Swazi Lo-Fi
by ubique

Comment:
Thanks for those two links in your very generous comment, John. Should any other readers come this way, I commend the two linked articles in the daisydavid comment. Swaziland and its people are a beautiful, sad tragedy.

Kumartuli 001
by salmiakki

Comment:
An interesting photo essay in the classical, Nat-Geo style. So the images are largely about their subjects rather than about the photography, at least as a first impression. But a longer look discloses some very clever photographic choices that elevate without getting in the way.

Indian craftsmanship is quite good, but Indian art is universally awful. This is folk art, which is pretty awful world-wide I suppose, but even the 'high' art is painful in India.

It's an instructive and worthy photo essay. Thank you.

Found in a Wrecking Yard #1
by jomari

Comment:
I love found art. It's a transformative process that demonstrates the difference, or one of the differences, between an artist and a mere photographer. And genuinely transformative images of found objects are a bottomless well of wonder for the observer. It takes two gifts to do this stuff as well as you have: curiosity and imagination. And they are the only two truly vital, vital signs of an artist. For the record, my favourite of them all is #9, which becomes an abandoned space station, still silently circling a beautiful but chillingly silent planet. Our last moving artefact, it has become. A bloody beauty, mate. Thank you.

Found in a Wrecking Yard #9
by jomari

Comment:
Lost in Space! Beautiful. Thank you.

oof
by colorcarnival

Comment:
I had you as my No 1 pick in the challenge, and by a good distance too. Sorry I didn't comment earlier. We (and I mean the whole of humanity, if you don't mind the responsibility) desperately need more insurrectionist photographers. And less of the other kind too. But I don't expect you to actually exterminate any of the damn drones; just keep jamming their signals like this.

I don't like awarding post-challenge accolades (doesn't have the same integrity), but had I been paying attention this glittering Order of the Thumb would have been an automatic. So sorry for the belated award ceremony; the band's gone home, the bar has closed, and people are sweeping stuff up and stacking the chairs. But what can you do?

For aince it’s toomed my hert and brain, the thistle needs maun fa’ again.
by posthumous

Comment:
I don't know what to say. It seems like you're viewing yourself with a certain amount of Guinness-enhanced bravura, and I wonder if you shouldn't have been born as a sozzled Irishman instead of a gentleman Yankee. I think it's splendid to be so self-aware, and yet so apparently insecure at the same time. It teases out very attractive threads of consciousness that stay well knotted for most of the rest of us. Some of these pictures are quite brilliant, and some are clunkers when viewed in the unflattering light of the morning after. But for a modern iteration of Mr Leopold Bloom, that hardly matters ... he's described as a man of appetites, and this collection speaks of appetites, I reckon. But I give you only 50% as Leopold Bloom, and the other 50% is Ignatius J Reilly. These photographs as individual mug shots don't automatically implicate Bloom nor Reilly, but taken together as an essay they make the two fabulous identities jostle for pole position in your visual autobiography. I've stolen a picture (by Joyce himself) of Leopold Bloom for you. Ignatius we will leave aside, at the mercy of the caprices of his pesky valve.

Inbound
by Melethia

Comment:
Best wave photograph I've ever seen. Most of the also-rans in this genre were all about improbable colour and unrealistic detail. Yours is about impressionism. Movement. Sound. The ocean as a heaving creature. Which is what she is. Thank you.

greener
by bvy

Comment:
Just wonderful. It's so different, so unexpected. I'm not entirely sure what it might mean, but I do know what it represents, what it stands for ... a splendid tilt at the conventional follow-my-leader numb-nut mediocrity of contemporary digital photography. If I could give you the Don Quixote award I would do so, but all I have in the shop is this dusty old Order of the Thumb. Plus a 10 and a Muchas Gracias.

Childhood
by Neat

Comment:
One of the most beautiful photographs I've seen for ages. It's love of the photograph, it's understanding of the photograph as an object, is magnificent. I hope it gets the exposure that it deserves. Alas, I don't suppose it will. And this won't help much either ... an emphatic 10 and the mixed blessing of an Order of the Thumb. So sorry! But thank you.

Dice Fury
by colorcarnival

Comment:
This is a super-duper photograph. The lighting is just astonishing, and yet the immediate impression is to not even think about the lighting at all, which just goes to show how very good it is.

The car is 90% implied, the road is there but hardly so, the instrument console visible just enough to show you care , the fluffy dice are in motion ... and you (I'm assuming that's you) are locked in the motor-head zone ... plus just enough highlights from the windscreen frame, the mirror and the driver's knuckles. The reflected light on the face is perfect and looks 100% natural, though I suspect you've helped it out somehow?

This is a sensationally good photograph because it doesn't impose itself on the iconography. I'd happily throw this baby a double-six all day long, but alas I'm limited to 10, so please have that with my compliments. Plus an Order of the Thumb. Thank you!