Photography forum image of the month — January 2012

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.

And miles to go before I sleep… And miles to go before I sleep by jumpinjimmyjava

This month’s choice is (Click to see the larger ver­sion of this image) And miles to go before I sleep… And miles to go before I sleep by jumpinjimmyjava

I chose this image for sev­eral reasons:

1 — It tells or sug­gests a strong story & Com­po­si­tion — The title of the image is a well known phrase from a poem that many of us stud­ied in High School (Stop­ping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert frost). Just read­ing the title helps to sup­port this image and veers our inter­pre­ta­tion of it in a cer­tain direc­tion both with visual and the­matic ele­ments. I love the posi­tion of the man in this image. It’s close to the edge but not quite at the edge. This adds ten­sion to the image and helps sup­port the theme that “there’s still work to be done”, it’s not over just yet) .The win­try scene also sup­ports the theme of a per­son in their sun­set years but the image is bright, not dark, again sup­port­ing a the­matic element.

I like the lay­ered aspect of the image where the bot­tom of the image is darker than the rest. The mid­dle part of the image shows lines mov­ing from right to left. The top part of the image shows more sky and is dis­tinct from the other 2 parts of the image. These ‘divi­sions’ or lay­ers as I like to call them add visual inter­est to the image. Our eyes like them.

2 — Colour — The sub­tle colour palette in this image works very well for me, the colours are very har­mo­nious. For me they are calm, well cho­sen colours. The blue of the jacket stands out really well against the white and brings our full atten­tion to the focal point of the image. In addi­tion, the blue of the jacket is com­pli­mented by other sub­tle blue tones in the image, again help­ing to cre­ate the over­all visual harmony.

3 — Post pro­cess­ing — This image is a com­pos­ite of sev­eral images or tex­tures. I don’t know exactly how many but I’d say at least 3 (the snow flakes, the man, the win­try land­scape). Either way the blend­ing of the images is well done to my eye and each part of the image com­pli­ments the other parts.

And the whole image, is greater than the sum of its parts.

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 jump­in­jim­my­java for cre­at­ing this won­der­ful themed image!