Amateur Photographer of the Year

Here are the top ten images uploaded to Photocrowd from Round Five, Portraits, with comments by the AP team and our guest judge

Round Five Portraits

Portraiture is always a challenge. It can be easy to become overwhelmed by our own creativity, or distracted by the technicalities of studio flash, or confused by the pattern and modelling of natural light. There’s potential to forget there’s an individual in front of the camera who needs directing and who has a story to tell – a story that it’s our duty to capture in a single frame. A successful portrait has an edge – a certain something that, in a split second, reveals some small detail or nuance about the person. And the beauty of it is, a different photographer a moment later might reproduce something completely different from the same set-up. A good portrait encourages the viewer to look longer and deeper into the image, and possibly come up with an interpretation that even the photographer hadn’t thought of. It’s a wonderfully fulfilling, creative genre, and the top ten images in this month’s round all succeed on a range of levels.

1 Mark Letheren
UK 100pts 
Canon EOS 5D Mark III, 35mm, 1/60sec at f/2.5, ISO 160

Guest judge Carolyn Mendelsohn says:

‘There were many strong portraits entered into this competition, but this portrait and composition stopped me in my tracks – there is a sense of theatre, a scene, a quiet drama, a story. It is like a film still.

I found it enigmatic, intriguing and engaging. We collect visual clues when we look at portrait images and these enable us to interpret them. This one, well, so many stories could be garnered from it, and also questions asked. It held my attention for longer because of this.