The Odd One Out

The strong contrast between red Santa and white Stormtroopers is so stark that one would have to be colourblind not to notice the odd-one-out. I particularly like the way you’ve turned the heads of the two Stormtroopers either side of Santa to look incredulously at the imposter in their line-up. It automatically humanises your lifelike still life. Your very funny photo went straight into my top ten the moment I saw it.

I’ve seen lots of photos of these young lads performing their water display on the Tutad Unda Dam in Bali but always in unison and never featuring an odd-one-out-of-time. Your perfect timing to capture the mistimed, green bucket-wielding performer is as watertight as your camera’s setting - it’s enabled you to catch every single sharply-focused drop of water.

With an old roof like this, it’s inevitable that they’d be a tile that was out of kilter with the remainder of the slates. It’s having the foresight to look up in search of something different that makes a good photographer find something out of the ordinary. Your vision paid off by noticing the slight colour discolouration of the lone tile to make it the odd-one-out. Now where’s that ladder?

There were flocks of photos entered featuring odd birds of one kind or another but your pied oystercatchers beat them all. To spot one wader walking in the opposite direction amongst so many others takes a very sharp-eyed twitcher. The shoreline bird is nicely centred within your composition with just enough space around it to make out which one’s the odd-one-out.

I’ve seen this photo before and admired the juxtaposition of the seagull alongside the Red Arrows. There were other Red Arrow photos entered to this challenge but they were predictable in that the odd-one-out was always another airplane. It’s your perfect timing in catching the gull within the angle of the flight-pattern that makes your photograph look as if he really is part of the Red Arrow formation.

Yours is a shot that could be a top ten contender in any street photography competition let alone one looking for the odd-one-out. The photo fits the brief for 4 reasons; 1. The woman is walking towards the camera while the other women are walking away; 2. The lady facing the viewer is older than the others; 3. Her skirt’s length is below the knee while the others wear theirs above the knees; 4. She cuts her hair short and the others have kept their hair long. Your superbly caught photo could also be an allegory for life itself - females in the foreground, males in the background.

Is this art mimicking life or life mimicking art? Whichever it is, it perfectly fits the odd-one-out theme. Your photo is so quintessentially faultless that I thought it must have been staged. But then, how does one coerce two gulls to pose for a photo in exactly the same position as the street art? Luck plays a great part in street photography and your click is the quick reaction of being in the right place at the right time.

Love the title; love the description; love the photograph. People don’t pay enough attention to photo titles and even fewer bother to give descriptions but you’ve managed to do both - even though the picture tells the story. The dog’s sheepish grin is what makes him stand out otherwise he could have been lost within the fleecy flock.

The simplicity of the arrangement is what gives this photo its effectiveness. Placed dead centre in a square-cropped carton the minimalism of the pastel-toned background makes the orange yolk leap out of the composition. Well done for cracking the odd-one-out brief by surrounding your topless egg with two dozen unbroken shells - I’ve always liked my eggs sunny-side up.