Side By Side

I enjoyed the creativity combining semi-circular objects to complete full circles throughout this competition. To my mind, yours worked the best because the man-made product is juxtaposed with what nature had already achieved. Your choice of silver alloy wheel spokes following the outward lines of a green yucca cactus has created a sense of abstract movement rounding off your composition beautifully.

I love the idea of combing two Heinz food cans together. You’ve used very sharply focused photos against strong punchy black and white backgrounds to create a powerful pop art composition. Another one of 57 Heinz varieties might have been to cut both tins in half and join the halves together to make a complete abstract can. But I love that you’ve made original use of two familiar food products which had me reciting ‘Beanz Meanz Heinz’ every time I looked at your hunger-inducing composition.

I’m surprised more entries didn’t feature half portraits because they’re such obvious side-by-side subjects for joining together. Your two very different faces of the Mad Hatter from Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland give him an inordinate personality. The colourful half-smirking faces are so perfectly matched that I had to do a double-take to see if they really were two completely different photos. I’m glad that (unlike the White Rabbit) you weren’t late for a very important (photo competition) date.

There were lots of abstract entries to this challenge but unfortunately many were not completely different from each other as requested in the brief. You, on the other hand, have stuck to the brief and taken two very different aerial photos of the same subject. Individually they’re both strong stand-alone photos but stuck together they make a superb comparison composition. Selecting a white background gives a distinctive edge to your pastel-coloured partnership. I admired your entry so much that there was no need for me to draw straws to choose which side-by-side composite was my winner.

What a great choice of two similar looking but completely different juxtaposed subjects. The shape of the disappearing winter road brilliantly mirrors the shape of the roller-painting ceiling. Converting the photos to monochrome cleverly removes any colour disparity between the two images. Because the tones of the photos are so similar I understand why it was necessary, in this case, to divide the two with a separating line. This is an extremely clever creative-comparison composition.

Your pastel-coloured backgrounds set off the delicate contours of the two half damselflies succinctly. Both google-eyed insects hanging onto their territorial waterside perches are perfectly aligned to be looking straight at your camera. Your choice of the Essex skipper and blue-tailed damselfly vertically joined together are neatly matched to form the single abstract body. The straight dividing line between your photos and the minimalist treatment makes this a very pleasing graphic composition. What a wonderful way to introduce the macro world of stalk-hugging damsels - thank you (and them) for sharing.

There were a few entries of half-split trees but your centrally divided photos stood out because of your unique used a horizontal join. I imagine you already had one of the photos in your portfolio and went out specially to photograph the other half to complete your landscape entry. The seasonal comparison photos, with and without foliage, clearly demonstrate summer and winter. This is a cleverly-conceived idea that works equally well for both halves of your contrasting narrative.

I like that you’ve combined two of your photos to create a very funny narrative. There’s a believable consistency to your entry through the use of the same-coloured, wooden shelves in the backgrounds of both photos. The red and blue taken from the opposites ends of the colour spectrum gives your still life that extra bit of strength. When push comes to shove this is a very novel idea.