Competitionby
GabrielComment: This is roughly something I posted elsewere about this image.
Personally I was one who gave it a 10. For me it was the most enjoyable and thought provoking image in the challenge, far better than a lot of the frankly not so great 'obvious' sports shots.
It reminded me of a lot of the Suprematism work of Kasimir Malevich, famous for his black squares on a white canvas and other such derided 'nonsense'. Yes it looks like a joke. But there is a serious meaning worth studying behind his images and I found something similar in this grey square.
DPChallenge is a team sport - people easily identify with their own team - Canon, Nikon etc. The forums are often full of this. The carefully matched grey square to the background brought this forward in my mind, along with the title of 'challenge' The simple bounding box between the image and the site demarked the space and all in all, this shot gave me a whole lot more to think about than any other. So the picture represents team sport, and also action, given that it is part of a live challenge.
The fact that you may or may not have entered it with any of this context doesn't matter either. We don't get to know intent or see details while voting. The entire field of deconstructionism is all about any viewer having at least as valid an interpretation of a work as the creator has, and in this case, my interpretation was worth a 10. It was by far and away the one shot I looked at for the longest time. It was certainly the best in my opinion. It is entirely in topic. It was the most enjoyable, stimulating and thought provoking image in this challenge, for me.
a random black rectangle with no thought would probably not have stimulated these ideas in my head - this more carefully constructed entry did.
Photographer found comment helpful.
