Chains

Focusing on an underwater anchor chain gives your photo a very original take and different perspective on the challenge. You’ve made good use on the expanse of the blue water and the addition of the submerged boat neatly completes your narrative. It’s usual to see water reflections at the bottom of a photo but what makes your shot unique is seeing the reflection at the top of your submerged composition.

This is an extremely powerful political photo using chains to express the horrors of a Cambodian prison camp. Blending the face of Bou Meng (one of few prison survivors) within the chain links personalises his ordeal giving the image its strong sense of imprisonment. It’s very hard for people living in a civilised society to imagine the torture and murder of 20,000 human beings, but your unique composite goes a long way to highlight the grotesque inhumanities that unfortunately go on in our world.

At first glance this looked like miniature toy soldiers hanging from a piece of string but on closer inspection one can see they’re real soldiers. They are six commandos performing an attacking manoeuvre whilst dangerously dangling from a helicopter’s swinging rope. The human chain is a very original interpretation of the brief and one I was pleased to see entered into the challenge. You could have positioned your soldiers anywhere within your minimalist photo but, just like the soldiers, you elected to go straight down the middle.

I like that if one was to see this photo out of the context of a chain photo competition one might struggle to know what it was. Because of the unusual angle the gradually diminishing images become a landscape of unidentifiable objects. To my mind they resemble a herd of tightly-packed animals. The individual skin tones could be the backs of wildebeests feeding in the Serengeti or a flock of seals basking in British coastal waters. However one perceives your photo it’s certainly worthy of a top ten place for being so full of intrigue.

Your black and white abstract photo reminds me of ‘The Great Wave’ woodblock print by the Japanese artist Hokusai. The way your curtain chain sweeps in a circular motion throughout the frame resembles the rolling movement of the sea as it gathers upward momentum. Your composition is completed by the white-curved arc at the top of the frame resembling the surf riding on the crest of the great wave. Your well-crafted photo is made more intriguing by having to guess if it was shot as a still life or a moving composition.

The intertidal zone along the Norfolk coast has partially exposed the higgledy-piggledy black chain links snaking their way towards the sea. But it’s the rippled patterns in the wet sand sculptured by the toing and froing of waves that makes your square-cropped photo. The dunes look as if they’ve been created by the movement of the chains in an effort to camouflage itself in the wet sands. The slight giveaway is the green piece of trapped seaweed formed like an alternative chain link. Well spotted!

I’m surprised that this was the only entry depicting toilet chains. This display of fourteen examples looks as if I may have been taken at a museum or maybe of a personal collection. Once the most important feature of a loo the chain went out of fashion in favour of cistern handles and more recently push buttons. Harping back to when I was a youngster I can still hear my mother asking if I had pulled the chain when I’d finished in the smallest room in the house. Thank you for taking me down memory lane - I hope you’re suitably flushed with your successful top ten entry.

This is an alluring portrait of a sultry model looking through a fringe of cascading chain mail hair. The black background matches her piercing black eyes, her seductive black lips and her real black hair. Your nifty-fifty lens has captured her soft semi-profile textures beautifully. The composition is enhanced by having a blue diamond earring with an extra tiny chain attached to the dangling pendant.

This horizontal silver chain running across the orange and red frame would be a nice but unspectacular composition without the sharply-captured, hanging dew drops. Your macro photo with its blurred floral background is beautifully contrasted with the global droplets framing the focused flowers. The five tiny water beads hang in-between the silver links creating their own bejewelled bracelet of crystal balls. Well done for giving your chain that added dimension.