Vertical Stripes

I’m jealous! I flew to the Netherlands having been told by the travel agent that the tulips were in full bloom only to find I was two weeks too early. Yours is exactly the kind of composition I would’ve been looking for, but yours is so much more superior than mine might have been with the inclusion of the tiny silhouetted figures. It’s that personnel touch that makes your entry a stand-out personal entry.

Not an obvious choice for a vertical line photo challenge but that’s exactly why I love it. In particular, how you’ve captured the delicate fabric creases in the voting booth curtains, partitioned by the two thin wooden walls. The vertical-stripped floor continues the other side of the booths in what looks like a sports hall commandeered for electioneering purposes. The finishing touches completing your narrative are the legs of three silhouetted figures making their voting selections inside the booths (plus the inclusion of the protruding walking stick). I’m amazed you were allowed to photograph in the privacy of a polling station or were you just as surreptitious as the three people secretly placing crosses on their hidden ballot papers?

My top ten ‘Vertical Lines’ challenge has been dominated by photographs taken by drones. Try as hard as I could to include a diversity of photos in my choices I kept coming back to the drone shots. And with good reason as your entry clearly demonstrates. Your straight ridges plowed in a potato field by a tractor makes for a very strong graphic composition. The narrative is that eventually the whole frame will be filled with lines but you clicked your aerial shot at exactly the right moment. You caught the plough in the perfect rule-of-thirds position with the scattering of white bird wings adding further emphasis to your point of interest. I kept flip-flopping the first and second place photos but yours eventually won for its clear minimalistic simplicity.

Your macro shot of a single dandelion seed head photographed against a rainbow-coloured backdrop immediately stopped me in my tracks. Your excellent point-of-interest is the minuscule drop of water you’ve cleverly placed inside the outstretched verticals of the flower’s seed head. Looking like a glass marble, the trapped globule sharply reflects the multicoloured blurred lines in your background. Beautiful!

Your poignant shot of Rob Heard’s foot long plastic figures covered in calico cloth is a lasting photographic tribute in remembrance of the 72,396 unnamed dead soldiers at the Battle of the Somme. You’d flown your drone to find the best way to record the solemnity of the occasion and shown a lot of restraint in not adding any unnecessary post production embellishments to enhance your shrouded composition.

It’s superb aerial photos like this one taken of a Vietnamese market that makes me wish I had a drone camera armed with your knowledge of how to get the best out of it. The vertical rows of stalls, peppered with round containers full of vegetables (surrounded by buyers and sellers) has created an intriguing, abstract composition. The small size of this entry doesn’t do your photo justice. When displayed much larger one could keep returning to find new details that were previously missed. When setting challenges I look for something different and unpredictable - your entry has unpredictability in bucket loads. It was a close thing between your photo and the eventual winner.

This is a beautifully constructed still life composition. Most photographers would have been happy to submit an entry of a straight row of rainbow coloured pencils - not you! You have taken the ordinary and turned it into the extraordinary by painstakingly adding undulating waves to your layout. This kind of edge-to-edge shot has to be perfectly straight otherwise anything slightly out of quilter would have unbalanced the photo drastically. Well done for your top ten entry with a submission that’s as sharp as the points of your multicoloured pencils.

Too many photos entered into this vertical lines challenge failed because of the heavy inclusion of horizontal lines. But it is the addition of the modest horizontal that makes your photo. By subtly breaking up the verticals, the water’s white wake draws our attention to the duck swimming across the lake’s dominant blurred tree reflections. Careful study of the identically-coloured duck one notices that it too is made up of vertical stripes which are sharply reflected in your beautifully composed composition.

This is a smashing piece of montage photography. Your creativity has combined two completely unconnected items to compose a unique vertical-lined entry. If that wasn’t enough you’ve furnished it with what I consider to be the best title in this challenge. It was only the extremely high level of submissions that precluded you making my top ten.

I would’ve only given your entry a merit had it just been a photo of another artist’s creative work but the inclusion of the silhouetted viewer has put your composition into a context. Riding on the back of another’s creative work is not at all unusual in photo challenges but what I admire about your submission is that you have credited the artist who painted the vertically-striped canvases. Photographers too often forget (me included) that without the existence of another artist’s work their photos could not have existed.

There were lots of reflected glass shots entered into this challenge but I consider yours to be one of the best. The use of vertically high wine glasses helped my choice as did the uncomplicated three-colour palette. I like how you’ve gradually diminished the levels of liquid in each glass instead of taking the obvious route and filling them all to the brim. I’ll drink to that - Cheers!

Markets are great places to find a wide variety of different items to photograph and this one in the Italian city of Florence was a great discovery. Ironically you found items that are worn horizontally being displayed vertically. The multicoloured, fine-stitched, leather straps with small round studs and spiked metal buckles hang unceremoniously down the length of your photo. I would have tightened your belts slightly by cropping out the dominant white ones on the left. That would have given you a more balanced colour composition - but perhaps I’m being over critical so I’ll take your advice and belt up.