Photography forum image of the month April 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.

Rep­e­ti­tion in Mono­chrome by Casil403

This month’s choice is Rep­e­ti­tion in Mono­chrome by casil403.

I chose this image for sev­eral reasons:

Spot­ting the scene — Abstracts like this are often all around us, and the vast major­ity of us will never ever see them. Look­ing is not the same as see­ing. See­ing takes longer, it takes more time and more patience. Hats off to Casil for see­ing this fab­u­lous abstract.

Com­po­si­tion — Even though we are not sure what we are look­ing at, this abstract scene is very well com­posed and very delib­er­ate. Both the curved lines and the straight lines in this image intrigue and suc­cess­fully guide our eye through the image. The repet­i­tive qual­ity of the curves and lines is also very pleas­ing. In case peo­ple are won­der­ing what the abstract actu­ally is, Casil wrote …“it’s the reflec­tion of a sof­fit ceil­ing on a mir­rored pole.”

Post pro­cess­ing — Black and white was an excel­lent choice for this scene. The lack of colour empha­sizes the graphic qual­ity of the lines and pat­terns that we see. The tonal qual­ity of the scene (good rep­re­sen­ta­tion of tones) as well as the frame around the scene suits this image extremely well.

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 Casil for see­ing, cap­tur­ing and pro­cess­ing this won­der­ful find!