Over the weekend I received another nice Gold Award for my photography from the SWPP – this was for a personal piece of work that had been entered into the January competition and was for an entry in their “Architecture – Interior” category.

The shot is of the Westfield Shopping Mall in Downtown San Francisco.  When I’m out with my camera I’m always looking for interesting patterns and shapes and when I entered this Mall and looked up I could see the possibilities for a good monochrome shot.  (Of course it also gave my wife Morag a great excuse to wander into the stores whilst I studied the building. In hindsight this was possibly quite an expensive print.)

Processing the photograph in Black and White as I have here, makes the patterns much more prevalent and almost abstract in nature.  Although it is a square image you’ll also note that the “eye” of the pattern has been composed to be off-centre, adding interest to the picture and creates a much more pleasing composition.

The SWPP monthly competition receives thousands of entries from around the World every month.  Gold Award winners are automatically put forward to the final judging for the Annual SWPP’s Photographer of the Year awards – this one will be put forward for the 2010 competition which will be judged in January of next year.

It is one of my personal favourites so it was nice to see it get a Gold award.