I attended a talk by poet laureate and poetry professor Billy Collins earlier this year. Someone asked him whether anyone can produce a poem, and he noted that one thing that cannot be taught is metaphor.
Thinking metaphorically seems to me to apply to images as well as words: you either see a connection or you don’t, and I imagine most people will see wildly different things.
This week’s photo challenge is wonderfully open-ended. It asks us to present dialogue between pictures, for beholders to contemplate. It’s almost too much fun to come up with such visual combinations.
I call this pairing “Burst”:
Some Sunday sloth:
“Caught in the Act”:
Possibly my favorite pairing:
Cupcakes, anyone?
For whom do the bells toll?
Of these two pairings, only one (in each) should be eaten:
Some architectural pairings:
Art is everywhere:
Some morning stars:
Love in the Spaces 
Beautiful interpretation of the challenge!
Thank you, Maya….it was hard to stop posting pictures to this one.
Fantastic! Well done!
Thank you!
Wow, so much great ideas!
Thank you!
beautiful gallery! Fabulous images.
Thank you….this was such a fun challenge, also fun to revisit.
Excellent post, wonderful pictures both as individual shots and in their pairings 🙂
Some challenges are just straight-up fun….I think I need to do more of those 🙂
Oh, well done! Such a sumptuous feast of pairings….tapas and wine!
This was what led to that “diablogue” idea 🙂
Beautiful! The best I’ve seen yet!
That is a supreme compliment!
What fun these are! Your enjoyment at making connections communicates itself to your viewers. Visual metaphors — an interesting thing to think about.
P.S. I love so many poems of Billy Collins, how lucky you were to get to hear him.
It was a great night–what a soothing soul he has, and with that gentle humor and wit. Reminds me of my husband, of course. Thank you 🙂
Wow! All your photos here are so lovely, but this response to the difficult photo challenge grabbed my attention most. It’s excellent, very thoughtful and very relevant to the challenge 🙂
Thank you, Mara! I’m still ruminating about ways to help pictures speak to one another, and to the beholder. It was such an original challenge to give us.