Looking Up

I"m not always a fan of botanical photography but this image is just wonderful. The shapes become abstracted with the intense white backlighting. I wonder if the photographer shot the flowers on a light box? The reduction of details to make the flowers purely sculptural is perfect.

The perfection of the compostion of this photograph, reminds me of a painting by the wonderful Surrealist painter Magritte. The blue of the sky is just so clear and with the perfect clouds its incredibly beautiful. The photographers compostion is spot on, the lines are completely straight and there are no converging verticals. A very strong and successful image!

This is another very simple yet strikingly elegant image. I've never experimented with long exposure night photographs, but this image really inspires me to do so. I love the compostional balance of the photograph, the way the sky line diagonally divides across the frame. its a very confident composition.

There were many architectural reflections in this competition but this was one of the best, in my opinion. I love the symmetry and a-symmetry at the same time, present within this image. The colour palette is strong and the 80s (?) architecture lends itself well to this kind of compostion. Fantastic and abstract!

There were many photographs of trees in this competition but this was the best one, in my opinion. I love the space and light in the photograph. The choice of the type of tree, the space between them and the decision to make the image black and white, all combine to a minimal but sophisticated composition.

I"m a big fan of roads and have spent a lot of time photographing them, so I was happy to see this fantastic image. I love the vertiginous nature of the road within the landscape and how you can almost feel yourself driving down this incredible piece of road. My only slight concern was the distracting square of grey tarmac in the centre, personally i'd have removed it in Photoshop, but nevertheless, its still a wonderful and evocative image.

This is another beautiful architectural photograph, perfectly answering the competiton brief. The space reminds me of a James Turrell installation, one of his Sky Room projects. I love the reduced colour pallette and the slightly converging verticals - which are normally very distracting, aren't a problem in this very sophisticated image.

This is the winning image for me because I love the minimalist nature of the composition. The square format works perfectly and the choice of black and white was great. All the extraneous elements are reduced and the image becomes very graphical. The way the reflections cut the two people in half is interesting too, giving half clear and half obscured details. A confident, strong compostion.

This image must have been one of the most minimal and yet elegant images entered in the competition. The strenght of the compostion reminds me of early Constructivist photography from Russia in the 1930s. I'm glad the photographer didn't include a pigeon etc, for scale, which some may have been temped to do! A beautiful photo!

This was one of the more original responses to this competition brief. Its a fantastic photograph that captures the fleeting beauty of the hotair balloon and the quality of (early morning?) light. I'm pleased the photographer chose to crop the balloon and didn't show the entirety of the shape, a very confident composition.

This was one of the most striking and original responses to the competition brief. I love the inverse, negative aesthetic within the image. Its like looking at an old film negative. Normally i'd be put off by the converging verticals of such an architectural image, but the abstractness of this image make this not a problem.

There were many photographs of architecture within this competition, obviously, but for me, this is one of the strongest and most intriguing compostions. I love that the image is so abstract and minimal, the viewpoint gives a very vertiginous feel to the image. The reduced colour palette is also very sucessful.

Here we have another minimal but confident composition. The image looks black and white but I wonder if its really just an extremely desaturated colour palette. The square format is elegant and the reductive nature of the compostion echoes the architecture perfectly.

From my selection of the winning entries in this competition, my love of the minimal is probably apparent. I love the extreme simplification of this image, all the unnecessary details are excluded and the colours are striking. A wonderful, empty photo, in all the best ways

I was in two minds about this photograph and thought for a long time about the levels of post production that it shows. Normally I prefer images that are more naturalistic, but this is an exception. I love the theatricality of the image, it reminds me of Gregory Crewdson's work, and the cinematic nature of the architecture he shoots. A wonderful and dramatic photo!