Colin Gray is a well renowned worldwide photographer accredited for his advertising work. Being a student of advertising and photography myself, i really appreciate and relate to his flashy, in your face, and dramatic style. Also, he often plays with perception, which is one of my favorite things to do.
The first image is a landscape on an ocean in Iceland. It seems the horizon line is close to centered but i believe he chose to make the bottom half a little larger to allow for the lights reflection to extend out until it starts to fade. What's crazy is that you cannot even see the sun or the light source which is creating this long reflection against the water. You start to see the sun peaking but it is mostly covered by a very dark cloud that extends into the top of the image and contrasts beautifully against the white reflection. What really makes this picture for me though is the area on the water right at the horizon line, theres seems to be some sort of heavenly mist or clouds right above the water.
The second image is a portrait of a girl and her shadow. Gray chose to have the center of the image be where the girl and her shadow are touching palms. Honestly i don't know how to feel about this image. Because of Peter Pan I almost get a childhood feeling of whimsicality and playfulness here. But then i think of how she isn't facing the viewer, she is alone, only with her shadow, being engulfed by a surrounding dark shadows and I almost start to feel bad for her. Regardless, you can tell he is trying to play with the viewer's perception and maybe even emotions as well.
The last image is sort of refreshing to me. This is because i feel like i see people using perfectly symmetrical places to make your typical portraits all the time. Here, Gray has achieved a something close to symmetry but with much more contrast. We can see this in the fact that the lines that lead the the subjects head are two very different things (a rail and yellow line of paint) that lead into the subjects head. Also, rather than having the subject staring straight up at the camera, she is facing down so only the left side of her face is lit, contrasting nicely against the background where only the row of houses on the right side is lit.
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