Industrial Landscapes

This shot has never left my Top Ten folder since it was first uploaded. The processing and the (often necessary) sky substitution are handled with sublety and work well with this great low light image. I really like this capture of a completely man-made industrial landscape in a hostile environment. If fits the brief perfectly. The muted tones, the panoramic framing and the graphic strength of the subject all knit together to make a satisfying whole. A hugely commended ‘Runner-Up’ ...

A shoe-in for Third Place. This is another image that has never left my Top Ten folder. I love the graphical intricacy at work here. The complex mix of the rail lines and the overhead electrification from this angle of view are superb. The placement of the trains in the image is also just right. That may be more luck than judgement but I’m a great believer in the simple tenet that, as photographers, we can often make our own luck - so long as we trust our eye. For me, this great image also fits the brief perfectly because it summarises in one picture the industrial complexity of an electrified rail landscape. Great capture ... well done.

This was a tough contest to judge with so many great entries and that’s why I’ve maxed out on my commendations ... but this is my worthy Winner. For me, this entry encapsulates the mood and feel of an uncompromising heavy industrial environment. I cannot fault the technique or the shot selection in this composition and every time I return to it there is more to see. The flare and the reflected light on the storage container in the middle distance draw the eye and the emissions from the steelworks against the background of the brooding sky help create the atmospherics. The stark waste land where nothing grows and the fly tipping point to the surrounding sense of dereliction but the coarse grasses and the sign referencing the Fishermans’ Huts on the South Gare indicate that there is more here than heavy industry. That provides an added documentary narrative that really appealed to me and made it my ‘Number One’ ... Excellent work!

I love the deceptively simple and detached formalism of this shot. The shot selection and the framing of this image is spot on. For me, this image also came as a welcome reminder that we do have new industrial landscapes developing all around us. The colours, the clean lines and even the optimistic planting of new trees along the curving line of the avenue beside the solar panels remind us that clean green futures are possible. The layout of this planned landscape also seems to challenge us with an important question: how planned and controlled do we want our new industrial landscapes to be? But that’s simply my reading of the image. We can all interpret images in our own way but if an image also seems to ask a question then it works as an added bonus for me. This one worked really well. It presented visual facts and asked questions as well ... Congratulations.

I couldn't resist the documentary force of this image. Logging - like mining and quarrying - is one of humanity’s most ancient industries and this powerful image reminds us very forcefully of the immense scale of the logging industry and how mountains of cut timber can create their own landscape to almost mirror the form of mountains in the distance. I really like the shot selection here with the Maersk containers in the foreground seeming to act, quite literally, as a logjam for the mountains of timber. Another very different take on industrial landscapes. Thank you.

I could not let this great image pass by without comment. I love everything about it but I could not persuade myself that it was a landscape photograph ... It would certainly have made my Top Three if I had won that argument with myself. Maybe I need to run another competition for industrial plant so I can award the placing it deserves ... or maybe I simply need a 'very highly commended' button because this image was a complete winner for me. Great composition. Thanks for sharing ...

I love the monumental quality of this shot but I had a long tussle with myself because I couldn't decide whether it fitted my brief. Is it an industrial landscape or a great image of industrial plant? In the end, I couldn't resist including this composition in my Top Ten because I persuaded myself that it has such monumental quality that it creates its own landscape. That's my story and I'm sticking to it ... Great image. Thank you.

There were a number of shots of Battersea Power Station submitted to this contest but I liked this image because it provided the context of the railway lines and the (unseen) marshalling yards that serviced this monster’s appetite for coal. I know this place all too well because I grew up in the shadow of this polluting beast and I am old enough to remember the contribution its belching smoke made to the toxic Great Smog of 1952 which killed thousands of Londoners ... but, that said, I also have to confess that I have nonetheless photographed this monumental and now broken architectural icon. It is a fascinating building and I really liked the sense of both memorialisation and regeneration in the construction taking place around the remaining shell of the building. A true industrial landscape and a captured moment in time before the remains of this old industrial white elephant surrenders to the ‘gentrification’ of billionaire apartments and incorporates Apple’s new UK HQ ... Thanks for the memories.

Zoom! The dynamism of this composition really grabbed my attention. The treatment of the image suggested immense pulses of electricity powering this futuristic industrial landscape of towers and unfinished construction. It conjured up echoes of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and flickering old Flash Gordon movies for me ... and I can pay it no higher compliment than that. Both contemporary and expressionist. Excellent ...

I was really taken by this image because the clean sweeping architectural lines of the industrial estate building, the elegant line of the anchored flue and even the tidy design of the goods yard seem to provide a well captured distillation of a contemporary industrial landscape. The image is formal and documentary and the visual weight of the component parts make a very satisfying whole of this technically accomplished shot. For me, that makes it a very commendable Top Ten winner. Well done ...