SPC Presents our 2019 Photographs of the Year
On May 1, 2019 Stamford Photography Club held it’s annual Photograph of the Year competition. Members were asked to submit 3 images across the 3 categories: Black & White Print, Color Print and Digital Image with no more than 2 images into any single category, for a chance to be crowned our 2018-2019 Photograph of the Year. The images members submitted were shown throughout this competition season, and could be from the open subject or assigned subject categories. Our judges were tasked with selecting one image per category to represent the Stamford Photography Club as the Photograph of the Year.
Presenting our 2019 Photographs of the Year and a note about the image from a couple of the photographers.
Note, click on the image to view larger
Black & White Print of the Year
Is This Where I Get Off? by Jean-Marc Bara
Moscow subway, September 2018.
My wife and I were waiting for the subway when I noticed that the platform locations where the subway doors opened were quite predictable. I asked my wife to wait for a few subways to stop before we boarded ours – they come every one or two minutes – and started photographing the instants just after the doors opened. In this capture, the gentleman holding the bag seems hesitant on whether this is the station he needs to get off, while the couple behind him were busy looking at a smartphone. Just at the moment of capture the woman glanced at me. The photograph on the side of the subway car and the year 1945 commemorate Russia’s defeat of the Nazis – an event often seen commemorated in Russia.
This image contains in it five separate groupings of people, or tableaus. Complementing the two scenes described above, one live and the other a photograph, a third tableau is framed by the window above the commemorative photograph; while a fourth one is formed by the reflection of some commuters on the glass widow on the subway door, and finally a fifth one is in the photographs hanging on the top left of the image.
[Technical: captured on a full frame digital camera, with a fixed 24mm lens; at f 2.8, 1/150s and ISO 3200. Captured RAW (e.g. in color) and later converted to B&W] ~JMB
Color Print of the Year
Etched in Time by Susan Christiano
Digital Image of the Year
In My Magical Backyard by Aleksander Rotner
For a while I had an image in my mind of animals, dancing ballerinas, musicians, all flying in a circle in the air and a conductor directing them from the ground. I think it was a childchood remembrance of Disney’s movies, like the short “A Band Concert” with Mickey Mouse and “Dumbo”.
The April’s assigned subject brought those images to focus. I decided to use my backyard as the stage and myself as the conductor. I took photographs of my backyard from different angles, even from above, but…
It was March and the earth was still grey, no grass, no flowers, leafless trees. Too many trees as a matter of fact. They would interfere with the flying animals. My backyard was not up to the task. I was giving up the idea but the pull of this image was irresistible.
Looking through my photographs for an inspiration I saw in one of them a small courtyard on the top of a castle in Portugal and there I decided to create my image.. The idea of a large circus had to be scaled down. The result was very different from the one I had in mind and yet it retained the magic of the original idea. An elephant from my safari trip was added to the picture and a balloon was replicated several times, colored and shape-changed. The Magician was placed in the middle of the floor releasing a balloon. To make this image reflecting the idea of a backyard, I placed there two kids, a soccer ball and to complete the picture, a barbecue in the corner. The entire image was saturated with color to accentuate the magical feel. ~Aleksander
