Architecture at Night (Exteriors)

This tight-frame view of several buildings in Shanghai provides a good balance between lightness and darkness, and variations of architectural styles. The darker foreground building (punctuated by the bright orange interior lights), neatly juxtaposes the more orderly background buildings. These have little spikes of interior lights and reflections which add to the depth of information.

A wonderful balance of lightness, darkness, colour and tight composition. Our eye is drawn to the brightness and warmth of the contemporary building in the background – beautifully offset by the cool, blue sky. The minimal, consistent lines of each floor is flecked by sparkling interior lights. Then we jump to the foreground building. An older style, we see the line of lights that grab our initial attention and then we look harder at darker tones of the shadowed recessed windows, which combine to create a darker, more menacing impression. Collectively, it is a wonderful conflagration of differing artifical and glooming daylight, juxtaposed architectural styles. At once bold and subtle, it is a worthy winner of this competition.

The architecture, London's South Bank Centre, has this wacky colour scheme that combine wonderfully with the stripes of passing vehicle lights. I like the amount of roadway within the frame. This highlights that architecture includes anything that is built. The soft, puffy clouds in the background sky offset the hard edges of the buildings and road.

All lines lead to the centre of frame, where we see a suburban or semi-rural cottage, lit by an out-of-frame artificial light source (presumably an ordinary street lamp). Little else is clearly visible, save the aforementioned street curb lines and adjacent property wall. The background is the sky. The twilight providing a deep coolness to offset the subtle warmth of the principal subject. This photograph is an excellent example of how carefull balance of remnant daylight and oddly cast artificial light, can create an image of a scene that expands our understanding of everyday places.

The tight composition provides three bands of architectural information. The central band reveals four or five storeys of a building's stairwell. One level is fully lit and we see a figure ascending with head bowed. It is a story of the solitary nature of the city, of contemporary architecture, and the relationship of this to the human condition. This is a different photographic approach to many others. Controlled and with an underlying conceptual framework – a refreshing variation of approach.

A classic cityscape of a famous city with its most famous building at its centre. Everything is perfectly balanced: the central positioning of the Empire State Building, the rule-of-thirds ground to sky ratio, the darkening skies holding rich colours, and the brighening artificial lights of downtown Manhattan. Perfect.

Generally, when photographing architecture at "night", it is best to make your exposures whilst there is still remnant tones in the twilight sky. Doing so helps to offset the architecture against the background (before it goes black), and provides an alluring contrast of cool to (usually) warm artificial lights taking over. This photograph counters this consideration. The architecture is rendered light against dark, and the black sky provides space for the sharp spikes of light beams from the overhead street lamp.

One of the few photographs in this competition that successfully work exclusively with artificial light at night. We see enough of the elevated roadways to understand what our subject is. The light at road level falls randomly below to ground level where the camera is positioned. The composition is good: we look at the brightest features, then explore everywhere else. What elevates this is the pall of fog that sweeps the scene (I note that this perhaps has been added in post-production – if so, it has been done thoughfully).

I really like this photograph. The subject is a nondescript corner of suburbia. Basic, everyday materials: timber fence, bricks, pavers, sand. Lit by artificial light from at least two directions, our eye jumps to every corner to fully grasp the scene and its significance. The colour palette are muted greens, yellows and browns, which compliment the ordinariness of the subject. The composition is a perfect example of edge-of-frame (with enough information to think what is beyond the understated subject matter). An ordinary place has been elevated through a moody, quirky rendition to something far more surreal. Wonderful.

Twilight is closing in. The sky is nearing complete darkness, but enough lingers to help offset the striking triangular shapes extending from the building's body. This oddness of this building's design has been accentuated by the moody evening light and sharp spikes of artificial light taking over. Collectively, this creates a surreal, science fiction feel.

Excellent timing for this photograph. There is a wonderful balance between the tones and hues of the remnant sky and that of the river. The sky is foregrounded by the hard-edge shapes and twinkling light so the cityscape. The river (taking up two-thirds of the frame), has dark, crumbling shapes of old pier stumps. These lead our eye deeper into the frame. The overall muted hues add to the gloomy feel.

A perfectly composed one-point perspective view (the horizontal and verticals lines neatly parallel to the frame), cleverly balances the gridded nature of the photograph's subject – the windows of a nondescript apartment building. I like the balance of the lit windows scattered across the elevation, and the variations of each. It is both architectural and voyeuristic. We consider the building design and the activities of the people within.

The balance of lightness versus darkness between the sky, cityscape, roadways and water is very good. The glowing full moon provides the finishing point of focus for our gaze. But, there is still much detail to examine and appreciate. The darkness has not yet fully engulfed the view. Getting this balance is very important for such a scene.