Aleksander Rotner Earns a Perfect Score for “The Intruder” in our February Photo Competition

Jun 02, 2023 Comments Off by David Henkel

Congratulations to Aleksander Rotner for achieving a perfect score of 27 from our three judges at our February’s competition. Aleksander’s image was submitted into the Assigned Subject category, which for February was “Industrial”:

Here is Aleksander’s remarks about the image:

The theme was “industrial”. Lots of ideas galloped through my mind;
“a window view from a peaceful apartment onto a busy industrial park”,
“constructing of a moon base”,
“an abandoned construction site”,
“a child playing with a 3D metal construction model”, etc…
But I was still looking for something more traditional and more dramatic.
I drove around, looking for industrial places and found some interesting possibilities.
A place in Norwalk, a place in Bridgeport, a place in NJ, seen from the 95 highway
on my way to Washington, DC.
I took pictures of those places, and in Photoshop combined their distinct elements
into one original structure.
Adding a dramatic, threatening clouds helped in creating an atmosphere of urgency,
which explained the three worrying (I had no problem convincing them to pose for me)
figures, scrutinizing the situation. I thought the picture needed some rain to be more realistic,
which would then require reflection on the wet ground. This was achieved with the help of
“Flood 2” plug-in.
The resulting picture looked good, but it was still lacking some convincing as to its reason for being.
“What are they doing in the middle of the road?”,
“Why the agitation, just because of some rain?”,
“Where are they looking at?”
Searching through my many photographs, I found the culprit: a cow!
I placed her in the direction of their gaze, lighted her a bit, so it was more visible,
and now there was a story.
A narrative, I believe, should be one of the most significant factor in any work of art. It certainly is in mine. ~Aleksander