Body parts

This is much more reportage in its interpretation of body parts. What I like most is the way that not everything is shown, having the key elements cropped to the edge of the frame and leaving you to make up your mind about the rest of the story. There’s a narrative tension and drama provided by the cross wrapped around the fingers. The crop is brilliant – you see the person kneeling out of shot, and a tiny bit of what you think is a grave stone, which on reflection looks like it might be made out of wood. Without the foot on the left hand side you’d have no idea that the person on the right is kneeling too. It’s a timeless reportage image.

This is a great silhouette image – full of fun and very dynamic. I like that there is no white in it – just blacks and greys. Much more interesting. The sand kicking up is nice and adds a little depth to the monotone, two dimensional form. My one issue with it is that it has all the body parts in it! For this reason I felt it wasn’t quite on brief, so it hasn’t been given an award, but a great image.

Babies hands and feet are so appealing, and for good reason they’re a popular subject for photographers and we had a few submitted of this type for the contest. It’s a lovely image, but probably more of a personal image and one for the album. It’s less likely that it will have success in a competitive environment due to the fact that similar versions will be presented alongside it, and I felt that I was looking for more originality in the shots that I gave awards to.

This is my winning shot, and I think it’s exquisite. Simple, strong, tonally gorgeous, everything that a great photo can be. It’s the classic, ethereal looking upwards that gives a sense of looking into the future, looking ahead. It’s almost a silhouette but has just enough detail and definition in the face. Less is more.

This is one of my favourite shots of the contest, and it only just missed my top 10. There are different levels to it. There’s a tension in the image between the fingertip on the white highlight, then the two sets of feet above the hand. Its an image you can look at and see more each time you look at it, all the time wondering where it is, when it is, and what’s going on – it’s intriguing. I love the strong graphic blackness to everyone that’s human in there. And the strong lines on the floor add to the strong overall composition. If I was being critical I’d say that I think a little of the left hand side of the image could be cropped out, and it would tighten the composition a little.

This shot was voted highly by the crowd, as was the shot of the polar bear’s paw by Thistledown54, both of which share broadly the same theme. They both have a great sentiment behind them, and are very emotionally engaging. Technically this shot is very well done – crisp focus, good exposure, shot at just the right moment. I puzzled over why I hadn’t given it a commendation, and I think it comes down to a feeling that it’s a shot I could have seen before, and which makes quite a populist appeal to our heartstrings. But that’s just my response to the image, and I can also see why it’s been rightly appreciated by the crowd.

This isn’t an image that you would think of when you set a contest about body parts, and that’s one of the things that makes it so attractive to me. I love that the plane is sharp and the hand out of focus. It’s not an easy image to set up, if in fact it was set up at all, but it tells a fantastic story that we all know - of waving a traveller goodbye. It’s an original and iconic image that you might well not have seen before. The fact that the airliner’s livery is the same colour as the sky adds to the graphic strength of the shot, with only really three colours represented in the image.

This has got a great sense of humour, and it’s classically British, with the flying ducks. I love the muted colour range and the beautiful colour palette, which emphasise the lovely, alabaster skin tone on the legs. Its cleverly pitched, combining both a sexual connotation, a sort of tongue-in-cheek pin-up feel, with a sense of humour that slightly defuses that sexuality. It’s also not too perfect, not too staged which I like – it has a sense of realism, its not overly lit, the angle of the shot is a fraction off. A simple shot, graphically strong, perfect execution of body parts. Difficult to pull-off, but it’s done well.

There were many shots of eyes in the contest, but this one jumps out for me. The depth of focus, all of about 2mm, is perfect. There’s a strong story within here, provided by the reflection in the eye, and you start to imagine that you can see what the eye is looking at. It’s crucial that the reflection is of something real, and not just a studio softbox. The shot is tonally beautiful, and I like that there is almost no pure white in the shot – I prefer this approach to black and white photography. If you’ll excuse the pun, I find the shot extremely eye-catching. The one thing I would change here is to tidy up the pale fleck of white above the eyelash, so that your eye isn’t drawn to it.

These are human forms, although not necessarily human. I’m a big lover of mannequins, and the way that we depict human form with them, so I’m attracted to this image. I love the two different skin types represented – you rarely see both black and white mannequins together. It gives a good yin and yang contrast to the image, and almost a yin and yang composition too. The colours are nicely muted. And there’s the impression of a story behind this image - are they a part of some unusual collection of mannequin pieces somewhere? You ask yourself what is the reason for these two objects existing together at all?

I love this picture. Where can I start? The tension of the fingers is beautifully balanced with the large expanse of blue. There’s a hidden story that you can make up yourself – somebody looking like they’re trying to climb over the wall, that they’re stuck behind the wall. The fact it looks like a child’s hand makes it even more powerful. And the colour tones are beautiful, with only really 4 simple colours in there. There are marks on the blue wall, but I don’t think you’d want to start cleaning them in Photoshop – its better to leave them in. Great shot, well done.

I thought I’d be a bit controversial with this one. I like reportage, and part of reportage is showing it how it is, and this is perfect for that. It’s gory, gritty, and like a car crash, you can’t not look at it. Proper real! I suppose that you could say the choice of black and white removes you one step from the reality. Not for the faint hearted, but I like it.

I love this shot because again it’s not an obvious body part. It’s just using a body part as a surface. In a way it’s how I would have liked to see some of the nudes done in the contest – more abstract and less obvious. I’m guessing that it looks like a stomach and a piece of melamine shelf, and why not? It’s almost a sort of sculpture with a bit of a human body and a piece of wood. It feels inventive to me and well worth a commendation