The Half Of It

There were many entries showing half full/half empty glasses but this one made me smile. I like that the cartoon animal seems to have downed half the pint of beer from inside the glass whilst standing in the other half waiting to dive in to finish the rest. The froth-stained top half of the glass is equally balanced with the clear bubbly beer in the bottom half. As successful as this photo is it still leaves the long-standing philosophical conundrum unanswered - is the glass half full or is it half empty?

This photographer has expertly captured not one but two halves of the same object in a single frame. The half visible damselfly half silhouetted in a blade of green grass successfully follows the triangular compositional element much used in classic visual arts. Close-up nature has paid dividends for this photographer so well done for visiting the world of macro to find a suitable subject for this challenge.

This is a simple image loaded with powerful connotations. Superficially one sees half a torn Union Jack blowing in the wind but the deliberate destruction of a country’s flag can stoke up a nations emotions.. The flag could be the remnants of war or the aftermath of a people’s revolution, it could be a symbol for a nihilistic musical movement like punk or it could be a political statement (as the photographer suggests) for Brexit or Scottish Independence. The success of this photo is that it’s loaded with dark overtones of a kingdom divided in half.

Whereas most photographers entered photos of subjects simply cropped in half this photographer has taken the more creative approach and combined two semi visible subjects. The portrait of the young girl hiding behind her musical instrument might be because she’s cheekily trying to avoid her viola lessons. Whatever interpretation one puts on the photo it certainly makes the viewer stop and ponder which is half the battle in photography.

There’s a wonderful surreal quality about this dreamlike scenario. The absence of a dividing line between the horse and rider’s reflection makes the image look like a Salvador Dali painted crab inching its way across the horizon towards the mirrored tree. I love the simplicity of this well-constructed, elongated composition which if you were to turn sideways (left to right) it transforms the photo into a horrific scene of a person plunging towards a menacing-looking spike.

What is it about shopping trolleys being dumped in the most unlikely places. One never sees the offenders wheeling them along streets often miles away from their supermarket bases. It’s as if aliens had sucked them up and dropped them when they were no longer useful in space. This is a well spotted half-in-half-out composition perfect for the challenge. The reflection of the trees in the water act as downward leading lines gently caressing the half immersed subject whose shadow makes it look like a whole trolley floating on top of the water.

This gloriously simple rainbow-coloured photo would easily have made my top ten had it not been for the unfair advantage of adding an extra wide white frame around the photo to make it stand out from all the other entrants.

Core! I love a clever idea that is well executed and this photo does it perfectly. A very interesting interpretation of the brief which may leave some viewers wondering how it was created. The lines of the wood-grained surface lead us neatly from the half eaten apple to the perfectly centred mirror image. The photographer’s humour is further demonstrated by one of the photo tags which simply reads - ‘nude’.

The use of the model’s own hand separating one half of her face by keeping the other half in total darkness is a very clever ploy. To be able to achieve such sharpness with no noise the photographer chose an aperture of f22 with a comparatively low ISO which meant the sitter had to be perfectly still whilst the photo was being taken. A simple idea skilfully side-lit has been the making of this stark-contrasted black and white portrait by a photographer who only settles for half measures when it’s called for.