Lou Noble, dear friend of Flickr and one of the inaugural judges in our Flickr 20under20 celebration, took the time recently to share his Flickr Faves with us. As a connoisseur of the luscious, we weren’t surprised when he sent us the following seven images from seven of his favorite photographers. They are rich and candid. They capture exquisite moments of tenderness, vulnerability, human connection, sexuality.

You can catch up with Lou at the excellent online magazine, The Photographic Journal, or read excerpts every Thursday from his interviews on the Flickr Blog.

Thanks for sharing your current Faves with us, Lou!

https://www.flickr.com/photos/chloeaftel/15751323805/

This photo strikes at my very core. It’s gorgeous, lighting and color and composition all in perfect harmony. But even more than that, Aftel utterly captures her subject (Edie, part of Chloe’s Genderqueer series). It is almost unnervingly intimate, and I am moved every time I look at it.

Everything about this photo delights me. But as much as I’m drawn to breaking it down into individual components — the light, the color, the subjects — it’s the image as a whole that draws me in, the perfect synthesis of the composite elements involved. When I think of fashion photography, this is what I hope for, this excellent display of clothing that doesn’t ignore the person wearing it, that suggests a story as well as highlighting couture.

There’s an elegance here, the shot is very evocative of classic Hollywood; from Hattie’s profile and hairstyle, to the use of lighting and smoke, it’s both simple and cinematic. And the imperfections of the print only add to that vintage feel, but not in a blandly nostalgic way, but rather to bring home the tangibility of the image, the feeling that you can reach out and actually touch it, feel the scratches, dab your finger and pull away a bit of the emulsion. Makes the image appear more Real, more than a series of ones and zeroes.

A shot perfectly created to evoke a moment captured. A romantic shot, two lovers so caught up with each other they’re forced to stop in the middle of the street, the story is all laid out by the details of the image, and every aspect of the image serves the story, from the angle of the car in the road, to the two subjects half in/half out of the seat. A quiet passion to the photo, lovingly embraced by the day’s fog.

A photo so exquisite it takes my breath away, each time I look at it. The perfect sunset, the lush colors that bring out the forest, the mysterious woman in the image’s center. A grand landscape that practically begs to be looked at more closely, to better appreciate the detail in the trees, the reflection in the water, the subtle rays of the sun playing across the scene. Tremendous.

A simple, beautiful portrait, whose name, unsurprisingly, is Adonis. Exquisite lighting, with just enough detail in the background to suggest the portrait is taken out in the street, that this moment is not one crafted, but captured. And that this moment of stillness, of strength that exists alongside beauty, isn’t one that had to be made, but one that exists freely in the world.

Despite being a fan of Traci’s since my earliest days on Flickr, her work continues to astound me. The way she plays with composition, the lack of artifice in her photographs, her continued experimentation with double exposures. This shot, in particular, exudes a warmth, subverts the expectations of composition in a shot of this kind, and like so much of her work, speaks of a communion with her subject, two people being in tune, creating something.