Show the Love

A big thank you to all contestants. As always many good entries to select from for the pole position. I have chosen to honer father-son love as my number one. There was a profound connection and emotion of love transpiring from this capture, so strong that you cannot not be moved by that the tender look that child directs towards his dad. Thank you mum, assuming that it was mum taking that shot, for sharing that precious moment with the entire community on here. If this was taken by a portrait photographer, able to capture such intimate from subject sin front of the camera requires skills. Congratulations on being number 1. Well done.

How can you not adore this. Well done on being number 3. It's difficult to say exactly whether they are brother and sister or just cousins,. But I think that we all remember our relationships with our siblings or cousins, and that they were or are as colorful as the colors found on this youngsters, to say the least. It feels thought that the 2 characters initial background was not this one but I think that the transposition worked reasonably well and enhances the emotions of camaraderie expressed by the 2 youngsters.

I have chosen this interpretation of a love between mother and child as my number 2. I just would like to mention that, by all means, my ordering is purely based on photography not on psychology which would of course, without discussion, label the mother-child love as primary in the child's development. Coming back to photography. I just loved the play with lights, barely showing chest and child connecting but only suggesting. There is natural, delicate and secretive relationship depicted here, all in one just with a play of light and shadows. I love it. Well done on being number 2.

We all have love directed to people that are no longer with us, in our physical reality. I have chosen this picture to commemorate all those empty seats we accumulate in a lifetime. There is sadness, loneliness and heartbreak but also strength and composure in this composition, like we all are in front of grief. Thank you for sharing this moment with us.

There were lots of entries with animals sowing closeness. As a brain scientist, I was trying not to indulge in any anthropomorphism. Whether love exist in the animal kingdom, is not on the table here, they certainly have emotions as many studies have shown, even reptiles and fish. I just wanted to stay away from misinterpretations and anthropomorphism. Why I have chosen this one then. It is mostly to honor and celebrate all those workers in zoos, sanctuaries around the globe assisting to care for earthly creatures that unintentionally came into the crossfire and have fallen victims of our relentless exploitation of the natural world from which we continue to reap resources without reverence.

My final review. Always a pleasure to see our little fellows at work and bringing us a somewhat more abstract concept of love... a message on a scrabble board... but none of the less lesser in content. Moving those tiles by himself was not an easy task but it looks like, he made it. Working in a men's group I know that as men we are not always the best at expressing our emotions. It takes a lot of effort to put 5 letters together but men are sensitive too, given the chance and the right output framework and a bit of patience, we can show the love as the little fellow show us. Well done. Worth the effort.