* Wednesday C&C "No Theme" Thread #785 / Revived #005 on 2023 05 03 *

A

Or B

Holland Flowerland

At Jim's suggestion, I improved the darkness.
Do you no longer see this photo in comments from others? It's a mystery to me what goes wrong, but I'll leave it as it is now.

Lou

Love the composition with the beautiful lines and the colors as well - excellent shot!

In my personal experience, birds are notoriously difficult to frame effectively and employ in a bigger composition.
I seem to always get the angle wrong.
And when the angle is half decent, there are always wings, necks, beaks or feet that don't want to cooperate and be framed well against a background.
So (again in my experience) i consider it quite the success to get ONE bird well in a frame.
Minnie, on the other hand, routinely makes images that contain three or more birds (four in this case) that all contribute to a pleasing overall composition.
There is one that stands proud and strutting, a dark silhouette perfectly isolated against a light background.
There is another, smaller, one, who seems to mind his own business: his light presence is just perfectly placed to be framed against brutal concrete.
Those are the static extras.
And then there are two main characters, all dynamics and action, with necks perched and wings unfolded, framed against two different strips of medium-coloured concrete.
How does she do that?
It this luck or patience (or both).
They say that luck favours those who come prepared.
I think that Minnie is routinely supremely prepared.
She knows this environment. She knows the water and the light and how they interact at different times of day. She knows the birds and their expected behaviour.
It is a knowledge that cannot be replaced by any amount of sheer luck.

This is the kind of image where it is easy to get the dimensions wrong as a viewer.
What is sticking out towards us?
What is a zone that recedes into depth?
(Talking about this phenomenon, my wife always gives the example of how she could never un-see the batman logo from the Burton logo as not being a black symmetrical bat against a yellow background, but instead in her eyes, it was always a mouth spread wide open, with weird teeth.)
Images that create such an illusion are the express way towards successful abstraction.
And this is one of them.
The only small little element that gives away what we are actually looking at, even at first glance, is the electrical circuit box on the nearest bright wall.

I am glad that multiple images from the same session are posted. It is always interesting to consider the artist's decisions in selecting which image to present. That is why I love looking at contact sheets from photo sessions (the wonderful book "Magnum Contact sheets" are a treasure trove for that kind of exercize).

In this case I agree with Minnie on her preference for the first additional image, and also with the reason why. Looking at your initial image by itself, there was something that rubbed me the wrong way, but I could not really pinpoint what. The eyes were OK with a nice catchlight. I also like the very tight framing. (For portraits I have been known to frame so tightly that even just one eye (or an eye and a half) are in the image, with just a bit of hair and half a chin.)

But is was the bow intersecting with the lip that bothered me a bit, and that becomes clear when looking at the other images.
The first additional image gets it all right.
The second additional image is less successful, because the bow becomes just a diagonal stripe with less purpose.
The third additional image has a strong leading line, but the face being straight yanks the image out of the "violinist performing" illusion towards being a more conventional portrait.
I do like the portrait of the man but would crop it tighter. Maybe square, losing almost all the black on the right of the instrument and most on the other side.

How a brook through an autumnal forest can look like a galaxy unfolding.

This is a good image with which to illustrate Robert Capa's immortal advice for photographers: if your image is not good, you were not close enough.
Being right in the middle of the action, following a protagonist at arm's length and looking over his/her shoulders is a surefire recipe for immersion.
We are there.
Or we wish we were.

The success of this image has many reasons.
For one, it is a great performance image, catching dancers in the midst of their action, with great atmospheric light centered on the most dynamic dancers, and a very competent stage fog to highlight them against the background, adding a layer.
But there is more at play here.
Your peculiar crop (very panoramic, very low and wide) creates an illusion of this not being a moment frozen in time, but a sequence of moments, like those age old and world famous first photographs of a single horse through different stages of its movement.
The illusion is that this group of dancers is actually a single person, captured at different stages of a cart wheel.
I adore it.

The thing here that appeals to me, is the reversal of expectations.
Lamp posts are supposed to be static.
Birds are supposed to be dynamic.
In this case however, the birds are the static elements, while the lampposts seem to be flying towards us.

I love the mystery here.
It's probably because of Jim's violinist portrait, that I see this great B&W closeup as a macro image of violin (or guitar) strings, over a fret.

So Dorothy left Kansas and came to Oz, and she met a Lion there. And a scarecrow and a tin man.
The Wizard of Oz leaves much room for speculation about exactly what drugs Dorothy was on.
It seems to be a hallucinogenic that offers a very bright and colourful perspective on life.

It's the same with guitars (I wouldn't know, I am not musical).
And with lenses : the viewer of the image may not notice the difference, but the photographer does.
And with bicycles too...

Whenever you are met with a wife eye roll, remember that this is the best response :
"I only ever use one at the time.
So the wear and tear gets spread out over all of them and they all last longer."

This must be breathtaking to see! My corner of the planet has an area that grows tulips commercially; however, I've never visited. I love the angle from which you shot this richly colorful scene.

I'm seeing what appears to be aggressive sharpening of the image. This has resulted in a treeline that looks somewhat unrealistic, along with the small details of the individual flowers. Strictly personal preference, but I feel the subject and colors are better suited to a softer touch. These couple of weeks since I joined your group has been a great learning experience for me. Thank you!

Many thanks, Roel. I know exactly what your wife went through 😄

My vote is for the black and white version. In my view, it makes the most of the compositional features - the dramatic sky with a V formation at its core, the nicely offset light bush in the foreground, the light itself. The blue color (and likely any color at all) masks the light and reduces the dramatic effect of the foreground/mid ground/background landscape formula (tried and true) that makes this image work.

This is a nice shot of a beautiful scene, if a bit dark. It is way too crunchy for my eyes. Backing off on the sharpening would improve it a lot.