I love this image for its simplicity! At face value, it's a beautiful, minimalistic and well-timed shot. However, my eyes focus more on the contrasting use of colour. Both from bottom to top, and left to right, the colours get lighter (from the darker skin of the child to the dog's white fur, and the darker, cracked pavement which becomes the empty pale sky), and it's a great journey for the eyes! Also, I love the title!
What first attracted me to this shot was how contrasting it is to my initial understanding of the brief. 'Street Photography' is usually urban and chaotic. This photo, however, is beautiful, peaceful and spiritual. Sometimes, when shooting in B&W, photographs can lose substance, however your use of light/shadow accentuates the textures in the image so well that I forget there is no colour! Congratulations on such a powerful image and being selected first from over 800 submissions.
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***This contest is open to subscribers (members on the Challenger, Pro and Master subscription tiers). However if you're not a paying subscriber you can still purchase entries for £2 (GBP) per image.*** There's a certain skill to taking black and white shots, since photographing the world in colour is quite different to photographing the world in monochrome. Nowhere is this more true than on the streets where contrasts, shapes and expressive subjects come together in dynamic motion, offering up all the elements you'll need for a memorable black and white image.
37,277 Ratings
This image is a good example of great composition and of lines photographed well. Firstly, they elongate the shot and make the building seem far more vast and imposing. Couple this with the CCTV camera in the centre, and what I can only assume is the shadow of another in the top left-hand corner, and the shot becomes something quite sinister. The lines also direct the viewers' eyes towards the subjects and force us to follow them on their journeys out of the shot.
Whilst I think that this shot has potential, there are a few aspects that could have been improved: Firstly, I think the editing is slightly too heavy and softer, more subtle editing would have been more fitting to the style of photograph. Next, the composition (with the subject very close to the front of the frame) can be quite obstructive, and it deters the viewer from exploring the rest of the shot. Waiting until the subject was further into the frame would allow the viewer to take in more of the image. Also, this would have allowed you to capture more of his reflection, which would have been beneficial given that the reflections seem to be quite an important feature.
