Home

This is a beautifully conceived, visualised and controlled setup. It’s evident that Emma had a very clear idea of what she wanted from the image, and she has achieved it to an exceptional standard. The young girl’s simple pose and pensive expression are what we see first, before taking in the toy stuffed under her arm and the atmospheric moonlight coming through the window. Emma has created a clever composite, using a separate image of the moon that she had taken previously, and has placed it in just the right part of the window frame. Her processing has resulted in a fairytale-like result that is deceptively simple and extremely well executed.

This round was characterised by wonderfully imaginative interpretations of the theme of ‘Home’, and here we have another by Simon. Instead of taking just one picture of his daughter dancing, he decided to take 16, with each one demonstrating her love for the subject, as well as her ability. He has carefully chosen where to place each image within the composite, with the four corner images creating a strong frame. The three different costumes help to hold the interest, as do the positions she is striking. A charming and very well thought out shoot.

Achieving an effective still life is all about balance – balance in scale, light and composition. It’s tricky to get everything right in one frame, but Paul has done very well here. The lighting is soft enough to bring out the delicacy of the seed heads, but intense enough to ensure the droplets really ping. The variation in the size of the droplets works well, as does the rise and fall of the seed heads’ heights.

There are certainly worse things you can do during lockdown than study Renaissance still-life paintings, and that’s obviously what Angi has done here. Her choice of the pink and purple colour palette brings a real sumptuousness to the scene, while the soft lighting is gorgeous and picks out the detail and texture in the items that are so carefully selected and placed. This is something many of us could attempt in our own homes, using ornaments from the mantelpiece, flowers from the garden and vegetables from the fridge. Seems simple when it’s broken down like that, but her eye for detail and composition is what makes the result shine.

It might look like a composite, but this is actually an ingeniously created image. Gavin set up a fisheye lens inside the fridge, before carefully placing the fish he’d bought especially for the shot. A remote trigger and a hungry cat did the rest. It’s no gimmick, though. He’s still thought through the balance of his composition – which isn’t easy with a fisheye – and the contrasting colours of silvery-blue and orange work well together. Top marks for ingenuity, and for making the judges laugh.

There’s something about this still life that is reminiscent of musical notes on a stave. The lack of information in the composition means it plays a bit of a trick on us, and until our eye settles and realises we are looking at burning incense sticks, we can’t quite tell if they are large scale or miniature. It’s rare for an image that’s made up entirely of nothing but straight (or almost straight) lines to be so successful, but it has certainly worked here. Our eye moves across the image, taking in the detail and the negative space in exactly the same way as it would if the setup were more complex. It’s a success thanks to its simplicity.

Flat-lay photography has become hugely popular in recent years, and it’s a wonderfully contemplative way of making an image. Paul has created a very nice example here. Restricting the main colour palette to green on black ensures the mug of tea in the middle of the frame really pops out. He’s done an excellent job of arranging the leaves around the cup, taking into consideration their shape and scale, and their position within the confines of the frame. With an image such as this, it’s also important to work with negative space (that is, the spaces between the leaves rather than the leaves themselves) and he’s done that well, too.

Anyone who has tried to work with dandelion seeds will know how tough a shot like this can be to create. The inherently shallow depth of field, even at small apertures, that comes with using a macro lens is made even trickier when working with spherical subjects such as droplets. Mike would have also had to focus at close range using a 30mm lens to get adequate magnification on such miniature subjects, which would have made depth of field even shallower and restricted the light – there was no room for error. These technical challenges, however, aren’t half as troublesome as getting the droplets to stay poised on the seed. Its delicate strands cannot hold much weight so the size of the droplets is important and hard to control. Mike has used water, but often the viscosity of saline solution can help droplets keep their form for longer. Despite the great deal of patience and challenges Mike faced, he’s created a water-based still-life with soft lighting, no messy reflections and just the right balance between sharpness and bokeh. Well done. – Caroline Schmidt, Guest Judge

The subject of ‘Home’ lends itself beautifully to documentary-style images, and Graeme has captured such a moment extremely well. You don’t even need to be a dog lover to know exactly what’s going on here – it’s a familiar scene to many of us. Even within its spontaneity, Graeme has composed carefully, being sure to include the vases on the left without cropping them, and making sure Molly’s perky ears don’t ‘clash’ with the letterbox. He’s shown exception control of the tones, too, and overall has made a very pleasing monochrome image.

It takes a bold photographer to reduce an image to one as minimalist as this, but its precisely this bravery that made Tuule score so highly. It would have been easy for her to include a pile of papers, or more of the person’s face, but none of that was necessary, because the rear of the computer screen, the top of the model’s head and their earphones was enough to tell the story of how so many of us passed our time during the lockdown of 2020. She calls this shot ‘Just Another Evening’, which sums up a superb image that is very much of its time. Well done.