Laughter

I love this image. The sheer breath of the laughter in this image is great. For me, this image personifies what it is to laugh. You see the nuances in the four boys who are laughing, each in their own way. Each expression tells a different story of just how that child feels about laughing. Two are with happiness, one is a little embarrassed, one a little unsure and the smallest boy is on his way and doesn't detract from the overall theme of laughter. Converting this image to black and white helps make it less visually busy and forces the viewers eye to go straight to the emotion at hand.

With laughter itself as the subject this black and white image of a group of young boys palling around wins first place for the raw spontaneity and lack of any pretension. These boys embody the act of laughing so well. The conversion to black and white from color no doubt helped this image become less busy. If the colors of tee shirts and dense black tires been allowed to remain I think it would have detracted from the takeaway, which is pure joy.

Love this perfectly captured moment of mother and son laughing uproariously in unison. Nothing staged here. As with some of the other winners I feel like the conversion to black and white helped the viewer be drawn into the photograph without the distraction of color.