WINNER ANNOUNCED: The Eighth Photographer's Lounge Salon Challenge: ALONE

alone in a crowd

Some time ago, I visited the old Cathedral in the city of Zapopan, an old suburb of Guadalajara, in Mexico. A mexican friend took me there, a devout woman, and as we sat in the uncomfortable pews near the front of the ancient church, she told me about a man - born blind and with deformed feet and hands, who is unable to either see the world around him or walk normally - and who has lived in the Cathedral for some time. She explained that it was a spiritual duty to care for those less fortunate than oneself. Moments later, I saw him. He can only move around by crawling, and he slowly crawled up the main aisle of the church. Although it was relatively full of people, most of those there pretty much ignored him. The lady I was with greeted him and asked how he was, and he replied to her that he was fine, there was a brief, polite, exchange of formal greetings. Then he continued crawling away, up the main aisle of the Cathedral. I had mixed feelings about photographing him - part of me felt like I was 'getting in his space' - but another part of me felt that it was perfectly all right. I only took a few photographs of him. This is one of them. Looking at it, again, I was reminded of my sense that a person can be in the middle of a crowd or a large group of other people....but still be very alone.

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arrodillado / on his knees
by La Chachalaca Fotografía, on Flickr

The photo was taken with a small compact camera, my old Lumix LX7.
 
I rarely participate in these kinds of challenges, but when I saw the subject matter it reminded me of a photo taken about a year ago just outside of Tokyo. Enough said. Here it is.

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There were a number of images in this thread that made me go "Oh I wish I'd shot that".

As I sit here contemplating how on earth do I pick a winner, I realize that I've had a whale of a time looking at these beautiful images over and over.

So the winner is me. Pretty much. Thanks everyone for playing!

Going back to picking a winning entry, when I picked the topic I was looking for an image with "gravitas". There were quite a few that had that in spades.

There was Sue's lyrical lone seagull, John's pondering flautist, Steve's railway mural, Matero's lonely jesus, David's solo journey on a bike, John's singular tombstone, Peter's surfer staring at the rough sea, Bill's very human street scene, Red's shot of Casa Batllo (or is it Casa Mila), Ken's fisherman, Doug's "moon over hernandez", Brent's panhandler/hungover party dude, Don's lovely contemplative image with beautiful textures, Antonio's strangely mesmerizing "girl leaning against iron lamp post", tdkany funny lone goat, Matt's lone man in blue shirt on the beach, Luke's wise old dog, Bart's long exposure of the milky way, Martin's "child clown examining knee", Miguel's difficult image in the church, Joe's pensive lady (loved the background), Stephen's pier, Dave's "girl on a swing", Milan's stunning "lone boat in mist", Kyle's "man fire sky" selfie, PJ's lone shrub, Martin's second over-riding submission "battlestar potemkin building" and lastly Nic's sparkly "man on surfboard with paddle".

There were two images that stood out for me, one was Steve's railway mural, which had an Elliott Erwitt quality of a second discovery when you notice the scale of the mural in relation to the man sitting at bottom left. I really enjoyed that.

But my pick is Bill's "Human Factor" image, which definitely fit the brief. It captures all that was in my head when I picked the topic and exceeds it in every which way. It has tonnes of gravity without being heavy handed about it and it was the image that made me go, "Dang I wish I'd shot that".

Congrats Bill!

Thank you all for a wonderful challenge!
 
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