Walk the dogby
bstansfieldComment by ubique: This is the outstanding entry in the challenge: the most ambitious; the most thoughtful; the most photographically accomplished.
I know there will be many who’d disagree in particular with that last point, but the anarchic nature of the photography here (it’s what I’d call an ‘anti-photography’ photograph) is beautifully judged for its purpose. It’s an image that scoffs at the sacred cows of composition – there’s no mindless genuflecting to the leaden bloody Rule-of-Thirds here! It also positively revels in its unruly colour balance. And it cares not a jot about its wilfully delinquent geometric distortion. It even says a big
foc-u to focus, at least in the wretched ‘tack-sharp’ sense.
And all these lovely Rabelaisian rebellions actually work perfectly together to establish the suggestion that this photograph is merely a premonition of
another moment that’s just about to happen â€Â¦ and we can also sense that something
else will happen after that too, as a result of the first something. The point of this photograph, in my view: I think it̢۪s about consequences.
The girl confronts the choice of walkways with a small act of bodily distortion, as if trying to divine the way with her elbows. Thus everything here – the roads, the walkways, the building facades, the traffic, even her forearms – all of it intersects at her perception. She will soon choose. Left or right? Red or yellow? But maybe not wrong or right â€Â¦ there may be no wrong or right path, in which case it is probably best to do as you suggest in your title, and go with the dog. Dogs have very good instincts, and they seldom fret about consequences.
It occurs that some may be sceptical about whether this is really shot through a shop window, but if so I hope they will not waste energy on that irrelevancy and instead use it to appreciate this super-duper photograph, to which I award the Order of the Thumb (and thus the kiss of death, alas):
Photographer found comment helpful.