The light in Alaa Al-Marjani’s picture is a
little tough: top artificial light creating downward shadows, flat highlights
and a colour cast. But this does not distract from an image that intrigues.
What is best about this image is the timing, even though the light is poor and
the women are covering their heads, you can just about see all the faces, with
downcast eyes, and through this you get a powerful sense of devotion. Take the
time to look at all their faces.
Each week Reuters photographers are commissioned
with a theme of the week. This week is ‘beauty’ next week is ‘tobacco’. They
are free to shoot what they want on this theme. Hayam Adel has chosen beauty
treatments and used full-on eye contact and a bold crop mixed with warm colours
to shoot this striking portrait of a young woman getting her hair braided and her
hand hennaed. Cropping off the top of the head and leaving the open space top-right
draws you into the eye and then to the carefully braided hair.
Sometimes a picture works well cropped in
two different ways, as is the case with Ronen Zvulun’s picture of Netanyahu.
The full vertical image, a classic ‘top of head’ in frame with the hand and
fingers leading you through the image to the eyes, works and the quality is
good. A strong single-column image, in newspaper terminology.
But a bold horizontal crop brings Ronen’s
picture into the classic, easy to use and easy to consume digital platform format.
It also brings your attention to the eyes in deep contemplation. Look carefully
where each eye appears to be looking. The hand is creating wrinkles that bring
you back into the image and those eyes as you are led from bottom left to top
right by the fingers.
Ammar Awad’s picture plays a visual game of
hide and seek. Your eye chases around the cool blues and greens and between the
highlights and shadows looking for something to focus on. And then suddenly you
see Netanyahu’s face, half obscured, peering at you from a protester’s banner.
What a clever and creative way to photograph a demonstration, through a passing
bus.
Waleed Ali’s picture has immediate impact
with its strong graphic composition. A solid black space is bisected by a gold
panel occupying just about half the image, eye-catching even when viewed small.
You then notice the sea of people moving through a bold L shape from top left
to bottom right. It’s then that the single figure, wearing a white shirt, jumps
out at you as he stretches to touch the holy Kaaba. And once you have spotted
him you just can’t look away as he tries to resist the movement of the tsunami
of people to prolong his touch. More pictures on Ramadan here.
Some pictures just lift the heart, and
Siphiwe Sibeko’s image does just that. Surrounded by colour, sound and movement
is the biggest, warmest smile of the week. Siphiwe’s picture is perfectly timed
so the waving flags don’t obscure the face. But the real secret to the success
of this image is the eye contact. She’s looking right at you, even from across
a crowded stadium.
Just enjoy the wonderful gentle horizontal
zigzag composition of Mohamad Torokman’s picture. People are spaced out against
the tooth-like concrete barrier as they make their way under the solid black
tones of the canopy, all set against the highlight of the blue sky. Take the
time to notice how Mohamed plays with the viewer, the figures right and left
are in fact shadows of people – a nice touch.
A very simple picture by Aboud Haman that
is quite thought-provoking. At first sight, it’s just a couple, dwarfed by the
rubble of a destroyed building, not uncommon in Raqqa. But look deep into the
shadows. These people are not walking past it, they are walking through it. A
potentially dangerous journey, but in the context of recent history, not as
dangerous as it was before. What occurred to me is how things that are not
normal in many places seem completely commonplace elsewhere.
The name Idlib conjures up images of a city
gripped with tension and destroyed by conflict. Khalid Ashawi’s picture of
bread being made in a bakery is counterintuitive and gives us a certain amount
of respite from what is imagined. The whole image is almost completely
monochromatic, the colour bleached out and the figure silhouetted by a single
light bulb on the wall. A hint of a kiss of pink on the wall and the glow of
the oven warm the whole image to the extent that you can almost smell that
bread. Read on about Idlib here
I really don’t do
cute, but hard to resist is Amir Cohen’s lucky and affectionate image of a
fruit-bat suckling. The strength of this image is that it is pin sharp with a
shallow depth of field, drawing your focus to the stretched teat, the bony wing
and the touch of highlight in the eye of the pup. Soft-focused and in the
background, is that a slightly indignant look on the mother’s face?
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