I shouldn’t say cream of the crop should I?  Now who will want to see other ma after I have identified this as cream of the crop ma?

I remind you, or tell you in the event that you haven’t looked at shutter ma, that “ma” is a Japanese word for space, negative space – and that I may well be using the word incorrectly.  However I am using it, I am not using it as in Ma and Pa Kettle and their math  – which you have to see if you haven’t.  Ma = space, got it?

These photos show gates and fences and other structures where spaces,  negative spaces, define the image.  The first, these penguins, is unusually representational:

Penguins!   “Wow” is what I said to myself when I saw these.  Wow indeed.  More swirls:

Moving from swirls to above-average negative spaces, let’s start with this gem from a Julian Hodges gate.  Hodges is as cool and excellent as you get with gates:

That’s the best.  The rest aren’t bad:

End of short first essay on ma.  They are great fun to look for.  Train your eye.  Look for the negative space.