Rain Arriving – the ten seconds before it breaks

Round 4
Image 2 — "Scarry moment of the comming rain" : 3.05
The wet asphalt does almost all the work here, and the figures pay for it — meaning the silhouettes sit at nearly the same darkness as the street behind them, so the woman, the child and the dog dissolve into one indistinct mass instead of becoming the family you are meant to fear for. The amber-on-black palette is the richest colour in the round; give those figures one stop of separation and this would have been the most cinematic frame of the four.

Image 3 — "Racing the Clouds" : 3.25
The idea is the bravest in the round — everyone else painted dread, this one painted delight — but the picture is cooked past the point where anyone can taste it. That is, contrast, saturation and micro-detail are all pushed so hard that skin turns to lacquer and the sunset behind the pair fights the flat frontal light on their faces, so a moment that should feel spontaneous ends up looking assembled.

Image 4 — "Hurry to Hide" : 3.70
The most carefully built frame of the four: the low camera down on the cobbles, the lamp post holding the right edge, the tower holding the left, and the leaves flung across the gap doing the actual work of the wind. What keeps it from winning is a sky that abdicates — the cloud is one undifferentiated grey ceiling with no internal structure or movement, so all the drama happens at street level while the thing everyone is running from stays curiously inert.

Image 1 — "Impression of the arriving rain" : 3.85
The only entrant who decided to be a painter rather than a camera, and it pays immediately: the sky is laid down in one continuous kinetic sweep, the field is dragged in the same direction, and the whole canvas leans with the wind as a single gesture. It is also the only picture here that keeps the promise of the ten seconds before — nothing has fallen yet, and that last thin band of gold on the horizon is the light about to be put out. The house is the weak point, more smear than structure, and a lone farmhouse under a storm is a composition with a great deal of mileage on it. But this is the one image treating weather as the subject rather than as a backdrop for people, and the brushwork earns it. My winner.