Dear Forum Members

Here are the results of the Forum’s May photographic competition.

This month the theme was “Colour” and on reflection I think this is a much harder round than I thought it would be. Why? Well, when you have to interpret the word ‘colour’, I think there is a propensity to try and capture a subject that is colourful or one that has striking colours. Of course this makes perfect sense, but I wonder if sometimes in keeping one’s mind so focussed on colour we have forsaken subject, shape and reason. In essence, the picture must always work as an artistic composition in its on right, regardless of the subject. Having said that, there are some truly nice pictures entered this month and of course, I have to stress that the judging of this competition is all about my taste and views — as we all know photography is very subjective. Lastly, it is great to see so many entries and a big well done to everyone who came to play.

This time I have chosen four Highly Commended’s and one outright Winner. They are as follows:

Highly Commended: AGW — Blue Star

This looks more like a piece of graphic art rather than a conventional picture and I salute the observation of AGW in isolating the subject from its environment and knowing what it would look like when cropped. I particularly like the angle from which the image is taken — the shadow on the underside of the star gives a three-dimensional effect. The only fly in the ointment is the spike rising from the apex of the star — but I have chosen to ignore it!

Highly Commended: Datawise — Colour Yellow

A beautiful, simple, clean and striking flower image. Very powerful. There were a lot of flower shots and many of them were really great, but this one just kicked bottom in my view. The fact that it faces the viewer full-on, is almost intimidating — a challenge.

Highly Commended: Scphoto — Rock Rose

This is an intriguing image. The uneven backlighting adds to the drama and again this image has a three-dimensional aspect. The petals look like paper and I think the stamen has been well-placed to the upper left of centre.

Highly Commended: Jchrisc — Eschscholtzia California

This feels peaceful and the composition grows nicely from the where the eye falls on the bottom right to the to top left. I love the fact there are only two colours — orange and green. It feels very peaceful.

Winner: Samsam — A Colourful View

Regular AP Forum competition entrants will know that often I will award joint winners, but this month Samsam’s picture is just so good that it just stood out from everything else. I would be interested to know how this image was captured and how much of it is a result of manipulation — but does that matter? I think its all about the end result. I love the viewpoint — very much like the opening credits of a James Bond film with the sweets replacing 007 and positioned just to left of frame. I also think the positioning of the sweets moving out into the distance and the placement cap is very nicely done.

Conclusion:

Lastly, this month we have a new award — the ‘Great Minds Think Alike’ Award, which goes to Stockwell and Prethero for both utilising an ‘ink in water’ theme. So there we go another month bites the dust and yet more great images posted by the AP forum. The next theme is Wildlife and I see that you have already started posting, so I’ll look forward to judging those at the end of the month.

All the best

Garry C-W