The photograph nobody was supposed to take

Round 5
Image 4 — "Midnight Exchange" : 3.10
The envelope handoff in a wet alley is the first idea anyone has for this theme, and it never pushes past that. Competently lit, but the wide crop leaves dead space and neither face gives you anything to feel.

Image 3 — "What's the hell?..." : 3.40
Smart device: the frame counter and desaturated grain sell it as leaked evidence, with the iridescent thing in the crate as the only colour in the world. The "RESTRICTED ACCESS" stamp over-explains what the picture already said, and the corridor stays flat where it should feel claustrophobic.

Image 1 — "Atomic bunker, photographer wasn't expected here" : 3.75
The wittiest reading of the lot — the officer's stare and the man scrambling under the map table put the act of being caught inside the frame. Gorgeous production design too: red bakelite phones, the warm lamp, the poster on the wall. It tips a little toward comic film-still, which softens the danger it's reaching for.

Image 2 — "Secret experiment" : 3.90
The chain-link in the foreground is the whole picture — it puts you outside, on the wrong side, looking in at something you were never cleared to see, and that mesh quietly cages every figure in the hangar. Cold light on the sphere against that cavernous dark is genuinely beautiful, and the hazmat suits are small enough to make the scale bite. Familiar territory, but it is the only image where the photograph itself is trespassing rather than merely depicting trespass. My winner.