Reader Photos: Best of Southern California Moments for May

• Posted By: Armand Emamdjomeh
• Posted On: 10:28 a.m. | June 5, 2012

With three professional sports teams making the playoffs, the Amgen Tour of California, a solar eclipse and Memorial Day, May was a month with many great images to choose from. Dana Barsuhn’s image of a man getting a stern talking-to by some officers on horseback is a great example of an image that tells a story — right down to the hand reaching out to pet the horse in the right-hand side of the frame. Meanwhile, Harry Datu’s image of a person with arms outstretched on Venice Beach is an example of perfect timing and serendipity in a shot: the sun, a passing bird and the person are all aligned, and the strong lines of the composition work well.

Then there are the mysteries: the woman with the butterfly wings on Hollywood Boulevard. Where is she going? Why is she wearing the wings? These are the types of questions that pull a viewer into a photo, but the fact that they’re unanswered, and probably never will be, makes them even more interesting.

Meanwhile, in choosing the images, I ran across two photos I felt were particularly strong, using a composition that usually isn’t. They’re very similar photos: one by Michael Ares and the other by Mehdi Bouqua, of men walking away with their hands posed thoughtfully behind their backs. As Bouqua said of his photo, photographers usually try to avoid photos of people’s backs. These are boring photographs in most cases, but here it’s the hands that betray the emotions of their subjects and make the photos interesting. What are they thinking about? If you could pick only one to include in the best of the month, which would you have chosen?

Last, and possibly my personal favorite for the month, is Toby Hancock’s image of a flag at the Los Angeles National Cemetery in West L.A. Taken the day before Memorial Day, the faded nature of the Polaroid-style instant film makes the image look as if it could have been taken a week ago, or decades ago, in the 1960s. Either way, the image, with its rows of American flags and gravestones, is a thoughtful image to the meaning of Memorial Day.

This month, we also got to take a look at what makes photographer Rinzi Ruiz tick. Know of another Southern California Moments contributor we should look at for a profile? Let us know in the comments.