Monthly #135 - Shadow Photography Competition

Thank you everyone for your entries, they are much appreciated, a small haul but plenty of variation, much to admire and studied. For what it’s worth here are my thoughts. By the way I took the liberty of playing around with some the images, which I also describe, hope you don’t mind!

Shadowfax – by drofmit – The title is a clever play on words! A patched grey roadway dominates the scene, a scrubby verge provides some colour contrast. The white road marking pulls the eye diagonally upwards. Harsh sunlight casts shadows on the roadway firstly from foliage pieced by a telegraph pole; a tracery of telecommunication cable’s catenary curves travel towards two further poles and onwards. A good idea though I feel the image could benefit from an increase in brightness and contrast. Does anyone still send Fax data?

shadow-play - by Noelcmn - The more I look at it the more I like it! The vertical split of the frame is so well balanced, the colours are nicely contrasting, the orange tinged light brown, the fabulously vertically textured blue paint with its little flashes of red and missing chips, then the deep dark shadowed area to the left with subtle hints of form within the shadows. And did I mention the coiled wire! No but it’s genius, the slanting side light reveals the 3D form of the coil and its long shadows cast on the blue is the topping of the cake. A really clever and satisfying composition, great shot very well spotted/created!

Shadows of IR – by Spad – How unusual, IR camera and IR lamp, I’m guessing the image has been converted to B&W. Anyhow the image is rather weird, I find Gnomes a bit creepy! A wild collection of items as a still life with an apparently solid black background. I experimented a bit with this images, mainly playing around with the Gamma value. This revealed a large amount of extra information in the shadows. The most surprising a heavily ornately patterned wallpaper with shadows cast onto it. Inventiveness is great, keep doing it!

Night Shadows – johnriley – A beautifully composed B&W image. A simple outdoor chair on a diagonal sits on slightly wet and damp patio slabs. It’s night, the only light source is from the top right, the ISO is whacked up to 12800 but noise is not apparent. I really like the mixture of textures and straight versus curves. The shadows on the chair itself and cast on the slabs are great. The texture of the slabs and various highlights provide plenty of visual interest. A solid image!

Off Pacific Crest Trail Washington – jrutle – I find the lighting in this image most unusual, I though perhaps a flash had been used to pick out the closest LHS tree trunk, but the EXIF says no. I suspect to the naked eye the woods seemed much darker, an ISO of 6400 was used! The vertical format works well, the verticals being broken by the fallen wood and especially by the diagonal truck linking the two principal trees. The sun must be almost directly behind you, the stripes of long shadows converging to a vanishing point are cast onto the brown needle littered forest floor, the green of the foliage a nice contrast. This was another image I played around with a bit, again I tried shifting the Gamma to darken the shadows, this seemed to work well without losing that weird light feeling. I like this image.

Vintage Camera – PRYorkshire – A silhouetted folding bellows camera, which I suspect could still produce great images. I have a very similar one from my Father’s things. The opened camera sits balanced on it’s foldable foot. Starkly lit in profile we see the shadow produced cast on to a micro-textured white wall. Why is the shadow dominantly orange? Why is the image heavily vignetted? By design or accident, we don’t know, I’d like to know! This is another image I had a play around with, this was great fun, the most interesting result came from applying an edge filter!

The results:
1st - shadow-play - by Noelcmn – A well deserved victory!
2nd - Night Shadows – johnriley – A great technical show case.
3rd - Off Pacific Crest Trail Washington – jrutle – I found the weird light fascinating.

So it’s now over to you Noelcmn

Best regards to you all
Mike

Thank you for the win, and your kind words, for the challenge and the judging exercise Mike. Much appreciated. The old F 100-300 working well for me, which I picked up for a bargain a few years ago. Congrats johnriley, the image I thought had it in the bag. And also jrutle for your 3rd place. A new challenge will be up shortly.

Congratulations to Noel, John and jrutle.... and thanks, Mike, for the competition it was fun.
Shadowfax is actually a reference to Gandalf the White's horse.... magic flying hither and thither.... the white line piercing the distance and the shadows of the passage of communications flowing behind like a mane.... [in Tolkein-speak Fax translates as Mane... so the hoss is called "Shadow Mane".... ]
but yes, fax copies are still sent where a document has to have an original copy and not a printout [even if the same printer is used to print the fax!!]
But, I am not sure I can increase the brightness and contrast.... or even could have, the sun was about as bright as it gets [14:45 is UK time]
When I have a moment, I'm gonna try!!