Competitions

We were happily overwhelmed with the outburst of photographic creativity inspired by the ‘It takes two’ Photo Challenge. To the average person, ‘Diptych’ may just be a moderately useful Scrabble word, but for our photographers it was the impetus they needed to come up with an extraordinary variety of artistic juxtapositions. There is something special about the way two well-chosen pictures can exemplify the old cliche about the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. These pairings are each, in their own way, arresting. They make you want to linger for a time as you decode their respective stories.

The idea for this photo challenge came from photographer R. Ian Lloyd (see ‘Be Prepared’ in Photo Review 34). One of the very first challenges he faced as a young photography student was how to come up with a good picture of a humble egg. The difficulty factor of this apparently simple exercise was obviously pretty high, because we received fewer entries than usual. However, it was good to see that a hardy band of our most stalwart Photo Review Challenge lenspersons were undeterred by the complexity of rendering simplicity. It was a competitive group as you can see, but in the end we gave the nod to Craig Mitchell for seeing the shape of an egg in a most unexpected place.

We’ve posed some tough challenges over the last 30 issues, but judging from the number of entries we received, ‘the smallest room in the house’ must have been the most difficult yet. Still, whilst we didn’t get as many competitors as is usual, the standard of the submissions was uniformly strong. As many artists know, working on a small canvas with only a limited range of options often leads to more than usually creative expression.

The response to our Shadowland Photo Challenge was one of the most impressive we’ve yet seen. Choosing the winner was, as always, a great struggle. But in the end, we felt we had to give the nod to Damien Siviero for a picture he captured 10 metres below the sea in a cave near a spot known as Splendid Arch in New Zealand’s Poor Knight Islands. As you will see, this photograph was competing for first place not only with the rest of the field but with two other extraordinary images from Damien’s lens.

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.

PR30 Photo Challenge 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.

Our PR29 Photo Challenge 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.

For PR28 Photo Challenge, 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.

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 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.”