Competitions

Photo Challenge 23 was another in our series of challenges that ask you to look anew at some part of daily life. The only travel it required was a trip to the dinner table.

Photo Review Challenge 19 was to capture a subject reflected in water or on a wet surface. We complicated matters by adding that we didn’t want to to see the subject itself, just its reflection. That narrowed the field a bit, but happily posed no problems for our talented contributors.

Our challenge for this issue was to seek out something old, yet small enough to be carried by a person. We wanted to see what interesting textures and colours talented Photo Review Challenge-takers could find in their subjects. Once again, as the photos reproduced here show, we were not disappointed.

The challenge we set in our June-July 2005 issue was easy: take an interesting picture within 15 minutes of waking up. It’s tough to be creative so early in the day, but our Photo Challengers were up to the mark in their usual style.

Challenge 18 was to get down low and to shoot upward. Peter Cook, our winner, went lower than any of the entrants in his search for an interesting angle.

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.