* Wednesday C&C "No Theme" Thread #789 / Revived #009 on 2023 05 31 *

This has a very optimistic vibe. Is that what pink and spring do?
It is another image where the poles and wires, despite their ugliness, are actually important. They balance the trees on the right and act as a frame to stop the eyey from wandering out os the frame on the left. Also, their straight-lined ugliness contrasts so well with the billowing pink beauty, making it seem even more attractive.
We can't see where the road goes, but all the signs suggest it will be a nice place.

Food for thought? Maybe clone out the shadow across the road in the foreground, which acts as a bit of a visual brake as we travel down the road.

Pete

That's pretty cool editing to get the city looking so ominous, with all its blackened patches. The enhanced light reflections on the wet road are a nice touch too. Compositionally, you take good advantage of the leading line of the slick reflective road and its accompanying march of poles, with the vanishing point off somewhere in the hazy mountains. What I'm not sold on is the blackened headlights in the nearest of the vehicles. That's a little too creepy for me. All in all, an interesting image in your city series.

Whilst preparing the image, I tried a crop similar to Jim's suggestion and was torn, but discarded it for the reasons Mike mentions here. The other reason was that I preferred the narrower vertical frame of the version I posted, as it felt a more appropriate shape for a giraffe. However, I do like a bit of mystery, which would favour the crop, so the decision wasn't easy. Having had time to look at Jim's crop, I could live with either.

Pete

I peeped ahead which I usually don't do, to see whether you ever said where this was taken because I was pretty sure it was Whitney from Movie Set road, a wonderful place to photograph like most of the eastern Sierras, especially the Bishop/Lone Pine areas. Love the IR version. You had some pretty special clouds and the capture made them moreso. That contrast between Whitney and the foreground formations (foothills I suppose) is so dramatic in tone and texture, then the smooth cloud formation lies across the spiky peaks. Just beautiful. Makes me want to go there again, if I ever get travel-worthy.

You have again chosen a set of colors that works together and results in a pleasing image. The cherry tree look is an effective emulation of spring just as the red/orange look emulates fall, and they both work because of the contrast with the blue of the sky. This one has a stylized look that makes me think of Topaz Simplify edits but maybe you got this with just color work. The composition is strong, with that leading line of road and row of poles/wires running from corner to edge so there is a clear way to read the image. I would suggest you crop off the pole that is right at the left edge, and clone out the black line across the pavement in the foreground.

Your image is another I looked ahead through the thread to see if you explained why you added the light painted halo, and I found it was in response to a prompt for a project. Then I found your other submission of the flower photographed alone. The second submission, the flower alone, is so much more appealing to me. The halo is a worrisome extra that doesn't make sense to me in terms of function or symbol or design, but maybe I just don't understand the image properly. So I try to focus on the flower. The alternate image allows me to do just that. The angle and points of focus are more pleasing, the colors and light are beautiful, and the detail is lovely.

The scene is simply beautiful in the truest sense of the phrase. The layers of color are rich and lovely, but there is also exquisite detail in those mountains, with that snow covered peak as the centerpiece of the composition. We see a suggestion of civilization in the valley between the rocky foreground and the towering distant mountains, but the scale of the landscape reminds us that nature rules here.

I have never seen an alpenglow with colors that intense but I'm willing to believe that if such a thing can exist, it would be in Arizona! A narrower panorama crop that removes some of the orange area is a nice alternate framing for this one, and gives it a different less fierce/more peaceful look that I actually prefer. .

Wonderful celebration of your special creative eye that sees what others cannot see and captures it to show it to them with titles that gently explain it for those of us who love words as much as pictures.

The mirrored sequence of the colorful critter are indeed constructed into a whole before our eyes. It has the feel of a kaliedoscoped image flattened and rolled out. I like J Kasson's crop too but I think I prefer the original with the embedded lines which serve to lead us through the construction timeline.

I really like this.

I just don't know what to do with this photo. If I mess with highlights and shadows it changes the petal colours. So far just a small boost to contrast and saturation... I started to completely remove the background with a view to making it just one colour but that was going to take ages which I don't have...
[edit] Macro: these little flowers are maybe 25mm petal tip to opposite petal tip

Two crops

Welcome to the Wednesday Thread! Visit often, share your thoughts and your images. It's a good place for sharing experiments with black and white. And yes this little cafe or coffee shop does look best in monochrome. The color version has very little range of color but quite wide range of tonality, a clue that monochrome will work well. The monochrome processing even hides some flaws like lack of detail in lights at the same time it increases interest in all the little details like the handwritten labels on the containers. And of course the young attendant adds interest in that version.

Nicely worked.

This looks like an upside downer, something I'm very partial to, especially with a bit of ground foliage hanging from the top of the frame. Rich but realistic colors, natural blues and greens. My favorite of all the shots you've posted thus far.

Welcome to image sharing on the Wednesday Thread! Glad to have you join in. I am glad I'm not the only one inspired by garlic plants. I think we could name this Garlic Week on the thread. Those plants do take on the most convoluted and interesting forms. The shapes do persuade me to use monochrome on some of them, though the purple blooms or good sunset light can persuade me otherwise. Yours looks like it's just a couple of days from popping open.

You made a good choice in choosing to separate the smaller section of flowers, which are truly beautiful, In the other portion of the scene the background is a little scruffy and the foreground a little blurry, and takes something away from the flowers themselves. I am always reluctant to bring up color adjustments because everyone's monitor is different, not to mention color perception, but if you have editing controls for individual colors, you might try lowering cyan saturation or moving blue hue away from cyan to limit the cyan in the top third of the frame. But that is a minor quibble in a nice image.

Minniev,

Thank you.

Rich

Hold my beer; I have a migraine.

The image is rotated 180 degrees and probably a polarizing filter was used. All of it is a reflection except the top and the bottom, which are the riverbanks.
I also see a float from a fishing line.
Is that it? 😀

Only after seeing it on a 24" monitor could I appreciate the picture. I like it, but that pink stripe disturbs me a bit. Was any filter used in the capture? or was it just your recreation with editing software?
You had dust on the sensor (upper left corner)😀

It's all been said. It's a great shot.