WINNER ANNOUNCED - The 19th Photographers' Lounge Salon Challenge: Hair

[Ray Sachs]

Just a reminder that this challenge ends in a few days - Sunday night at midnight on the US east coast. Get 'em in by the time I start looking on Monday morning and I'll still take 'em. Some great shots here already - always room for more. Don't be afraid to take it outside the box. I took this yesterday and if it wasn't my challenge, I'd probably enter it - just to get any later entry folks thinking...

Philly 58mm-351-Edit by Ray, on Flickr

-Ray

 

[drd1135]

This one was a challenge.

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[Ray Sachs]

OK everybody. The challenge is closed. Thanks for playing!

I'll take another look at all of the entries and try to have a winner announced soon...

-Ray

 

[pniev]

I had forgotten about this challenge. But it was a joy to watch the photos. Ray, I liked the theme and I wish you lots of wisdom in selecting a winner!

Let me add 2 out-of-competition interpretations (I couldn't find a "they missed each other by a hair" photo in my portfolio)

Hair, growing under water:

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And a hair(spring) in a watch:

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[Ray Sachs]

OK, my highly non-scientific or methodical or analytic method of picking a winner has picked a winner. My methodology is to just keep looking at the images over and over and see which ones I kept coming back to the most. First, thanks to everyone who took part - it was great having a lot of fine shots to choose from. I was gonna do a list of honorable mentions, but it occurred to me that so many of the submitted shots would be on that list that it would be somewhat meaningless. So I didn't. I will give a shout out to all of the great shots of long hair in motion, with Davect01 being my favorite of those. And I loved pniev's underwater hair shot, and if he'd wanted it considered for the contest, it would have placed pretty high.

But in the end, my choice came down to two, Miguel's "wired", which I think is an absolutely brilliant self portrait, and Bill's (Lightmancer) very first shot. As much as I loved Miguel's shot, the winner is Bill's shot because it's ALL about the hair, ONLY about the hair, and about NOTHING BUT the hair, with no other story involved at all, and yet I still find it to be a brilliant photograph, and the one I came back to the most. When he first posted it on the first day of the challenge, I thought that's gonna be a tough one to beat and it turned out that way. I love the glorious, all over the place, wild, random, yet thoroughly styled HAIR in that photo. I love that I'm not even totally sure if it's human hair on a human head or if it's a wig being worked on. I'm pretty sure there's a woman under there, but it doesn't really matter if she's real or plastic. There's no story about the person wearing the hair, just the presence of the out of focus stylist in the background. And it's also technically great, with the narrow DOF and wonderful B&W processing.

So, congrats Bill, wonderful photograph! Now it's your turn...

-Ray

 

[pniev]

Congrats Bill. It is indeed a wonderful photo!!
Ray, thanks for organizing this challenge. You've done a terrific job in selecting the theme and the winner!
And a big thanks to all participants. As said, I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the various interpretations.

 

[pictogramax]

Another great challenge. Congratulations, Bill and thanks, Ray!

 

[drd1135]

Congrats to Bill (and Miquel).

 

[MiguelATF]

Bill's shot is, in a word, mind-bendingly wonderful - and he gets my vote as well as the consensus winner! Ray gets another vote for great curating and judging and he's totally right about the quality of all of the entries. I have to give special props to Davect01's brilliant hair-action-shot. And to everyone else, too! But Bill's shot has some truly timeless qualities - one gets the feeling it could have been taken either yesterday....or 50 years ago - and I can't say (or imagine) that about many photographs.

I know I'm not alone when I say I'm looking forwards to see what Bill's fertile imagination has in store for us in the future

 

[donlaw]

Congrats excellent challenge. Great photo Bill!

 

[Lightmancer]

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Thank you particularly to Ray. It's tough to curate one of these challenges, particularly when you have so many great entries. When I saw the subject, I knew I only had one photo that really met the brief but I saw so many wonderful and more imaginative interpretations posted after mine that I thought I would be a runner up.

As a little backstory, this was the last wedding I shot, a couple of years ago. It was in San Sebastian and was a three-day affair, with the actual ceremony on the beach. My Spanish is poor, certainly far worse than my Italian, and my Basque completely non-existent so marshalling the hordes of relatives was in itself a challenge. The bride was American and the groom a local Basque politician so it was quite a shindig! Just for the record, this is the bride from the front:

The Fellowship of the Ring par Lightmancer, on ipernity
I love this shot because she is serene, while all about her is chaos! I shot the entire 3 days "documentary style", which is what they wanted, then turned the result into a Blurb book which was sold for charity (she is chief exec of an NGO operating in sub-Saharan Africa).

Now - thinking cap on...!

 

[christilou]

Well done Bill, loved the title too, speaking as one who detests having her hair done!

 

[PJacobs]

Congrats Bill! And thanks Ray for coming up with a very fun theme.

 

[Petach]

well done Bill, like the story behind it too! Thanks Ray for posting a hair raising challenge.