Collage of seven different photos
Lens-Artists,  Themed galleries

Gallery: so which did you choose?

January 18, 2023 / 24 Comments

Art and life are subjective. Not everybody’s gonna dig what I dig, but I reserve the right to dig it.

Whoopi Goldberg

Photography, like all arts, is a subjective business. We all have our favourites. At times though it seems it’s almost as hard to judge other people’s work as it is our own. Nevertheless, we often do just that.

A while ago I posted some of my favourite shots from 2022, in response to John’s Lens Artists challenge. I organised them into several categories. But at the time I wasn’t sure which single one in each category was my number one favourite, so I asked you to choose. Some of you were reluctant to do so, but many did. Thank you all!

I promised to share the ‘winners’ in due course, hence this follow-up post. Interestingly, the exercise of asking you to pick a favourite in each category also led to me looking more closely and in most cases finding that I did have a preference after all. So below I share not only your winners but also my own, where they differed from the majority choice. I hope you’ll find it interesting to see the outcome of this exercise, and to compare your own choices, if you made them, with the final results and with mine.

Note: not everyone voted in every category so the totals for each vary.

Architecture

Stone vaulting in a large empty room

Your clear winner: The Cellarium, Fountains Abbey

(9 votes out of 16)

Ornate balustrade against a panelled white wall

My own choice: Staircase in the Palace National Art Gallery, Sofia

Flowers and plants

Coiled fern

Your clear winner: Fern uncurling, Costa Rica

(8 votes out of 15)

Pale yellow tulip drooping

My own choice: Fading tulip

Landscape

Mountain peak with small hill in foreground

Your clear winner: Machapuchare

(11 votes out of 17)

View of snow-capped mountains framed by a bare tree

My own choice: Annapurna Range of the Himalayas seen from near Pokhara

Monochrome

Backlit bike leaning against a tree

Your narrow winner: Bicycle in the Place Saint Sulpice, Paris

(7 out of 13 votes – Faro was a close second with 5 votes)

Sepia photo pf a man in a cap next to large machinery

My own choice: Ex-miner demonstrating pit machinery at Beamish, north east England

Street

Small girl feeding pigeons

Your clear winner: In Kathmandu’s Durbar Square

(11 votes out of 19)

Boys in yellow robes outside a shop

My own choice: Young monks in Bhaktapur, Nepal

Sunrise and sunset

Snow-capped mountains tinged pink and small aircraft

Your narrow winner, and my own choice: Sunrise over the Annapurna Range

(9 votes out of 21 – the sunset over the Narayani River was a fairly close second with 6 votes)

Interestingly this was the category where votes were most split, with all four images getting at least 3 votes, yet it was one of only two in which I agreed with the majority!)

Wildlife

Two black birds on a fence

Your clear winner, and my own choice too: Young jackdaws at Studley Royal, Yorkshire

(9 votes out of 16)

24 Comments

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