Today is a new month which means Fstoppers has a new Critique the Community contest! For the month of August, we want to see your best images featuring soft lighting. Anyone can enter up to 3 images with details below!
This month we want to focus on one of the most important aspects of photography, lighting! For the August 2025 edition of Critique the Community we are asking to see your best images featuring soft lighting. Soft lighting is often described as having gentle, diffused shadows with gradual transitions between light and dark areas. Soft lighting is often less vibrant and shows less contrast when compared to direct, hard lighting. Your soft light images can be completely naturally lit or perfectly crafted in the studio using flash, and any genre of photography is acceptable including landscapes, portraiture, weddings, still life, and conceptual photography. Each community member can submit up to 3 images for this contest.
Rules
- All images must be submitted from now until August 30th at 11:30 PM Eastern Time.
- Every image submitted must include a short story on how you took the photo, what were the challenges, how you used natural or artificial lighting, what gear you used, and any other interesting insight on the image itself. Photos that do not include some backstory on how it was taken will not be picked to be featured in the Critique the Community episode.
- Each image must primarily feature soft lighting in some way. There can be other forms of lighting included but the overall theme and mood of the image must be soft.
The top 3 images win!
This month we are rewarding the top 3 winners with a full photography tutorial from the Fstoppers Store (Prize value $300)
Good luck to everyone who enters and we look forward to seeing the best soft light photos from the Fstoppers Community!
Featured Image by the talented Irina Jomir
I am excited to see everyones work. Soft light is really difficult for me so it will be great to watch others fantastic work!