grand illusions
by jagar

Comment:
This is my top pick; of all the many terrific pictures in this challenge, this is the one I'd most like to have taken myself.

On the superficial level, it employs most of my favourite things: B&W, deep contrast, mad vignette, grain. Plus some smaller sly pleasures ... the cloud poking in like the finger of God, and the shadowed profile at lower right, snooping on the conversation.

Scrape a layer deeper and the subtler delights include great blocks of shape and tone that introduce a nearly abstract motif. You could view it from far, far away and it'd still be interesting because of the purely graphic characteristics.

It's also something of an anti-photography photograph in the absence of any faces. We expect faces, expressions (think of selfies, and those pouty-face things). Instead we're left to draw those identities ourselves. We get to choose who the players are, and what's happening.

What I choose to see is two older couples sitting on a bench in an art gallery (apparently a cold art gallery), looking at a gigantic and brutal floor-to-ceiling modern artwork. And they are all glancing sideways at each other, hoping that someone will soon suggest moving to the gallery cafe for a cup of tea.

But I could be wrong of course. Maybe there is no gallery. No tea either. That's the great thing about good art; you imagine what it means, what it is, and you could be wrong. Imagine a world where all the art was so simple and unequivocal that the viewer could NOT be wrong. I wouldn't want to live there.

I offer you the first ever Order of the Blue Thumb, and my thanks for this thrilling photograph.

fleeting
by jmritz

Comment:
This is a wonderful photograph.

Viewed objectively, it looks like a hurried snapshot. But why view it objectively? Objectivity in art is a desensitiser; you prevent yourself from seeing the wood because you're too busy counting the trees, ticking the boxes, judging the work by some dispassionate external criteria of what's 'good'. All that leaden stuff about tilted horizons, tonal range, sharpness, etc, will take the resolutely objective viewer away from this picture, rather than toward it. And when that happens, the resultant 'failure' of the work is the viewer's fault, and not the artist's.

Instead get inside the picture and find out how it feels. It feels different, original, daring. And it's not as snapshotish as it first seems, either. The doors of the Lexus echo the great soaring arches and sweeping curves of modern architecture. I mean public buildings; nobody constructs buildings like that with their own money. Ordinary people, real people, grapple with that extravagant vanity ... just as we see with this lady, struggling to make it fit her, or her fit it. Struggling to make sense of it.

I'm being wildly fanciful of course, but wildly fanciful is what makes art of life, and life of art. This is both: life, and art.

Please accept the Curse of the Red Thumb, and my thanks for an original, interesting photograph.

the summer palace
by Tiberius

Comment:
I love this photograph because it's unresolved; there are many possible interpretations of it, and the answer can come only from each viewer, rather than something imposed by the photographer. For me it's like the first paragraph or two of a good suspense novel ... where you are taken immediately on to unfamiliar ground; where your preconceptions and prejudices as a reader (or in this case viewer) are challenged. Where the bounds of your personal comfort zone are immediately tested. You feel the sand shifting a little under your feet, and scramble for a grip on what's happening, what's already happened, what's about to happen.

There's no good reason why a photograph should not make the viewer feel slightly uncomfortable, and the most ambitious and lastingly interesting photographs do so.

I like this because it's not like a million other photographs. Why get yourself a camera and then make only pictures that are familiar, comfortable, and terminally boring? Pictures that can be absorbed and understood in a second or two? Pictures of which the only thing a viewer can think to say is "Nice", or "Soooo beautiful". Why not instead do as you have here and make something of substance? Something original, and durable?

On the technical side, your photographic craft is excellent; good exposure, nice tones, blah, blah, blah. But you can buy a camera and lens that does all that stuff quite automatically and consistently. You can't buy a camera that has an auto-interest setting, nor a significance-bracketing dial. That part is all you, and can't be bought at all.

Superb photograph, incisively seen and well executed. A yellow thumb is yours. Slip it under the short leg of a wonky table and you'll thank me one day. As I thank you now for this terrific photograph.

goddamn the man
by Diuk

Comment:
I really love this minimalist style of photography (actually, also of art generally, of cuisine, of music and just about everything). There's something in it that reveals essentials by excluding what doesn't matter so much. Here we have extravagant contrast, and suspension of all photographic subtlety. And it works beautifully for me. I'm also very keen on harsh crops, and on juxtapositions of person with urban spoor (spoor = tracks, artifacts, so I refer to the signs).

Here's a small thing that's actually big ... if it were not for the reflected light on the spectacles, the picture would be diminished. That light elevates, because it confers character somehow, at least in my fevered mind.

As a photograph it's more like a cartoon or caricature than a fully realised image. But I mean the good kind of cartoon, like a scintillating political cartoon in a newspaper. Something that distills a complex idea down to its essence, with amazing (yet generally unnoticed) economy of rendering.

I would not want every photograph to look like this, but I would be disinterested in photography if at least some didn't. We're all better photographers for seeing and appreciating elegant economy of expression of this standard.

It's also graphically, compositionally, very interesting. Negative space isn't merely blank or unused space; it has a purpose. It's part of what the picture is, not what it isn't.

I fling a pulsating yellow thumb at your feet, and hope that it may light your way through this darkness. Thank you.

A Sense of Direction
by Yo_Spiff

Comment:
I am a committed fan of pareidolia. But that's not enough to get a picture across my finishing line and onto the podium. It's got to be more than just a happy coincidence; something with a further dimension. And this one is. How lucky you were to find the looming face being oriented by the spray painted directions? Unless you spray painted them yourself, in which case it's instead how naughty, but clever? But I proceed on the assumption that it's all objet trouvé.

I suppose some would think pictures like this a bit trivial; just a gimmick and not 'serious' photography. I mean, you just walked along, saw it, stood in the obvious place, and took a shot. Surely anyone can do that? But photography is exactly that; being there, recognising what you see, and then using a camera. Most camera owners start with the third of those, and then try to incidentally add the other two. But that's ass-backwards. And the result is far too many very skilled photographs of nothing.

So I like this because it's about why we take photographs; to assay our imagination, and to stick out our tongues at the world.

I smash a yellow thumb across your bows, and I thank you and all who sail with you.

Macy's Parade
by markwiley

Comment:
Excellent street photograph, made better for me by your insurrectionist crop of the guy with the phone. And there's the smoking girl contrasting with the bride. And it's black & white. And (one more) I like how the centre is nearly blown out, creating a great swoosh of energy almost blowing the picture apart. This'll get a crap score, but not from me. I think it's terrific, and interesting, and thought-provoking. It also illustrates the fundamental difference between a photographer and a photography enthusiast quite nicely. You're a photographer. Thank you.

No title
by Sisto

Comment:
Not my cup of tea and yet, and yet ... it's wonderful, and just goes to show that I know nothing. Or what I think I know is nothing, and what I don't know is something! Confused?

It's a lovely, deeply satisfying photograph. Absolutely perfect composition, so elegantly judged that it's quite unimpeachable on that score. The colours are glorious. And the contrast (I mean the figurative contrast, not the photographic one) between the delicate spray of the leaves and the bluntness of the streaked wall is ... no other or lesser word will do ... beautiful. I also like very much the suggestion of a distant skyline beyond the wall: it looks like a ruined or ravaged place over there, at least in my imagination, and that gives context to the foreground wall. Interesting (and humbling) photograph that I admire very much. Thank you.

ubique in tenebras cordis
by Bear_Music

Comment:
Well of course I love it because it's dark, it's weird to the point of madness, and it's got gorgeous Gothic tones. It's impossible to resolve comfortably; in fact discomfort is its middle name. And the older I get the more I look like Brando's Kurtz. And finally I really love sly titular allusions, as you obviously must have noticed, so it's a pretty good fit all round. Thank you.

you first
by LevT

Comment:
Just bloody fabulous! Such an interesting, amusing, real life photograph. I love shadows, and I love juxtapositions, and this is a classic in that quirky genre. How can we not imagine that upper shadow to be a huge mechanical dinosaur? Or perhaps an alien, sizing up a potential abduction. And the postbox (is it a postbox?) is animated into life as well. It stands tight lipped, hoping to be invisible, waiting for the strike from above. The human victim is blissfully unaware, and sees nothing. Happily, you did see. It's terrific. Thank you.

Sand and light
by hajeka

Comment:
I usually flick past landscapes, but not this one. The sensual mood that you have created/captured is remarkably beautiful. Most landscapes are static; they just lie there looking spectacular like a supermodel on a pool lounger. But yours is dynamic, and that makes all the difference for me; in yours the supermodel is scratching her ... let's say her ear. That is, there's something interesting going on. The sense of movement, the dance between sand, air and light, is gorgeous. I think this photograph will go very close to the blue ribbon, and if it does I would not quibble one bit. It may not be my preferred cup of tea as a genre, but it's undeniably lovely, stimulating and interesting. Thank you.