All I can say is I’m soooooooo glad I’m not the judge this week!!! 
MobiColour RESULT: MC #147 Theme: Minimalism - Nov 19-25, 2018
Wood Shop
Snapseed
Snapseed
Langkawi. My paradise on earth.
Fab!
Minimalist graffiti
Lightroom
GroovyGouvy
MobiLifer
Behind the scene
XSmax native, no edits
XSmax native, no edits
GroovyGouvy
MobiLifer
The slide
XSmax native, no edits
XSmax native, no edits
Good one Gouvy.
It’s certainly a great abstract. Love the reflection of those two red rods.
rizole
It's not even my banana.
Koi
I don’t know (or care) whether it’s classed as minimalist or not, I love this.
This is an earlier version showing the mirror through which Brad was photographing himself (and a good part of the rest of the train station) . By comparison, I guess my colour offering is minimalist
Btw, Brad took this photograph in 2015, on a generic android. My edits at the time with an early version of Brushstroke, when those obvious brush marks made great textural patterns 
And thank you, ma’am
GroovyGouvy
MobiLifer
Candy on kitchen towel
XSmax native, Ultrapop
XSmax native, Ultrapop
sinnerjohn
IOTM WInner - April 2022
How long have you had the flagship iphone for GroovyGouvy ?
Won’t it be fun!All I can say is I’m soooooooo glad I’m not the judge this week!!!
I think the reason that more architectural photos appear is that more people live in cities.
rizole
It's not even my banana.
Lines tend to be cleaner and patterns regular too I guess.
That’s a beauty Gouvy and I would never have guessed what it was.
rizole
It's not even my banana.
I'm struggling this week to get new material. It's dark when I go to work and dark when I leave.
Today is exams day and I'm a runner in a corridor. There's very little beauty here but I've had a go.
Today is exams day and I'm a runner in a corridor. There's very little beauty here but I've had a go.
rizole
It's not even my banana.
Resting.
rizole
It's not even my banana.
Never more.
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rizole
It's not even my banana.
The Eye and the Needle.
Yes, it’s true that at medium distances nature appears quite complex. It often takes something like snow or sand or shallow depth of field to simplify the background.
It is the onset of winter, and especially the first snows, that rekindles my interest in minimalism. Guess what, it’s that time of year right now when I had to pick a theme. So I’m looking at the subject with a great deal of curiosity and trying to figure out why it appeals to me so much.
One of the things I like so much about kayaking on the Bay of Fundy is how the entire world becomes simplified into three things, the sky, the rock cliff, and the sea, and then there’s me looking at it and feeling my place in the overall picture. Bobbing on the water reminds me I’m just a visitor here and not part of the sky, the rock, or the water. The reality of the scenery is a bit more complex but the image in my head is very simple - sky, rock, water.
Writing about this has reminded me of other images I have made that weren’t on the top of my mind but turn out to be among the ones most meaningful to me. That tells me I need to follow this path with more attention.
Losing the leaves simplifies a lot of plants.
Looking more at my favourite images there is a... something, an object, a line, and I could leave it at that, just one element, but there always seems to be one other thing to offset or complement the primary thing. For instance in the picture above, I made several others, some with only one arching stem, but somehow they seem too stark. As if there’s nothing happening, no story to be told.
This is one where I felt the background was too busy to be minimalist.
This seemed quite minimalist to me when I made it but that is because I was abstracting while looking at it, only seeing the foreground leaves and imagining the background to be more out of focus than it really was.
Until I further simplified the background.
And this could have been further simplified if I switched to vertical and focused on one side or the other. But I like this because it has a repeating form in the straight blades and a complement in the one crossing leaf, and the three tips forming an imaginary triangle bringing the three together.
Earlier I wrote about how the ability to abstract is a central skill in being able to compose an image. To see the simple forms among the overall complexity. The thing about minimalism is that the final picture itself needs to be minimalist and not require abstracting on the part of the viewer to see the simplicity. Well, at least that’s how I see it.
In your photo above of the locker doors: the thing I found drew my eye the most was the bottom left corner of any of the locker doors, the part that includes a bit of the frame, the corner of the door and the eclipse with the three parallel lines, but not as far as the hinge. I don’t know why that part attracts my attention, but it does. Maybe a psychologist could explain it to me. And maybe if I knew I would no longer be interested.
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