Mark

Our freeze-frame photo challenge proved very popular indeed. While it’s difficult to choose a winner and runners-up from so many strong entries, we’re pleased to have the ‘problem’. In the end, three striking images from Melissa Grimley caught our collective eye, and we’ve decided to give her balletic ‘white man trying to jump’ the winner’s guernsey. She writes: ‘These photos were taken one sunny late afternoon of my brother and a mate whilst they were “mucking about” at a local park with a skateboard and playing one-on-one basketball. The photos were shot with a Canon EOS 300D with a 17-40mm f4 L lens at shutter speeds between 1/1000th and 1/1600th of a second to freeze them in mid-action.’ has won a Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop Executive Edition.

Photo Challenge 28 seemed simple on the surface. We asked photographers to do something interesting with a tree or trees. It is surprisingly difficult to see such a commonplace object in a new and fresh way, but see it thusly our winner and runners-up most certainly did.

Asked to do a bit of roadwork, our photo challengers responded with enthusiasm and creativity. The brief was to create images that somehow conveyed the spirit of ‘the long and winding road’. Once again the judging task was not an easy one, but in the end we had to go for Adam Donnelly’s moody study.

For Photo Challenge #26, we asked photographers to respond with images that somehow conveyed the idea of taking flight. And, as always, our Photo Challengers were up to the task. Our winning image comes to us from Rebecca Cover who has managed to capture her daughter and the family blue cattle dog mid-bounce as they run off to play. We’re pleased to be sending Rebecca a copy of Adobe Photoshop Elements.

Our Photo Challenge 27 was simple enough – namely, to capture a musical performance. We decided to give the winner’s guernsey to Mat Moore for his untitled but interestingly complex study of a musician and his audience of one [right, and larger image below]. It’s a very nicely composed image, with an intriguing visual tension between the two subjects.

The challenge to photograph a special place at a special time turned out to be rather popular. Our winner is a simple and pleasantly mellow image taken by Curl Curl, NSW’s Caue Mello. “The daily walk on the park (Curl Curl). It seems that even Roxy (the dog) got impressed with the sunset.”

Arguably the most popular subject for pictures, sunsets are inherently photogenic. But their beauty seems to dazzle many photographers into forgetting about the rest of the frame.

The Challenge: Photograph a sign which says something more than it’s meant to in the context of its surroundings…Treat it as an exercise in visual postmodernism or play it for laughs, but the trick with this one will be avoiding cliches.We’ll be looking for a certain subtlety of vision.