Photo Challenge winner: Film Noir

We were looking for darkly mysterious pictures that might easily have come from some long-lost 1940s movie and, as you can see, our Challengers obliged.

Robert Morgan’s photograph from the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin manages not only to look the part but to also not be disrespectful of its deeply sombre location. 

WINNER: Escape, by Robert Morgan
This image was taken at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. The photo opportunities are almost limitless. I went there three times in different light. This young man was hiding from his friend, but you can imagine something more sinister happening. Escape from…

Royce Holliday gave us two similar yet individually distinctive studies of thoroughly noir-esque Parisian streetscapes. And Ingrid Makowski has created a very cinematic scene around strong shadows and an intriguingly ethereal figure.

FIRST RUNNER-UP: Homage to Jean Rhys #1, by Royce Holliday

I ventured into the Paris streets one night to experiment with a diffuser filter on my Sony RX1 camera. I had no idea how it would turn out but, for me, it evokes a film noir mood. The halation effect around the street lights is, I think, reminiscent of early photography. I think a great deal can be read into this image.

In Jean Rhys’s novel, Good Morning, Midnight, she referred to “walking in the night with the dark houses over you, like monsters…” The novel is set in Paris.

SECOND RUNNER-UP: Homage to Jean Rhys #2, by Royce Holliday

The dimly lit window with the suggestion, perhaps, of someone lurking there, was unplanned; my attention was entirely on the couple as they walked into the light.    

HONOURABLE MENTION: She Haunts Me, by Ingrid Makowski

Susan Shanta, too, has composed one of her trademark little-world scenarios, appropriately spiced with noir visual references.

HONOURABLE MENTION: In The Shadows, by Susan Shanta

Robert has won a stylish Think Tank Retrospective ® Leather 5 Pinestone bag