* Wednesday C&C "No Theme" Thread #788 / Revived #008 on 2023 05 24 *

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RoelHendrickx
Members 893 posts

May 30, 2023, 6:57 a.m. May 30, 2023, 6:57 a.m.
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@minniev has written:

@MikeFewster has written:

@Bryan has written:

Rainbow Lorikeet, had been feeding in this bottle brush tree.

Rainbow Lorrikeets and bottlebrush! That's an Australian combination with eye popping color possibilities. I'll get to the actual photo in a moment but I gotta say that the photo doesn't have the colours of the bottlebrush and only partly shows that of the lorikeet. A further aside. I'm in southern Italy and bottle brushes and eucalyptus trees are everywhere, as they are in Spain.
Back to the photo. The head, the beak and the red rimmed eye that seems to look straight at us, plus the small area red breast, all are what get my attention. The branches and the rest of the bird all seem to get a bit jumbled with visual lines that take the eye to them but there isn't something there we want to see. There is a largish dark area instead. What about a crop of the head/eye/beak portion?

I agree with what Mike has said and done here. The bottlebrush tree, if it had the usual blooms on it, would have added a lot. The harsh light that turned the beautiful bird's midsection into a puddle of shadowed confusion was not your friend. I doubt you could retrieve enough from the shadows to make it work - the retrieved areas would probably be noisy and less saturated and give away the retrieval. I would try, but would not be optimistic about it. But the interesting crop shows you do have a quality photo in there, waiting to be discovered, tack sharp, with beautiful details and colors.

The very tight crop on the bird's face is an excellent idea.
Almost everything that got deleted here, was a distraction.
But most importantly: this crop made me realize what fine feather detail there is on that head, and also it made me remark the catchlight in the eye, creating a sense of the bird making eye contact.
In the uncropped image, I had not remarked those details at all.
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MikeFewster
Members 1722 posts

May 30, 2023, 7:32 a.m. May 30, 2023, 7:32 a.m.
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@PeteS has written:

@LouHolland has written:

Wormhole, the world of an apple and the world or bird food.

Showing the wormholes in the apple is a clever idea and well executed.

What are the fruit in the second? The stems seem too long for apples. In any case the image seems to be coloured with an orange wash over the exposed flesh abd a blue-green over the background. However it has been done, it is quite effective and gives it a depth and also a dream-like quality.

Pete

I wasn't sure about photo two either. Looking again, I think Lou has created the Orpple, a fruit that combines the best of oranges and apples. It will be immensely popular with fruit salad makers and Lou will make a fortune.
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MikeFewster
Members 1722 posts
May 30, 2023, 7:45 a.m. May 30, 2023, 7:45 a.m.
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@minniev has written:

@simplejoy has written:

Another shot for a flickr group weekly theme, which was "10:10". Didn't quite know what to do with that theme and was very busy anyway. In the last two hours before the deadline I had a couple of ideas and decided to try it anyway. So here's a shot with everyone's favorite Steinheil V-Cassarit 50 mm f/3.5 *(enlarging lens)

Ten up, ten down! by simple.joy, on Flickr

it's not! 😅

The larger in focus golden bead is set off nicely by the matched groupings of smaller OOF red ones with their cool triangle bokeh. A visually pleasing image that falls in the realm of the abstract.

Some people are symmetrically orientated and some aren't. The symmetrically orientated are driven nuts by things like earrings that don't match. Vice versa for the other group. I think it is something like left and right handedness. Me, I'm firmly in the non symmetrical group (unless the symmetry occurs accidentally in something like a landscape.)
All of which means that this image simply doesn't appeal to me while I am quite sure it will be different for those on the other side. This is a personal idiosyncrasy.
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LindaS
Members 523 posts

May 30, 2023, 11:15 a.m. May 30, 2023, 11:15 a.m.
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@PeteS has written:

What are the fruit in the second? The stems seem too long for apples. In any case the image seems to be coloured with an orange wash over the exposed flesh abd a blue-green over the background. However it has been done, it is quite effective and gives it a depth and also a dream-like quality.

Pete

@MikeFewster has written:

I wasn't sure about photo two either. Looking again, I think Lou has created the Orpple, a fruit that combines the best of oranges and apples. It will be immensely popular with fruit salad makers and Lou will make a fortune.

Has Lou replied yet? It looks like a pluot - a real life hybrid of apricot and plum, quite delicious 😃
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LindaS
Members 523 posts

May 30, 2023, 11:20 a.m. May 30, 2023, 11:20 a.m.
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@Bryan has written:

The cropped version and comments about the resulting improvements are worth the price of admission to this week's thread 😁 Fantastic educational moment for me as interested observer.
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RoelHendrickx
Members 893 posts

May 30, 2023, 3:47 p.m. May 30, 2023, 3:47 p.m.
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@LindaS has written:

@Bryan has written:

The cropped version and comments about the resulting improvements are worth the price of admission to this week's thread 😁 Fantastic educational moment for me as interested observer.

Agree, Linda.
That is what we are here for.
It's the interaction that creates a unique value.
Roel
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JimKasson
Members 1738 posts

May 30, 2023, 3:53 p.m. May 30, 2023, 3:53 p.m.
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@RoelHendrickx has written:

I have waited long to comment on this image, and now Pete has beaten me to it, articulating what I also felt.
I do not mind (at all) the unconventional composition of the original image: the lone main subject close to the image's edge gives us a beautiful speculation about what is just outside the frame: is there a whole other band there, and is he conducting? Or is he just isolating himself for a moment and stretching his arms, maybe nervous because his band is about to perform on this apparent jamboree. I like that ambiguity.
The revised and AI enhanced image (though technically well done) loses that magic of uncertainty. Now there is just empty grass in front of him.

Moreover, I really liked the square crop: it had an internal logic of lines and tensions. That unravels in the wider version.

Thanks. I don't think I'll change how I print this image. Square with visual tension is how I saw it at the beginning, and though the image with the additional AI elements is appealing to me, I like to go with my initial take if I can.
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Bryan
Members 1320 posts

May 31, 2023, 7:53 a.m. May 31, 2023, 7:53 a.m.
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@MikeFewster has written:

Rainbow Lorrikeets and bottlebrush! That's an Australian combination with eye popping color possibilities. I'll get to the actual photo in a moment but I gotta say that the photo doesn't have the colours of the bottlebrush and only partly shows that of the lorikeet. A further aside. I'm in southern Italy and bottle brushes and eucalyptus trees are everywhere, as they are in Spain.
Back to the photo. The head, the beak and the red rimmed eye that seems to look straight at us, plus the small area red breast, all are what get my attention. The branches and the rest of the bird all seem to get a bit jumbled with visual lines that take the eye to them but there isn't something there we want to see. There is a largish dark area instead. What about a crop of the head/eye/beak portion?

Mike, yes it is a far better view. I had made a couple of identical crops more or less the same size as yours to observe the effects of some tweaks. But to me I could see some graininess and softness that I didn't like. The one or two passable shots I have of him feeding are even more cluttered with branches and old seed pods.