The results of the fifth round of our prestigious Amateur Photographer of the Year are in! Matteo Strassera wins the top place in this round with a striking minimal desert landscape taken in the UAE, with Lucy Monckton coming first in the Young APOY competition. Here are the top ten images uploaded to Photocrowd from APOY Round Five, Landscapes, with comments by the AP team and our guest judge. Landscape can be everything from an epic, breathtaking scene to a tiny, abstract detail in a rock; it can be a long exposure that strips back a composition to its basic elements; and it can be something that allows us to see the world anew.
That’s why it regularly tops the charts of favourite genres among amateur photographers, and that’s why this round is always of such a high standard. Very often, what makes a photograph memorable is its ability to conjure up an image of something other than that being depicted. In this case, Matteo’s stunning, minimal image of a desert in the UAE appears almost like a solar flare emanating from the sun.
The beauty of this picture is that the viewer needs no more information at all than what we are given. The strip of ridged bright orange that takes the eye from bottom left to top right is more than sufficient, with the way the detail fades to black anchoring the composition top and bottom. But it’s about so much more than technical excellence – instead, it’s about the sense of vastness, peace and solitude that is conveyed with stunning c.