Photography forum image of the month February 2011

Every month on our pho­tog­ra­phy forum mem­bers nom­i­nate images that they like. Then at the end of the month I choose an excel­lent image and talk about why it rocks. The photo I choose is not nec­es­sar­ily the best one of the month. I’ve come to real­ize it’s not really log­i­cal to pit images from totally dif­fer­ent gen­res against each other. That’s why there are cat­e­gories in photo con­tests. I just choose a photo that has extremely strong ele­ments that we can learn from.

Junk Yard Cat by Barefoot

This month’s choice is Junk Yard Cat by Barefoot

I chose this image for sev­eral reasons:

Mood — Light­ing — This image has a great mood due to the won­der­ful light­ing. The light­ing is on the low key side and it’s totally work­ing for me here. Even though the light­ing is low-keyish there’s still quite a bit of deli­cious shadow detail.

Good sug­ges­tion of a story — This is also related to the mood but it looks to me like this car is in an old garage or barn. The car is also way old with loads of rust but it still serves a pur­pose, it’s not dead yet. It serves as a poten­tial favourite rest­ing spot for the cat.

Sub­tlety — Mys­tery — Sur­prise — I love the fact that my eye did NOT go straight to the cat in this shot and this is due to the fact that the bright cir­cu­lar thing on top of the head­light at right is the first thing we look at. I love that. Had the cat been brighter, the shot would have been more about the cat and our eye would have gone straight for the cat. This way, we get a bet­ter sur­prise when we notice the cat.

Com­po­si­tion — I dig the repeat­ing cir­cles and lines in this image as well as the point of view from which the image was taken.

For all these rea­sons, this is my choice for image of the month. Since we all have opin­ions, some mem­bers may dis­agree with my choice. That’s cool but THIS thread is not the place for debate over my pick, NOR is it the place to fur­ther cri­tique the image. The pur­pose here is to sug­gest strong ele­ments in the photo that we may learn from.

Con­grats again Bare­foot for see­ing and cap­tur­ing this won­der­ful scene!