Motorways/Highways

Car light trails in this image are like colossal redhead and blonde hair waves flowing towards the Dartford tunnel and cascading down from the Queen Elizabeth II bridge. Always a busy motorway crossing you have captured the scene with every detail post-processed crisply. The blue hour was a good time to take your photo. It clearly exposed the industrial background which would have otherwise disappeared had it been taken when it was any darker. Shooting from where you were I assume you managed to get away without having to pay the toll fee.

Amongst all the predictable entries came this oddity seemingly defying any kind of logic. Looking like a motorway, equivalent of an affinity pool, it had me postulating as to what I was seeing. I even thought it might be a still life of plastic Scalextric race tracks joined together. The clue was the word ‘bridge’ in your metadata. I realised you’d caught the four road lanes being lifted simultaneously to allow something oversized to pass underneath. Congratulations on capturing a motorway from a completely different angle.

What better way to enter a motorway photo competition than have the road shooting out from the very item that shot the shot. Removing the lens converts the SLR mirror into a drive-through tunnel completing the photo’s manufactured metamorphism. Looking like a surreal artist’s painting your creative composite immediately stopped me in my tracks which is half the battle in grabbing a judge’s attention.

The M25 motorway crossing over the M23 motorway together with their slip roads are routes that I’m very familiar with. What is unfamiliar are your crossovers seen from an aerial viewpoint. This is a superb use of a drone making the configuration of four slip roads and two motorways look like a Union Jack concrete pattern. Known as ‘the largest car park in England’ because of its constant traffic jams, your drone must have been up with the birds to catch the motorways devoid of hardly any moving vehicles.

What a great use of a motorway gantry. Capturing the eight lanes of M1 traffic through the gaps in between the zigzag supports was a clever ploy. The structural, turquoise horizontals, expertly top and tail your tarmac sandwich filling. Keeping both the gantry in the foreground and the motorway in the background equally sharp is what helped drive your entry’s success.

I can understand why this Toronto highway is allegedly the busiest in Canada. Your nose-to-tail traffic, taken during rush hour, consists of one of the biggest bulks of vehicles entered into this challenge. There’s a strong linear presence in your photo: From the wavy lines of vehicles following the curvature of the roads, to the juxtaposed straight lines of lampposts, gantries and architecture. It works particularly well because you’ve managed to keep all the verticals and horizontals absolutely straight throughout your highway composition.

When I set this challenge I wasn’t expecting to see so many night shots featuring red and white motorway car trails. Although all good, I must admit, they did begin to look a bit samey. Except for your entry. You’ve avoided the elongated flowing movement in favour of a staccato treatment in order to separate each car’s individual light trails. The upshot being that you’ve given your canvas a different and standout pointillism effect.

The moment I saw your entry it went straight to the top of my top ten. Sadly you don’t give any details where this photo was taken but it reminds me of spaghetti junction in the UK. Taken with a long lens helped to flatten the three-dimensional mishmash of winding and unwinding roads crisscrossing throughout your abstract composition. The limited, pastel-coloured palette of blues, greens and ochres gives your photo an overall toy town effect. It makes it seem more like a pristine model rather than a down-to-earth motorway. Well done!

This minimalist photo is in direct contrast to the majority of shots entered into the challenge. Yet, it couldn’t be more on brief than hundreds of other submissions. Two sets of opposing, four lane, directional arrows, remove any doubt that this is a major expressway. Instead of the expected rows and rows of busy traffic you have elected to feature a lone Cuban pedalling his pushbike across the wide expanse. It’s that deft touch that makes your entry a piece of fine art.