WINNER ANNOUNCED: 29th Photographer's Lounge Salon Challenge: Time

Keeping Time.jpg
Keeping Time
 
Just a quick reminder to one and all: this Photo Challenge - about Time and the nature of Time - is, in fact, 'time sensitive' ... which means the ticking clock for entries will expire in approximately 3 days, on October 21, at 10:21 in the evening, give or take a few seconds or minutes.

So, if you are or have been time-challenged - or if the concept of TIME in a photograph challenges you and you haven't yet had or found or made time to enter your time-sensitive time-relative photograph .... please do so .... while there is still time ;)
 
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Istanbul - always lively by bartjeej, on Flickr

Istanbul's city center is always, always bustling with locals, with many of their own clothes, food, and customs intact. This, more so than even the mind-boggling amount and quality of old buildings, makes you as a visitor feel connected to the city's past, much more so than in western European cities like London or Paris.
 
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All good things, they say, must come to an end....and so has this Photo Challenge. 10:21 pm on 10/21 has come and gone and passed and entries - which by the way are thought-provoking and, basically, fabulous, are now closed.

I will be ruminating and agonizing and attempt to do the undoable and select one winner among the many many many deserving photographs.

Stay tuned, as they used to say in the days of analog TV sets, an earlier and more innocent 'time' ;-)
 
Before announcing my choice...I have a few comments on each entry. In the order they were submitted - so we will start with -

Antonio (ajramirez) and his remarkable Clock Face. With a cool Spanish title: Doce horas menos 16 segundos en la vida de un reloj. It’s a wonderful, almost timeless and classic photograph and image. Sixteen seconds to go until...noon. Or until midnight. A sense of mystery here. And the shadow within the white clock face adds to the mystery. It seems like a simple photo but the more I look, the more I see.

ReD - Roger (ReD) has another clock face - an even CLOSER and very texture view - which, yep, is another fine entry. The multiple tiny ghost images above and below the 3 indicate, to me at least, not one but multiple moments either frozen in time or lost to time. The photo’s textures make me feel like I am almost literally getting underneath time’s skin. Another seemingly simple image that grows on you.

Which brings us to Luke’s (Luke) rock wall - and dead leaves with the Graffiti: Death AWAITS
I love this photograph. Especially the dead leaves on, above and surrounding the bittersweet graffiti. You almost expect to see this message chiseled in a 19th Century gravestone but written on the sidewalk in chalk - chalk which not last, which will be obliterated in the next rain, and thus will not ‘pass the test of time’ - it’s a wonderful, ironic, and philosophic comment on the links between Time and mortality. I keep coming back to this photo over and over and staring at different parts of it.

And, okay, forget about time. Milan’s (pictogramax) amazing photo of old gnarled hands smoking a cigarette gets special kudos. This arresting black and white portrait - I have to call it a portrait, a portrait of the hands of someone who has obviously lived quite a bit - is a remarkable image. Among a field of outstanding entries, it stands out. Not just visually, but also for the metaphoric almost poetic subtext of time - the time the unseen smoker has lived, the time to develop those wrinkles on his hand, the time it took the cigarette to burn down almost to the stub, the times I kept coming back to stare at it and wonder if, finally, it would burn all the way down and burn his hands.

David (Burkey) gives us such a cool image: a rusted old bicycle that has become, apparently, a permanent fixture in the garden which has grown up around and on top of it. And damn, another photo that demand repeating viewings. I kept thinking about it. And appreciating it in different ways. There is a small part of me that wants to ask David to take a whole series of this Overgrown Bicycle in different seasons - including winter when I imagine it, like the rest of the garden, might be covered in snow.

ricks boating image - Nighsail - with the electrifying colors and textures of this photograph - it made - and makes - me feel like I am entering into another zone - a zone where colors are tactile, where the normal five senses may operate in different ways, a zone in which time can move either quickly or slow down to a frozen crawl. It’s quite cool.

Lightmancer’s entry - another clock face - the RIVA CLOCK - is another seemingly simple image which captivated me. The backlighting, the reverse view, the sense of light and shadow and texture, they all seem to come together to give this photo a special almost timeless feel. I mean that literally - timeless in the sense that it might be a contemporary image but I could also see this image being from the 19th century camera of Eugene Atget - which btw is a serious compliment for me, Bill, as I love, love, love Atget. This is another great photograph.

dougpayne’s photo - of what looks like a very very old signature, etched into a rock face in New Mexico, is for me another beguiling entry. Who was E. Pen Long, this mystery man? When did he actually sign his name and why? It’s another series of mysteries within mysteries and the photograph, which seems like a simple documentary snap, seems to hold layer within layer, once you begin studying it. Quite cool.

The Prague Hebrew Clock from Les Klein resonates with me for both photographic and other reasons. I spent some time in Prague several years ago and heard many stories of the horrifying genocide done to the Jewish community of Prague. This clock is testimony to some things - including a very poetic sense of time itself - managing to survive. I also love the pigeon, perched stage right, observing the world calmly and apparently unaffected by the ticking minutes and hours.

marlof’s shot (Sign of the Times) - the Apple Watch Ad on the huge glowing street screen in Beijing - grows on me. For many, many reasons. Including its multiple depictions of time and technology and the complex relationships which bind them together. The more I look at it, the more I see. Including the seemingly almost negligible analog clockface down the street, banished to dim obscurity by the glowing Apple watch. Waaay cool, Marlof.

drd1135 Steve’s almost collage style image - of an ancient photograph - an ancient camera - and an ancient hand/pocket watch - works on so many levels it’s hard to know where to start. So let’s start with the notion that as time passes, some things get lost. Not unlike Luke’s message of time and Death. But here it works differently. Looking at this image, for me, was almost like entering into a small cultural cemetery of old pieces of what I imagine to be someone’s life. The faded photo of a smiling young man who in my minds’s eye may either a very old person now or more likely is no longer living. The ancient camera with its cool mechanical and analog scales and numbers, which, again, I imagine took many photographs, possibly even the one of the smiling young stranger. And then the watch with its hands frozen at 9 after 8, a time which for some reason I can only imagine might have meant something to someone. Of course, someone else looking at the same photo may interpret it completely differently...which in a way is the beauty of the image.

kyteflyer Sue’s haunting black and white image - End of Life - also got to me. Or should I say gets to me. I kept coming back and just looking. Like others, it has its own mysteries. The dying flower - an agapanthus florelet - has an almost anthropomorphic feel to its shape and textures. Looking at it I imagined a slow-moving insect, disguising itself as a branch, and living an entire lifespan in...a day. Or a week. Mentally, at one point, I readjusted the old ‘time waits for no man’ into ‘time waits for no plant’. There is so much subtext in this photo that it’s almost easy to overanalyze it which would be a mistake: it’s really a great photograph. Period. Bravo, Sue.

davect01 Dave’s monochrome/black and white shot of Hands holding Hands - the hand of a very old lady, as it turns out, holding the hand of her not-quite-as-old-as-she-is daughter - is, simply, powerful and emotional. It’s impossible not to look at this and feel the human spirit shining through. Those invisible bonds which bring us together and bind us together are very visible here. Damn. It seems so easy, to take a photograph with strong emotional content...but it’s not that easy, at all. Nice shot, Dave.

donlaw Don’s image of red-shirted marching band members “Keeping Time” is definitely both a keeper and made me smile, repeatedly. Plus I love the interpretation of the Challenge. What is time, anyway? For a musician, it’s different that for a non-musician. Not to mention that for the rhythm section it may be different than for the winds. But that’s getting a bit technical. I really like this photo. A lot.

snkenai Stephen’s image of of the sand - or should we say the sandS, plural - on what seems to be an amazing beach, in Kenai, Alaska - is rather amazing. Not just the sand but the those far-off mountains. And the clouds. And the light glinting to intense brightness on the tides which are coming and going and coming again. Yep. Definitely another intriguing interpretation of what time is...and can be. Plus - damn! it’s such a cool photograph.

Matero What appears to be a crowd scene - perhaps a packed weekend in the park, or at a local market or fair - changes when you realize the object those tiny children are leaning against, oblivious, is an ancient tombstone. And all of a sudden there is a seismic shift in the way I’m looking at the photograph. And then I start noticing other details. Like the young man lying nearby focusing on the screen of his cell phone. And I can’t help wondering: was the mysterious man or woman, buried in the cemetery-now-become-a-public-thoroughfare someone who used technology or machinery whenever he or she lived and died? And what would they have made of a smartphone if someone had shown it to them? Bottom line: a truly interesting image.

bartjeej Bart’s contrasty photo of Istanbul shows one of the faces of a bustling metropolis which - and this is the cool ‘time’ part - before it became Istanbul in the 15th Century …. was Constantinople … and before it became Constantinople, in the 4th Century ….. was Byzantium, an ancient Greek colony that dates back to the 7th Century B.C. Whew. That’s a long timeline … and a lot of time. Nice photo, too.

The last entry in the Challenge comes from

michealj - Micheal’s image of an ancient Zenith clock-radio is one of my favorites from this Challenge. Partly because of the rich and creamy bokeh which sets it off from its background. Partly because it conjures up memories of the old, possibly ancient radios which both my parents and my grandmother used and listened to, another bygone part of a daily life that no longer exists in the technological here-and-now we inhabit in the 21st Century. It’s like stepping into a time machine and emerging on the other side the day this radio was brand new. Quite a cool image.

And….the winner is….

I’ve judged a few Challenges before. This Challenge hands-down was and is the hardest. There are so many great photographs here which interpret the subject in so many cool, different, surprising and unexpected ways that...it is and has been nearly impossible to pick a winner.

Sue’s great image of the dying plant came close and is deserving of more accolades than I can muster up. Luke’s philosophical graffiti about Death gave me serious pause. There were several incredible clock face images which, each in their own way, especially Bill’s, are not only great photos but truly great interpretations. And it would be sinful not to admit, publicly, that Milan’s photograph of the ancient hands of the congenital smoker, is such a great photo that it deserves more time and space than I can begin to say. So it ain’t been easy.

And no matter how objective anyone, me included, ever pretends to me, when all is said and done, this is a subjective decision. But -

The photograph which in some ways I’ve already mentioned and others that I’m still struggling to define...that is my choice for the winner of this Time challenge… is Steve’s (drd1135) remarkable image. It embodies for me, in visual, emotional and most of all, in photographic language and subtext, some of the (many, many, many) things that 'time'....can be.

My congratulations to Steve - but also, seriously, to all of the rest of you for stretching the limits of where a Challenge can go. I swear, this wasn’t easy, at all.

But CONGRATS to drd1135….guess it’s TIME for a new Challenge now (grin)
 
I think what I learned the most here is that I need to learn what makes a great photograph. Otherwise, the only way I get one as a result is by dumb luck.

Thanks Miguel for your enlightening analysis and sharing your gift with us all.

And congrats to everyone else....your photos were better than I initially thought. I will re-enjoy each one as I read Miguel's thoughts and I would encourage everyone else to do the same.
 
Congratulations Steve! truly a deserving winner. :bravo-009:

Miguel, thank you for sharing your analysis with us. I find your thoughts about the pictures and drawing the feeling/emotion out of each with out dwelling on the technical side. If I can learn to do that kind of analysis, my photography should improve. :bowdown:
 
I had never entered any photo contest before. Miguel, your sagacity and generosity inspires me to be more mindful of the impression of an image, as well as the technicality of the image itself. Your individual comments and reasoned opinions wove the effort into a complete experience. I'm encouraged to consider entering another contest. Thank you.

Your evocative picture, Steve, well deserves the accolades. The tools, images, and emotions of photography were all reflected in your picture.

Congratulations to both of you and my fellow contestants. A great set of pictures!
 
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