Flags

I really like this - filling the frame with a repeating pattern is a useful formula for an image. Maybe it would be a good idea to have a smaller aperture to get more in focus, or a really wide aperture to just focus on one flag at a time, but it's a well thought-out frame. It doesn't matter that the image is of musical staves, a national flag or oranges (or of people, come to that) this is a technique that works equally well with anything. I wonder what the tune is?

This image has a lovely frame evocative of summer days, and it cleverly uses the flags billowing as a kind of pastel sky. A lovely palette. The image is breaking rules by shooting straight at the sun, but rules like that are there to be broken. I'd have liked to have seen the figures walking on the left as a more defined shape, because as they are they don't add much. A stronger frame might not have had them at all, but overall I really like it. It's a mood picture.

This breaks a lot of rules, but I like it. Graphic and strong, the abstraction of the flag is what makes it. Compositionally it's great with a lovely 'rule of thirds' bisection of the frame. Maybe more accurate processing or exposure might have made a better job of differentiating the reds - the flag bleeds into the seats a little too much , but nevertheless the idea is sound and interesting. It's a lovely and worthy attempt. Up the reds!

There's a good idea here, but it's let down by poor technique. Shooting into the sun is usually a bad idea, but sometimes if your exposure is better than this it can work. However, the frame is also weakened by composition. The picture would've been a good deal stronger if the camera was lower, making more of the shape of the heads and the bulk of the jackets without the distraction of the man in the grey t-shirt, who adds nothing. For a great frame things all have to work harmoniously. Here the photographer's seen an idea but only snatched at it.

Another straightforward picture, but one that has bags of energy and fun. I like that the flag behind is not straight and I like that the people are not perfectly central. The glass echoes the descending slope of the heads from taller to shorter and gives it a pleasing line. It echoes the flag's line. Happy, warm, close and personal - a lovely moment well captured of an everyday event. It's entirely natural when it could have been very cheesy.

This is an interesting graphic that suggests more than it shows, and sometimes absence in photographs ca be very useful. Here the Union Jack has been consigned to just a few parts, but it's recognisable enough. The pattern of the tiles are pleasingly and graphically at 45 degrees, and that somehow makes the image more striking. There's just a bit of colour to arrest the eye, and it's a good idea to look down (we often just see what's in front of us) and vary our field of view.

This is a graphically strong image with a really lovely frame and brave use of composition. There's lots of space to let the subject breathe. The red draws the eye into the ocean of blue. It makes me feel the wind rushing past me and the excitement. The spiky shapes of the structure add an element of menace to the symmetry. It's not an obvious image, which is why I like it so much - the photographer invites your eye to walk around the photograph and by framing it carefully has made an interesting and engaging shot out of a mundane situation.

There's a lot of colour and confusion, but in a good way - it's really visually noisy (and a bit over-saturated if I'm being picky), but I like the explosion! I like that its confusing and I like the spiders' web of lines and the fact that it's almost an 'anti-composition' picture. Sometimes images can be just about colour and this one is.

I like this very much. I like the hard and pointy shapes and the contrast of the flowers, but I'd have liked it much better if it was more abstract - seeing a bit of building between the two figures really bothers me. Such a shame - the idea's absolutely right and it's a strong and non-obvious way to frame a scene. An inch or two lower would have made the difference between a good frame and an excellent one.

This is quite a straightforward picture, but I like it because it uses the tension between a very strong graphic background, the flag and the seeming randomness of the people. It would work on some level even if the flag wasn't there, but that adds a splash of colour and a focus - the stripes bring the eye down to the Union Jack and explore other elements after that. I'd like to have seen a better spread of people in the frame, but that's a small quibble, and the more I look around the frame, the more I like the girl (luckily wearing red trousers) sprinting out of the picture.

This photo is deceptively simple, but it works because of the composition that forms the cross in the first third of the picture. For me, it sets a scene like the detail picture in a photo essay. The solidity of the houses contrast nicely with the tiny bits of colour that cut into the sky. There's a nice angle, which is simple and pleasing. There's no grand statement here about flags as a symbols or emblems shouting at you, but the rather subtle, cloudy sky streaked with blue is complemented by the bunting.

I think this is great. An interesting photograph is often one where your viewpoint is challenged. A flag is a flag is a flag... Well, not in this case. This is a swirl of lovely colour and form; an abstraction of a symbol that is usually visualised in a terribly mundane way. The photographer has managed to capture a moment where there are almost perfect curls. Serendipity or not, it's charming, and a good image sometimes relies on an element of luck and chance.

Is it a flag? No. Is it a good idea? Yes. It suggests a flag (in this case German) and that's good enough. There is nothing special in it apart from the strength of the colours and the ability to see beyond what's in front of the photographer's eyes. It's inventive and playful, and sometimes it's perfectly fine to take liberties. A bit like Sam Abell seeing gardens in the flowers in a vase on a windowsill... This is seeing something that is ultimately about non-complementary colours bolted together to force one to look at contrast.

This image has strong shape, strong composition, and it's humorous too. What works - apart from the incongruity of the situation - is that the verticals are all straight and the red of the flag breaks up the pattern of the tiles. We find a big, bold maple leaf, almost completely unfurled, in a composition that's unexpected and funny. I like that the red is echoed by the red of the strap around the man's head as he's... concentrating. A second or two earlier or later the picture would be gone.

This is a pretty random scene enlivened by Tibetan prayer flags. It's all about colour and cheerfulness and there's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes it's enough that a photograph makes you smile and this does. It's not great art but it lifts the spirit. I love the randomness of the flags contrasted with the orderly lines of the British countryside - tidy green hedgerows etc. It looks like a big smile across the frame. The exposure's a bit wishy-washy in quite harsh light, but so what? Lovely.

I like this very much. Interesting use of shape - the circle and the hard straightness and angularity of the Union flag work well. There is good, rich colour and I like the fact that that there's white space at the bottom of the frame to make the composition a little more quirky. Images like this are about contrast and this one is a good example. You need to look hard for these kinds of geometric angles that work and aren't cliched and this photographer has, making something a little out of the ordinary.

Almost there. This would have been a great frame if the head wasn't creeping out from the back of the van and the figures in the centre had been more defined. A tricky situation to get right and it feels sadly 'snatched'. This sort of image is about waiting and then waiting some more - á la the Decisive Moment. But the important thing is that the photographer saw the potential. The figure of the policeman bolts the image together and anchors the action either side of him in the same way a gutter might down a double-page spread. Lovely, graphic, strong. The flag is just a bonus.

I'm not sure what I'm looking at here. The image is neither about flags nor balls of wool, nor about them together. There are lots of extraneous details that make the eye swirl around the frame without resting on something that makes visual sense. Maybe a close framing of the flags to create an abstract image might have been a better idea - concentrating on colour perhaps? I'm sure the photographer saw a visual possibility for colour but hasn't worked out what they wanted to say.