The devastation of a mud slide is
graphically illustrated in Newton Nambwaya’s striking picture. As far as the
eye can see a brown gash of mud cuts down from the horizon, through the green
trees, destroying and smothering all in its path. The woman in the foreground
struggles through the mud, seemingly with little or no hope of achieving
anything. This all seems slightly unreal. It was torrential rains that caused
this mud slide, but the scene is now bathed in warm sunshine.
Strong warm highlights and dark cold
shadows in Khalil Ashawi’s bomb aftermath picture give us a real feel of the
chaos of what is going on. It’s hard to work it out. Your eye is drawn
immediately to the bright yellow and you spot the spray of water, or is it
smoke? It’s then that you see the man with the jeans and white t-shirt, behind
him another with the fire hose dousing the damaged vehicle. The ground, wet
with water, reflects the light and the action. Slowly, the bystanders can be
seen in the shadows on the right. They seem calm and used to all this.
The overall shape of the police arriving at
the scene is like a wave crashing on the beach, with a strong right-to-left
diagonal formed by the line of their helmets. Then you get a sense of a strong
undercurrent pulling back. I think it’s the position of their arms that give us
this sense of back and forth motion. Take special notice of the man’s hand in
the centre of the picture. He looks like a surfer in a powerful current trying
to control the flow of the wave.
A cacophony of colour and line makes your eyes swirl around Afolabi Sotunde’s picture from Eid prayers. Finally, you are allowed to rest on the brand name Hello Kitty, to make this a terrific business news picture. Then, and only then, you see the fingers reaching to the edge of the frame. Imagine just how disappointing it would be if these were cropped off! To see more picture from Eid click here
An affectionate and simple set of pictures
by Abdullah Dhiaa Al-Deen looks at the tradition of buying new clothes to
celebrate Eid. The black background and the relaxed poses draw attention to the
varieties of clothing purchased. Abdullah is taking a break from news
photography to bring us a visual surprise to enjoy. I have pulled them together
as a combination so you can see a small selection.
All colour has been choked out of Thaier Al-Sudani’s cityscape by the smoke from the chimneys. The image looks like it’s from a bygone era. A tiny figure is dwarfed by the chimney stacks and the extent of the pollution. It’s the vehicle on the right that snaps us out of this illusion that this is from the past. It’s happening right now. Read on here
All compositional lines in Azad Lashari’s
picture lead to the fiery open mouth, from the torch itself, the line of the
eyebrow, to the clothing of those watching. The yellow glow of the flame will
be snuffed out in an instant as the worshipper closes his mouth, shutting off
the oxygen to the flame. But the moment before that happens has been captured
forever.
Like a Mondrian painting, this picture is
made up of rectangular blocks, with the strong vertical lines of the telegraph
poles intersecting the horizonal lines of the cables and breaking the image up
into sections. A slab of solid back-lit black is counterweighted by the bright
colours of the translucent flag held aloft. The picture structure feels like a
loud drum beat.
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