The Pulpit

A simple wooden pulpit in a plain, almost austere parish church. There is nothing remarkable in the architecture and yet this image captures a real sense of atmosphere. The composition is carefully considered, the HDR processing handled sensitively and viewed large I can almost hear the cold hushed silence and see the motes of dust hanging in the shafts of weak sunlight. Well done on your top ten placing.

I was very careful when judging this competition to do so anonymously and not look at the names of the photographers. Even so I detect the work of a certain individual in three of my chosen top ten.

Is this favouritism or nepotism? Not at all, it’s just that Steve James is a master of HDR interior photography and his work both impresses and inspires me. This image is no exception.

Congratulations and keep up the good work.

Probably my favourite of all the pulpits featured in this competition and yet a devil to photograph well due to it's size. Well done for almost fitting the whole thing into the frame and yet still retaining true verticals. Maybe stepping back slightly would have provided a little more compositional leeway.

The theme of this competition was rather specialized but with only 264 entries I found that the lack of quantity was more than made up for by the variety and quality of the submitted images.

The entries fell into two broad types, those taking a close up view of the pulpit itself and those pulling back a little to set the pulpit in the context of the surrounding church. Both approaches are equally valid and my top ten features images falling into both of these categories.

My first placed image is beautiful in it's simplicity and the photographer has cleverly used lead-in lines and a symmetrical composition to emphasise the twin pulpits and yet still reveal the simple church architecture beyond. The colour palette is of course a delight and I really do wish that this image was one of my own.

Congratulations on your well deserved first place.

There's a simplicity and honesty to this image that I like very much. The pulpit is architecturally interesting and fills the frame, the light and colours are good and the picture is nice and sharp. A perfect fit for this competition and a well deserved top ten placing.

Far away the best of the monochrome entries this is a beautiful image. The conversion to black and white is extremely well done and has preserved a full tonal range which allows all details of the intricate architecture to fair leap off the screen. A delight to view large and a well deserved top ten placing.

My second placed image takes a close up view of the featured pulpit and only hints at the church architecture beyond. This is a beautiful pulpit and it has been extremely well photographed. The quality of light, clarity of colours and sharpness of the architectural detailing make this a delight to view at full screen size.

Well done on your second placing.