Vivid-Memories_5252.110311
by mariuca

Comment:
Holy Mackerel! At first I didn't like it, until I did. And then I liked it very much indeed.

First impressions can be an unreliable guide. Mine of this was that it was a wildly over-processed picture of the side of an old sailing ship! All that standing rigging. But wait ... it's not that at all! How clever of you to produce a 'defaced' photograph of a violated surface (which I assume now to be a train window?). And the person reflected while reflecting is also superb. It's a great example of a very interesting picture that exceeds one's initial expectations. Thank you.

silence
by PennyStreet

Comment:
That's a beautiful picture of nothing much! Strange how those are often the most beautiful things, isn't it?

Pegasus Fogbound
by Bear_Music

Comment:
It is indeed pretty good 'film' grain, Bear. I enjoyed the 'inversion' of the tonal gradient in the reflection. That's easy to overlook, but very, very lovely!

by RKT

Comment:
Nice. Straight up: no mixers or ice. It's nearly always better that way.

And there came a fearful wind ...
by Melethia

Comment:
Good grief! It's lovely! And look at that beautiful face with the wind-whipped hair in the upper right quadrant, too. Congratulations, and thank you.

"Family" is a history of moments shared...
by Bear_Music

Comment:
All these flashy ribbons could redefine our relationship, R.
Just kidding: well done mate!

Reclination
by Paul

Comment:
My top choice, for being such a negligently beautiful, anti-photography photograph. It's part drawing and part kinetic sculpture. 10. Thank you. Plus an Order of the Thumb.

Mardy Bum
by Giles

Comment:
Top two. A scorching picture that skirts around my usual preference for non-contrived portraits by being a parody of itself. Something like Lou Reed: the parody and the reality are interchangeable, so equally valid. Thank you, and have an Order of the Thumb:

Flare Interrupted
by dmadden

Comment:
This is in my top three.

I short-listed 26 entries that interested me enough to want to look at them again (I gave them all a brief "Highly commended - 7" comment, if you want to identify them). Quite a few were arguably better photographs than this one technically, but this picture made my top-three cut because it is unapologetically different and authentic. It doesn't look like any other picture, and it doesn't even want to try to do so, and for me that's far more commendable than just doing something common uncommonly well!

Shooting into the light is difficult and unpredictable, and nearly always seems to produce various unexpected little graphic rewards: photographic birthmarks that some observers insist on seeing as blemishes (and so they'd clone them out or otherwise screw the thing up, or even more likely they'd avoid the contre-jour experience altogether). This picture is all the more lovely, and the more interesting, for its 'flaws'. It succeeds not in spite of, but because of, the limitations imposed by the way it was shot.

I know I'm laboring the point, but I reckon it's worth it. There are many superficially impressive pictures in this challenge, but the world is no worse off should they never have existed. They add nothing that we don't already have a tiresome surplus of. Your picture does add something we didn't have before, or at least that we didn't have enough of. Thank you. And please accept an Order of the Thumb.

one eight zero
by tome

Comment:
Highly commended. 7. Thank you.