* Wednesday C&C "No Theme" Thread #783 / Revived #004 on 2023 04 25 *

Lumix - TS3 -- Street photo, CCD vibe. Try to set the person in an isolation center.

Welcome home, Fox- That's an interesting offering. I have never thought of using a glass ball with light painting but it's a nice look. (I've never become proficient with my glass ball at all, actually, so you've reminded me to get it out and try again). The billowing shapes inside the ball are fascinating. I don't know enough about either light painting or use of glass balls to do more than tell you I like it, and I think the ball placement along the lower right thirds marker is a good idea. I am not sure the tiny reflections of the surroundings (various stick like figures) is adding enough information or mystery to be useful, so if it were mine I might eliminate them and see if I liked it better without them.

Maybe Mike F will chime in, as he is an Aussie and familiar with the landscapes there. The landscapes where I live are not particularly colorful most of the year either, but with a slightly different color palette. The numbers you're mentioning on the adjustment sliders sound about right for basic adjustments based on editors I've used, and you don't ever want to go overboard with saturation sliders, there are other tools that work better, especially if your editing program allows for adjustments of individual colors. How much disembodied intrusion to leave vs remove is always the photographer's decision. My own personal taste is try to to include branches if I include leaves, and to try to include bases of ground plants if I include tops. But I never read that anywhere, I just have that as my own guide to help make sense of the edges of botanical things.

Your scene is nice enough to revisit often and find many different interesting compositions with different lens lengths and camera setting. It looks like there are animals there (cows and ducks at least) various structures, nice reflective water, even hills (what I would give for a hill!). Lots to work with on small and large scale.

That lonely figure against vastness of environment says it all. Magnificent capture.

Thank you!

Rich

The number of participants here exploring creative ways to use cameras as tools to create abstract images has surprised me. It must be symptomatic of something but I don't know what that something is.
I don't see this image as completely abstract. The shapes suggest cars to me and fast cars at that. Testing, wind tunnels and wind flow. The colour states that this is no conservative, practical model either. The tapering front, the left right direction and the circular form all work to create the impression.

I'm not getting it. Street photo, yes. the soft focus and angle suggest it was taken fast, maybe shot from the ship or through a bus window. But why? I'm not seeing anything that would have made me want to grab that shot. Would you like to tell us what you had in mind?

Meant to add, I think we are in Thailand here.

Certainly Thailand, Mike.
On the right you can see the picture of the queen.
Apparently an old photograph showing the entrance to an inn.
Very valuable for me because I have a connection to it from the past.

This is a curious image. It's very crooked, which is always a bother to my eye even though I know such compositions are popular in certain types of images. The colors are so muted that the photo is basically dichromatic. It is heavily blurred due to lighting, capture settings, processing or the camera itself. But it is a Lumix Ts3 you say, and I've seen clearer photos from that camera. It mostly reminds me of a scene from a scary low budget movie. The woman who is bent over gripping the bannister to haul herself upstairs looks seriously ill, and this is of apparently no concern to the concierge that I think I can make out behind the desk. I will look forward to your sharing more info about your goals for this image, and what you'd like to know from those of us viewing it.

Lou, this is the best photo this week.
Amazing!

Personally, I would correct the geometry as much as possible without losing the picture of the queen on the wall. I am generally not a fan of tilted images but others seem to like them. The person on the stairs is almost lost in the image.

Andrew

Hi Mike,
I appreciate your comments. You can tell your wife north east NSW, about 60k's inland. You were close, taken the other day so Autumn.
I had cropped the original to get that, and there were branches at the top and a line of grass at the bottom but too much sky. So I will stick with that crop and have started cloning out all the intrusions.
Just another point about eucalypt colours as I am sure you know. Close to them they can have plenty of green, but move away and it fades and there is more grey. As opposed to say a pine tree which tends to hold the same shade. But as you say, location, season, species, there is plenty of variability.

Getting towards the end of the week, I want to post two pics not for critique but with an observation.
I believe these are river red gums which often exhibit the yellowish / tan shades seen in the rear tree.
When I first noticed it, my mind was consumed with the natural tones and it completely blocked out everything else. So I wanted to capture what I was seeing.
When I look at it in a photo, it doesn't stand out nearly as much and I tend to see the whole photo. [edit] They start to be more apparent viewed 1:1
Not sure if that is a function of 3d reality vs 2d photo or something else.
I visited it again after I had seen the photo and the tones are close enough.
I know our minds filter so much from our field of view, bringing to our attention what it thinks we need to focus on. Perhaps amplifying what it wants to.

It can be so hard, even impossible at times, to get the camera to do justice to something we see in nature. That is one reason simplification works in photo composition, it helps us capture/see what we liked most about a particular scene. Your second image does more justice to your vision than the first, even though the first shows more of your subject which seems counter intuitive. You might find that even closer shots that isolate just the beautiful colors and textures of the bark might reveal even more.

I like your correction and crop. I thought about half of the lamp, and assumed that viewer can find the person on the stairs. Thank you for this idea.

Alex

Yes I will try and get some closeups