suggest this all the time but the reality is, if you had to leave a full written critique anytime you left a 1-2 star rating, people would simply not review anything. Only really outstanding images would be rated and the whole scale would be skewed towards 5 stars being "good" and 3 stars being "bad".
Yes people try to cheat the ratings on these Critiques in hopes that a higher rated image gets featured in the video, but we often don't pick the highest rated image (or top 3 even) and it's even rarer that all 10 images are from the top 20 voted images. The rating doesn't correlate to the images selected ALTHOUGH I will say that the community does typically get the best images rated higher in general. It's rare for a spectacular image to be rated #50.
All that said, the goal has always been for people in the community to quickly rate 5-20 images while scrolling through images (not necessarily images for the CTC but on the actual community page). Having to stop and write text about why an image is a snapshot just isn't something people are going to do.
A very common sense answer. I was thinking basically the same thing when I read the suggestion. Thanks for the confirmation.
But Patrick need I remind you of all that CTC means Critique The Community. If it just boils down to just voting 1-5 stars really?
CTC is what Lee and I do on Youtube. You can critique if you like here but that's not leaving a normal comment.
If leaving a critique is not normal, given the context of this being a "Critique the Community" competition, then I know it's a waste of time to explain a vote.
Yes Patrick I'm well aware of your and Lees feature and I have commented in the past on the job you two do with it, and still find it as fstoppers' highlights. I appreciate the honest critiques and your pleasant / humous demeanor the both of you present. Except the weight you place on the star rating system of the community in steady of the entries photographic merits on their own. You already criticize when you point out or mention 'the community rated as ...'. I understand how over whelming and time consuming it is to view and rate hundreds of entires in these CTC is ... I have tried as a site member and CTC participant.
Your last sentence: "Having to stop and write text about why an image is a snapshot just isn't something people are going to do." It's probably not the kind of thing that very many people are apt to read, either. My reason for saying that is I do occasionally make a constructive comment on a picture, but I'd guess that no more than one out of ten people bother acknowledging it in any manner.
I don't know about that. I love when people leave positive and usefully critical comments on my work. I read them all and I find them useful.
Better photographers usually do find constructive criticism useful... that's how they've gotten to become better. It's the photographers who post the worst photos, or pictures that can definitely be improved, who are often defensive or ignore any sort of help that you try and give them.
Some people seem to feel cheated if they get a lower score (1 or 2) without an explanation to back it up. Most people probably aren't interested though, nor wish to hear a critique without asking for such. Either way, it feels like writing a comment isn't really worth the effort.
In their videos, they explain that 2's don't mean it's a bad image, just that it's not yet ready for a professional portfolio, like if there's too much highlight on the model's nose. We're programmed to think that 1-3 means bad because of the usual rating system for products, but that's not the case here. A rating of 1 just means that anyone who walked up onto that scene could've taken the picture, in my opinion, that no thought process or skill was needed. While you might think that would apply to all street photography, that's not true, as street photography evokes an emotion or tells a tale, much different than a snapshot style image. I'm fine getting 1s and 2s on my photos, because it makes me look harder at it and figure out what I could've changed. I know we all put our heart and soul into our art, and it's hard to see small numbers, and sometimes we need to take a step back and just be happy that we're able to physically do the craft at all.
That would be true in a real photography competition with real judges, but not here. A great image could most definitely get a 1 or 2 here, because anyone can vote, no matter their skill level. It means nothing.
To be clear, I agree with their rating criteria. I often give 2 stars for shots where the effort is there, but the flaws - such as poor cropping, unflattering expressions, or bad composition, etc. - keep it from getting 3 stars, which I give to shots that are technically skilled.
4 stars are for photos that show both technical knowledge AND good aesthetics.
1 star shots, though, are clearly snapshots that anyone could easily shoot with no skill, no thoughts about lighting, and no effort to properly compose. They're literally what billions of people post on their social media pages every single day, because they're simple function is to capture a moment; not create something worth framing or labeling as "art."
I've worked hard at creating the images I've posted. And while I can honestly say that they're not out of this world, 5-star, Getty Museum quality photos, they certainly are not snapshots that any moron with a camera could easily recreate. The lighting, exposure, composition, posing, expressions, and post work are worth at least 3 stars.
Yet, some people on here have given my photos 1 star. I think that takes a certain level of audacity, so I think it's only fair to ask anyone who gives any image 1 star to provide an explanation to justify that rating.
Critiques on 2 star images, I believe, would also help photographers improve their work by getting good feedback.
I'm along your lines, but my standard is 3 since 2.5 doesn't exist. If someone is mostly there, its a solid image to me. 2s are you're trying, but you're missing something major (eg. post processing, bad crop, missed focus, etc.). I rated all the images that have been submitted at the time of this post and handed out a few 4s, but didn't see any 5s.
I will also say, some of the best online critiques I've received is when my images have been picked for KelbyOne's Blind Critiques. I've submitted some images I thought were solid and have been torn to shreds, but I've also been praised for some of the images I've submitted.
Sorry but I don't agree at all. D you like receiving 1 and 2 stars from snappers that dont know how to use camera settings? Others that dont know what depth of field is and how to achieve it? Dont have a clue how to take an urban portrait using available light without staging, or positioning their model. Did you know that 80 percent of photographers dont know how to use manual on a camera these days? Thats why this type of so called contest means nothing to me. I would much prefer comments with no ratings, so newbies could ask questions.
I think both are good. However, if someone can't justify giving a photo a low rating and are basing their decision on the photo's content (e.g. Someone dislikes a photo simply because it depicts something like a politician, celebrity, style, religion, career field, etc.), then those ratings should be eliminated because they're not actually critiquing the photographer's art and skill.
For example, it's likely that I would never hang a piece or your art on my walls because it's not a style or subject matter that I particularly care for. Regardless, I would give pretty much every one of your images 4 stars or above because you're obviously both skilled and talented, and have really reached a level of mastery that most of us could never achieve in the graphic art department.
If there were flaws, then those images would likely get lower scores, but a supporting critique would give you insights on where those flaws are. That, in my opinion, helps all of us become better artists.
My point was, photography is a so called profession that anyone who buys a camera, without knowing anything about photography can push a button and now is called a photographer. They can post the outcomes on line to sell most anywhere. They can also vote in these types of contests without knowing anything about photography except how to push a button. That is why I dont take this type of contest seriously. 1s, 2s,3s,and 4s are all the same to me. I love my profession, but it has been decimated over the past 10 to 15 years. AI art takes more time and skill than that.
Don't you think between "good" and "museum quality" (whatever that means) there's a huge gap?
If 5 stars is an amazing photo and 4 just .. good... how come these good photos get just 3 stars here?
Where is very good? 4?
This is very subjective of course and you are trying to quantify something that is defined by anyone who owns a camera in the whole world.
And BTW 95% of all the photos here are mediocre, but when I see a good one, it has 3 stars, which means people have no idea what a good photo is, which is expected when you look at what photos they are posting!
It's like expecting from an autistic person to understand your feelings.
Yes Marian, but they (Lee and Patrick usually Lee) say the(y) 10 selections are based on entries with highest or top scores.
All and all why not spilt the difference and only have two ways to vote we have all witnessed the coliseum mentality of the community in these Critique the Community Monthly Competitions go basic 1 snapshot or 5 world class, or 2 needs work and 4 excellent. Patrick you have constantly stated you pick images from the highest rated yet you also talk of being aware that some members are attempting to beat or "game" the CTC which I interpret as it being askew and are aware of member unhappiness. But last month beats all Lees selection manly animals” because he’s on a wildlife HIGH beats all. “I’ve chosen a lot of wildlife images. I’ve kind of been on a wildlife kick recently. Come on hold your enthusiasm til the next animal/wildlife CTC Monthly Competition, not change the criteria in a current one.
Yeah, that got me. I shoot mostly birds and decided not to show any of my bird shots in the last contest because the judges always have something negative to say, like, "it would be good only if it was a rare bird," or "how do we know it's not a zoo shot," and suddenly most of those chosen were wildlife shots. Sigh... I admit to bailing on the video halfway.
Really funny coming from the guy who leaves rude comments without an explanation on why hes being rude. Cognitive dissonance
What are you talking about?? I explained what the flaws were in the photos I gave 1 star to. I'm not going to sugarcoat it for anyone, though.
They can either learn from it or keep repeating the same disservice to the people they photograph, who are probably too nice to tell them directly how much they dislike the way they look in the image. Doesn't impact me at all.
(Edit)
I just realized which comment you were talking about. It was a simple question; did you intend to create something that looks like a screenshot off a phone?
How is that rude or dissonant?
Dont sit there and act innocent. How else would anyone esle receive "so you INTENDED to do that??"
You leave comments that are loaded all while being upset that your photos are bad and are being judged as such. Noticed ive never complained about my rating. Just your audacity and then playing dumb.
Socrates once said, "A life not examined is not worth living."
Critiques are not are not a bad thing when they're coming from someone who knows what they're talking about. I never claimed that any of my work deserves 5 stars. It certainly doesn't deserve 1, though.
Take your hurt feelings out of this and you can probably see that. Then, look at your work and HONESTLY ask yourself, are YOU really in a position to call my work bad?
Yes, actually!
I do think that comments should be more towards helping others who want to learn, instead of boasting.
Do you think it really worth my time to explain to ppl how crappy their photos are? This is not a photography master class.
And on top of that to whom will it serve? Do they care? I'm sure not... most of them are in denial or delusional and will hate on you. I mean you can also be constructive insead of being rude, but still will not make a difference.
And why an explanation just for 1 star? Who validates if the explanation is logical or makes any sense?
Do you think ppl who create mediocre photography know how very well all the art principles and have a good insight into arts determined by a critical thinking?
If they'd have, they would be better!
How can you rate something if you don't have a high level of knowledge in the field?
The entire concept of contest by public vote is flawed.
The ratings are definitely low, but you can probably add 0.5-1 star on top of what you’ve got and that’s closer to the real rating. This competition always has low ratings but after a while you get used to it.
Ratings will always be a bit of a mixed bag, but the convo's been interesting to follow :) No matter who wins, someone’s always gonna be upset about it. Comes with the territory.
If this was Reddit, it would already be a flame war. I'm all for a good conversation, but not when it starts to degrade into bad behavior.
People complain about the rating system, but it has refined me. You really should just accept it as refinement. Ok, you don't understand why your photo has been rated by many as 1 or 2 stars? Well sometimes that has happened to me too. I've had a few like that. Often I just take it off the contest or the site, if it's just rated too low. But I do see it as a teaching moment. Instead of something to complain about.
Some have said people are just rating 'Good-Photos' poorly just out of spite, and they need to justify the reason for the low ratings. I'm not going to claim that 'spite' has never happened, but I don't feel this is what makes up for a lower rated photo.
Here's my further two cents: Particularly about portraits. The standard is just extremely high. Don't expect, just because you think you have a great looking shot, that 'raters' will think you have a great shot. Portrait photography as a business has people in it who think shots need to look a certain way, and your shot doesn't meet the criteria.
Let's talk about another controversial aspect: 'Subject'... Some said, that well they are just rating the 'Subject'. And honestly of course we ALL really are. Of course 'Subject' does play a part of the rating. I don't care if you don't think that is fair. I had this discussion on another board with a member that is no longer here. Here's an example: I won't refer to 'subject' in the context of 'Portraits', but lets say your subject is your 'Backyard' trashcan. This other member said he was going to take my challenge to make his 'backyard' trashcan interesting. None of the shots he tried of his backyard came back very interesting. He did try though, in some macro shots.
I have noticed there appears to be a lot of Voting before reading the Artist Statement.
You will alway get higher rating and feedback in your Gallery than in Critique the Community.
My entry for example:
2.52 -⭐ in Critique the Community
4 - ⭐in my Gallery
It's all about having a dog in the fight.
I've found the same... but there is an obvious reason for that. After being on this site a while you began to recognize more and more how your profile shots make it on others screens for others to rate: if you just post a shot. That shot does not necessarily come up for viewing... by many people. But slowly... as you gain followers. And someone likes a shot of yours. Then that shot will show up in the activity list. Then others will see it... it still get more exposure. My point is: with this method... you're bound to get more people in the "4+" like category.. rather than those that don't bother to click on it. Where as in a contest... All images are rated by 100s of users. If they are like me they click the button that says "not rated" and scroll to the right and rate and rate. What I'm saying is profile images may be gamed to the positive. 1) because you may have followers they are predicted to rate positively. 2) the people that click on profile pictures are taking the time to do so. Which could be positive.
Dean I totally agree and have experience the same. And I’ve been thinking for sometime the simplest and most fair to all would be is for the powers that been (Lee, Patrick and Fstopper IT staff) have the vote go through a bell curve algorithm that fairly brings down the 4,5, and boosts the 1,2, up and set 3 to a fair mid range score.
Or just do this for members the have a propensity to vote extremely high and massively low these days they could even figure the time someone votes upon view any giving image, being a quick low vote more rash than one that is studied and considered.
Many years ago I was heavily involved in PPA print competitions. I always saw it as kind of a peer review of my work, and it gave me a clear eyed look at what was strong and what wasn't. But they always were evaluated by photographers that had standing, and you didn't get to be a print judge just by saying you were one. (And BTW, for those of you involved in PPA print judgings, there is value in what they say. The mistake is in changing who you are to be who they are - and some judges, evaluators is really a better term, do want to make you like they are. And I did get my PPA Masters in five years, so I do have knowledge in that arena.) There was a criteria that had to be met, and for the most part they were good to very good, to even world class shooters. So what they said carried weight and had validity.
The problem with critiques here, and anywhere else on the interweb, in reality, is that no one commenting has to have any credibility, they don't even have to be a real person! The profile could be the actual person named, and it could be anyone masquerading as knowledgeable, or someone that just wants to be ugly to you, for whatever reason. So never take the comments anyone makes here as having any credibility. There's one guy that just wants you to crop tighter... doesn't matter what the image is portraying, or why, or what the maker of the image is wanting to say, or why. Just crop tighter - it's more a personal thing with him. Others want you to make your photographs more like his, or hers; and in all honesty the one doing that is usually a guy. So I ignore critiques, and on the rare occasion that I have tried to engage, or have a reasonable conversation, the commenter goes full ghost mode. I enter these things for the fun of it really, and I never take a commenter serious because they are probably incompetent themselves, and only try to magnify their photography by denigrating yours. Having said all that let me offer words. Never critique someone unless they have asked you to offer suggestions. If some boorish person gives a very unwanted opinion, to the degree you can, ignore them. There re obvious rookies, and obviously unknowledgeable people commenting. If you are wondering about the validity of their comments, go to their profile and look at their work. If it is quality, and if it rings true to you, then maybe pay attention. If you go to their profile, and there are no images, or if there is no profile, they are just a troll wanting attention. Sadly, I have fallen into the trap of replying to a person that had no images on their profile page, and I should have known better - I did know better - but I engaged anyway and it ended up in a very nasty argument; and you can't win those. So, words of experience.
I always look at the profiles to see if the commentors have actually uploaded any photos. The "crop tighter" guy hasn't (one of my entries had a "crop tighter" comment lol...which I do have a tighter crop, I just liked the one I uploaded). I'm not the greatest photographer, but nowhere near the worst, and can take criticism when its solid. But like you, I do this for fun. I'll leave a comment if I have something constructive to say, but outside of that I just try to rate people fairly.
After surviving FaceBook, and actually being kicked off for unscrupulous sales on FB Marketplace - which I have never bought, sold or listed there, but my profile was stolen - I learned to not offer an honest appraisal, or any appraisal that is unsolicited. So I may make an affirming comment comment, and often do. But in terms of telling people what they should or should not do, that just doesn't happen.
Probably the same guys of yesteryear who liked to she women squeezed into those sadistic corsets.
Not I that (the crop) is a personal decisions totally up to the photographer, alone. Though the crop tool is a viable tool, use it too much it becomes more of a crutch to someone wanting to advance their skills as a photographer. I just don’t believe in cropping although on very rare occasion I have used it myself when no other alternatives exist. I am more incline to mention to try and compose the photo tighter. Also I feel a photographer should learn to use a full range of prime lenses before buying a zoom lens.
This site offers a rating system, though. Isn't that in and of itself opening the door for critiques? Just my opinion, but I'd say if you post something here, then you have to be willing to hear the good, the bad, and the ugly.
When I first got into photography, I posted my earlier shots on Photosig.com. That site was all about critiques. At first, some of the critiques really stung. When I read the comments objectively, though, I found value in what was being pointed out, regardless of how blunt some of them were about it.
Today, I can look back at photos I shot 20 to 30 years ago and see how flawed some of the images that I THOUGHT were really good actually weren't. I've re-edited some of the shots, and found some that I thought were flawed but just needed better post work.
All that being said, I don't necessarily think that someone needs to be a master photographer to criticize my work. I mean, I'm no chef, but I'll still send a meal back if whoever cooked it did a poor job on it.
In my opinion, we improve by learning, we improve by trying again after we failed, and we improve by listening to the critics. We don't improve by blind praise from those who are more concerned about sparing our feelings than telling the brutal truth.
The current movie industry is a prime example of how quality deteriorates when critics are bullied into remaining silent. Disney has finally scrapped all but two of the upcoming Marvel movies it originally planned on producing. Had they listened to the critics years ago, they probably could have saved themselves a few billion dollars.
Personally, I WANT to improve because I eventually want to turn photography into a profession after I retire from my full-time career. So, I say be as brutally honest with me as you like. Leaving 1 star and no explanation (or even a snarky comment), though, doesn’t help me out one bit.
So, it's not a matter of taking it personally; it's a matter of wanting to find out what I might be missing. If the explanation is something like, "I just don't like cops" (referring to one of my photos in the contest), then that's not a ME problem; it's a them problem.
I hear that often, but if you read what I said it is utter nonsense that you would accept the comment from someone that just got their brand new CanoNikSony camera at WalMart and is now a "perfessional" with the same validity as you would from someone that has been doing this for many years and actually has credibility both in the work they do and in the technical parts of it. It isn't a matter of taking it personally, and how do you do that if you believe deeply in what you do and are doing? It's a matter of discounting plainly ignorant comments. I in no way want valid criticisms silenced. I do want the criticisms validated by the expertise and the work of the person doing the commenting. I would be fine if FS set it up so that an individual cannot comment until they have at least 5 or so images in their portfolio. But that's just me.
That wouldn't be a bad idea. If you don't upload images, you can't comment. The issue is, comments are part of engagement and the darn algorithms seek the engagement to push content in search engines.
So we can't critique movies unless we're an expert filmmaker? We can't critique music unless we're expert musicians? We can't critique any art form unless we're experts in said art form?
The audience, skilled or unskilled, also has input in my book. There's nothing nonsensical about that; the entire history of cinema and music up until this past decade or so is living proof of that. It's only in recent years that people started demanding we only say nice things and give everyone a participation trophy.
Input from experts is highly valuable and greatly appreciated. The audience perception, though, is also part of our reality. If the masses approve, then that's a good indicator someone is on the right track. It's how music has changed styles from jazz to rock, to punk, to alternative, to grunge, etc.
Now, if someone tries out an art form and neither the audience nor the experts like it, then maybe the "artist" needs to reassess their abilities.
No, but I would take more stock in a critique coming from you than some other photographers because of the quality of your work shows you know your way around a camera and lighting.
Nice to hear you give credit where you feel its due. That's rare these days here or anywhere.
Not being able to rate unless you have posted 5-10 of your images is good idea. You have to have some skin in the game. As in the movie, Jerry Magurie, "Show me the money!", the quote here should be "Show me your work"
Thank you. I appreciate that.