Medical

Such a simple composition, but what a result in this image from Maneesh Satheesan. The focusing on this close-up had to be absolutely spot on or the effect would have been completely lost, and Maneesh has achieved this by focusing so precisely on the subject's eyeball. Credit too to the subject for keeping so still, as even the smallest movement would have thrown the focus completely. Whilst there is no technical reason for the large empty space to the right of the image, in terms of composition it works beautifully. The choice to go black and white worked well too. And the lighting is so simple - just natural light coming in through the window, which is evident in the reflection in the eye.

I'm really not sure what's going on here! Well, I am - it is a shot from the set of an immersive live action game. Whilst the definition of the brief's theme of 'Medical' is of course open to broad interpretations, this shot for me I'm afraid fails to fulfil any of these. People playing in a game, made up as zombie-like characters, lying on a hospital bed and sitting on a chair do not really fulfil a medical brief.

This image from Andy Ferrington caught my eye with its vibrant colours and great sense of action. I like how he has not gone for the 'traditional' panning shot where the subject is sharp and the background is blurry, opting instead for a slow shutter speed of 1/8th to really blur the background as well as add some motion blur to the ambulance, but not so much that it ruins the shot. With no other vehicles in the shot to detract, the ambulance is the sole focus, set nicely against the blurred background. Nice shot and well executed.

Whilst the brief did state there was no restriction on shoot date, a certain amount of self-moderation and common sense needs to be exercised, especially when the subject involves people. When I first saw this shot, I immediately thought it looked dated, and it is. The watermark shows it to be almost 25 years old! I actually thought it was older. It looks very dated - too set up, almost cheesy, and a second thought should really have been taken before entering an almost 25-year old image into the competition.

We have a very simple composition in this entry from Andrea Smith, but one that works very well, especially with the choice of black and white. The composition and selective focus are combined to draw the viewer's eye to the obvious focal point of the image. A fairly wide aperture of f5 keeps just the letter C in focus, whilst allowing everything to drop off fairly quickly in the foreground. I don't know if choosing the letter C was a play on the word 'see', or purely unintended and coincidental. Either way it brought a little bit of humour to the picture for me.

I really liked the effect that Rebecca Brown was aiming for with this image. The ambient light source from a single window has a lovely quality to it, contrasting the subject nicely against the dark background. I think the shot would have benefited greatly if the subject's head had been turned slightly towards the light, just to catch the light in one or both of the eyes. That would have brought some life to the picture and created more of a connection with the viewer.

This entry from Paul Osborne is certainly a different take on the theme! But one that I felt worked. It's obviously a concept shot, bordering on the abstract and weird, but still within the realms of the brief's theme. The HDR-type processing has given the colours a feel and look that complements the somewhat bizarre-looking subject matter. All too often HDR colouring can be used just for the sake of it, but here it's been used appropriately. In fact, in his notes Paul says that he doesn't normally use HDR processing, but for this subject it seemed appropriate. I'd certainly agree with that. This image immediately made me think of the Bioshock series of computer games - I could just see this 'person' being one of the characters from the game and you can envisage them performing medical experiments on some poor unfortunate souls!

To some, at first glance, this entry from Paul Osborne may look like some sort of terrible torture chamber, when it is in fact an early example of an iron lung, a machine which helped people breath and was commonly used in the treatment of polio. The stark overhead lighting from a skylight adds to the effect of foreboding, and the sepia effect is just the right choice for this image. The dodging and burning that Paul has done is subtle, but enough to make a difference, from the lightening of the dials to the darkening down of the shadow areas. The highlights have burnt out quite a bit on part of the very top surface, but given that all the lighting is overhead and ambient it's hard to criticise that!

This entry from Friss Istvan was one of the many images with 'Pile of pills' as the subject matter. Unfortunately, it was one of the many photos of this type that were poorly executed. The lighting is obviously from an on-camera flash, with no diffusion, resulting in a very harsh lighting. There doesn't seem to have been any great attention taken with the arrangement of the pills, looking almost just plonked there with no real thought. Using a diffused off-camera flash would have helped, along with greater thought about the arrangement of the pills.

I doubt if anyone would fail to have an emotional reaction to this image from Maciej Gadzinowski. The eye is almost looking straight into your soul and you can feel the vulnerability and frailty of this prematurely born baby. A good choice of black and white, along with the subject and composition, gives this a lovely reportage-type feel, which is further enhanced by the grainy look as a result of using a high ISO of 2500 in the very low light conditions.