* Wednesday C&C "No Theme" Thread #791 / Revived #011 on 2023 06 14 *

I'm afraid any praise attached to this shot belongs to pure dumb luck. While I was trying to capture her personality, the intended shot was of a long drool trail that was billowing in the AC.

Not at all pedantic. I don't like mislabeling things, thanks for the correction.

And yes amusing they are. One could say cheeky. And relatively tame. Sometimes they let me get within 10 mtrs of them.

Apologies Rich and SimpleJoy. Rich is correct and I confused the work from each of you.
May I put it down to the problems I have in trying to follow conversations in the flat view forum format.?

Pete has covered Linda's image comprehensively. I might have suggested B&W as well. Linda has supplied a b&W version. I agree with her. I prefer the original colour version for exactly the reason Pete mulled over as a possibility.
Conclusion? Discussing images is a win, win activity for photographers.

It certainly does. It's a huge issue in India.
Here, the men have become a united block. This is conveyed in the similarity of their clothes , postures and eye direction. They appear relaxed and confident. Smug? The solitary woman stands directly opposite. She isn't relaxed, she is on her feet, facing the men and in movement. The angle of her head is wonderfully caught and even at this distance we can tell that she looks above the men to the Goddess. The men have their backs turned to the female values represented in the statue.
In the current mood in parts of the indian community, this image might be banned. That's a measure of how good it is.

This isn't a definitive answer. It's my take on what I was looking at and my reactions.
It was in an art installation in Naples. There were a number of other pieces although they were very different to this. I think they were making a point about art being chained to the classical, which means Roman and Greek.
Another "I think." This post appears to support the roof and may well be a comment on the continued use of the three Greek orders of pillar capital design, the Doric, Ionic and Corinthian. It is highly probable that my interpretation is merely a display of my biases and how they warp my view of things. I dislike Corinthian style and I get bored with its overuse. There's a lot of it in Naples. I saw the pillar/capital as a rejection of Corinthian and a playful suggestion to try something else. If so, this looks closer to the Doric and Ionian I enjoy.

A little masterclass in how we interpret shapes and angles when looking at images.. One angle says "question." The other says passivity. The angle is interpreted and we believe we have entered the though space. Very cute.
As everyone has noted, the darker background brings out the characters better.

Good pick up Bryan. I assumed this was a genuine piece of art on the tank and I was about to write something based on that. "Tanking" should have alerted me but it didn't. The B&W helped fool me. I now realize that I expect B&W to be serious and journalistic. So it is but the PP is fun as well.
Good one Lou.

I am told it is a Bromeliad

.

Early on, I looked close enough to see the name OilTanking - and found via Google that it is a real company. I also looked for a logo. However, until just now I had not noticed the "tools" of the knife in this photo. Brilliant!

I have quite a few from different positions.
For this area of the skatepark, standing up and looking down was the best way to get the shot, in order to also catch shadows.
In other areas I stood lower and saw the riders run up a ramp and then jump higher.
Those are also cool shots, but I cannot yet share them, because they are landscape orientation, and under consideration for the book.

I did not use a wider focal length than 8 mm (MicroFT, so 16mm EFL).
That is really more than wide enough to get close. The riders sometimes almost landed on my lap.
I once used my 7mm (14mm EFL) at another skate park and I have some images from that session that still scare me. (Not really, duh).

Great capture - I like the composition and colors! There also are some nice details visible... only thing I'm wondering about is why you choose to use 1/40s at ISO200? I suspect it would be significantly sharper at ISO800 or thereabouts (of course I don't know your camera).

That being said, I have to add that sharpness is only important, if you want things to be sharp... And I feel like with flowers there's often no need for it anyway. Here's a recent example, where I completely ignored that factor:

I just love a look like that from time to time.

Thx, and sure. My camera only has a "pinhead" 1/2.3" sensor with a small pixel size. So in lower light noise is becoming apparent as low as ISO 400. Anything higher is losing it.
Re sharpness: I took plenty of shots front on to the flowers and being a macro with the anther in focus, the stamens / pollen are already losing focus. Some were ok with the closest part of the petal close enough to see some detail. But I chose this side on shot because more of the whole flower was closer to focus, and as you said, the softness it gives looks pleasing. I have tried closing the aperture but at such a close focus point, there really isn't much of an improvement to the depth of field, and of course I am losing shutter speed by doing that.
My camera will do focus bracketing but it doesn't stack them in camera. So next stage for me is to grab some software to do that. Some of these small flower macros are quite fantastic with their colors and structure and to be able to get the whole thing in focus will hopefully take it to another level.

Replies To Those Who Commented:

LAF! Indeed the dam birds' public toilets are very noticeable. I have been asked why I don't clone out all that poop. For one thing there's too much of it and for another it's, as you noted, part of the environment. I appreciate those of you who've been following this story with me for years. You've helped me more than you know.

I have recently concluded that I am more storyteller than photographer, and that I take pictures only to illustrate the stories.

I'm not sure it is persistence, or more likely addiction. They fascinate me, and when they're at the dam they perform more interesting dramas than I might find on television, all for free.

Thanks for sharing your goose story. I am always intrigued by the social and emotional lives of animals. They think, as we do. They feel, as we do. They have relationships, they work and play, they have personalities. We just fail to understand their life-view.

Ya, the thumbnail view seldom does any justice to larger scenes with multiple elements. Glad they got the enlargement option worked out. The dam intrigue is all about the lines and shapes, the light, the textures, and of course the actors that use that as their stage. And I do so appreciate your sharing your ideas for a crop. I suspected it needed a crop but I included all the elements I had in it in case someone offered an idea. I like the color treatment you added too.

I concur. I have seldom added anything to a dam bird photo, but on one of my favorites, I dragged the bird a bit to one side. I'm not a purist and will do anything that suits me to a photo but fun is catching them doing something rather than forcing it with Photoshop. And it would interrupt the solemnity of the funeral.

It is rooted in the series, as most all them are. Our new members of this thread have not been inundated with my birds for years like you have, so it may be like coming into a movie that's 3/4 over. As to the lighting here, it's about where they are situated, beneath the grates. Even on cloudy days some light comes in the grates, but it doesn't form beams as it does on brighter days, just diffused patchy lighter/darker areas. Some of the birds are caught in that mixed lighting. All are egrets and blue herons. The central blue heron is further back so less in focus, which shows up more in contrast to the front row of mourners. I think of him as the undertaker though your explanation may be better. I think of the high roosting egrets as the Amen Corner, and the squawking Broke Beak egret as the preacher.

Thank you. The birds' grace, even in such mean environments, always has a hypnotic draw for me. I will try the crop. I think it will work well.

Yes, it does require some study. Which is fairly usual with my storytelling photos. I include "too much" in the frame, and refuse to quit doing it though I've been told repeatedly to do so. I like this crop, and I think it's similar to what Pete suggested. I expect the final version will be cropped this way. Thank you!

Nice capture of a beautiful flower. I use an m43 camera and run into similar issues, so if I were to shoot this flower, it would look a lot like your version though I would be able to wring some extra background blur out of it I think due to the differences. I would not be shooting at ISO 800 either, though the new Lightroom feature offers some more noise control than the prior versions. I get better results underexposing a raw file and fixing it in post than I would by raising ISO. I might do a stack (my camera will capture and process stacks pretty well), but either by taste or adaptation, I've got used to shooting with the camera I have and find ways to mitigate, accommodate, etc. Camera and computer software are your friends in mitigation.

Minniev you started your answer about my reaction to the dambirds with the word / abbreviation LAF! could you please describe to me what this word or abbreviation means. Thank you, Lou

Lou,

I assumed it was internet or text message slang and looked it up because I was also not familiar with it. I would use "LOL" for "laughing out loud".

"LAF" is an abbreviation of "laugh" based on the phonetic spelling of the word. It is not very common, but people may use it in place of other popular laughing terms, such as LOL and haha. You'll likely see laf used online or in text messages.