* Wednesday C&C "No Theme" Thread #795 / Revived #015 on 2023 07 12 *

I had no idea. To me it looked like the emergency outlet in a grain silo. People can drown in the grain in those things.
I agree with (I think it was Open Cube) that a magician doesn't have to reveal their tricks. Seeing what Linda began with in building this image gives me nearly as much awe as the image itself however.

Good point re AA and viewcameras. I had never thought about the impact of the style of camera on his process. That's critical. If you are developing plates, all kinds od parameters can be adjusted in the developing for the individual plate. I was playing with roll film when I was into the zone system. This meant that every shot on the roll had to be developed in precisely the same way. This was regularly frustrating as I was also interested in messing about with higher development temperatures and different agitation.

The very fine follicles on the lower right flower are super important here. They give an anchor point and we admire the tiny, sharp details that the macro photo reveals. It works especially well because you have placed those details so they are hit by the crosslight and the the dark red area of petals behind helps them stand out. We have to search a little before this stamen stands out. Once we have discovered it, the rest of the image falls into place. The triangular form gives balance while we explore the many small details. There's enough sharpness still in the petal edges and the changes in colour to make the exploration of the details satisfying. Just enough detail also in the background to identify it and feel that it is right for the stars of the shot.

It is curious how very small details can impact on my response to an image. I immediately felt it was America and west coast America at that. I have never been further west in the USA than Colorado. Countless scenes from countless films must have got at me. Maybe also the Coke machine but they are universal.
Detective vibes crept in. To me, your man on the top floor was very important. A stake out by either a good guy or a bad guy? Voyeurism? Hitchcockian staircase. Hitch would have liked tho shadows as well. He'd also like playing with a staircase that was open and external to a building rather than the cliche inside an old building.
Can't wait for the next reel. Hopefully justice is meted out to whoever painted this place grey.

There's a lot of great brickwork to be found in Italy (also ancient concrete: the Romans used that too), apart from all the marble and sandstone and whatever.
Brickwork is intriguing, because it shows the skill of making something big and grand from the most modest and basic of materials.
Marble does not have that quality : a marble statue or architectural ornament, when done well, looks like it has always been there in its grandiosity. The craftmanship is obviously just as big if not bigger, but the human hand and scale is less immediately visible. You have to look and imagine the sculptor at work to appreciate the skill.
Brickwork, in that sense, is a more "in your face" material.

I really like your showcasing of this material in the different images, that show us buildings and structures of different ages.

The Bologna towers are medieval or early renaissance IIRC; the Forum is obviously a millenium older at least.
When in Rome, did you only visit the "main" Forum, or also the smaller site across from Via dei Fori Imperiali, where there is a roman-ear market place too (near the Column of Hadrian (I think it is Hadrian?). That is often much less crowded and at least as interesting, from an architectural perspective.

This image is "made" by the two patches of bright colour in an otherwise fairly industrial looking environment : the canoe and the umbrella.
Two ways of enjoying a day in summer near the water. A fun image.

This is a very neat abstract, almost hypnotizing.
I always love it when photographic tools are used in unexpected ways to create results that puzzle and dazzle at the same time.

(On a side note, let me tell you what your image reminded me of: it looked to me like somebody with a car with tires caked in chalk, had made beautiful patterns on smooth fresh black tarmac.)

I really like very selective focus in this kind of portrait, making the eyes stand out and DOF slowly going OOF already towards the mouth and ears.
I've made portraits like those with some very fast lenses, and also with a dirt cheap Lensbaby lens, which is kinda like your tilt/shift but yours is higher quality.

So you have a great tool here for making striking portraits.

Composition-wise, I am not the biggest fan of the photo shown here: it is very centered, but then the chin is chopped off. Because you used landscape orientation instead of portrait, that missing chin feels like an error more than a deliberate choice. Just not the greatest composition.
Sometimes, a crop can be used to remedy that. I've often had occasions where my in-camera composition was lacking (because I had cut off some part of something, especially after tilt correction which I often have to apply). And in most cases, taking the crop a step further, was an improvement.

In the case of this portrait, if it were mine, I would not hesitate to go totally overboard with deep cropping and focus on just part of the face: e.g. make the crop square to make the image less centered, and then crop even higher on the chin (maybe even just half the face) to make the composition look more deliberate.

Something like this maybe :

Enlarging this image, it becomes possible to appreciate the very intricate different textures of the structures.
The bird shows us an unusual pose, and am I correct in thinking that there is a shape stuck in his neck, like he has just caught a fish and is still in the process of swallowing it?

This is a wonderfully warped image and I am not even really sure what it is that we are looking at: the inside of some kind of silo maybe?
I'll look at other people's comments later and see what they think (if they write about that at all).

The colour scheme is excellent : the blue sky is a match made in heaven with bold orange.
The moon in the blue sky is almost too good to believe.
If you tell me that this is not a composite, then I would be wowed!

The shape of the blue sky patch with the moon is almost like an eye with iris looking down on us.
Very intriguing.

That is a great idea that I have seen applied for 3D works of art (like statues or buildings, with a smaller version that you are allowed to touch, and with braille caption), but not yet for 2D paintings. There's an artistry in itself in such an approach.

Your image presents us the actual artwork and the 3D representation together in a tight geometry.
Very nice, but something tells me that I would have liked it even better if you had a person in the frame doing some actual touching.

That sculpture is quite something. Apart from the repeated dark / light bands it is really disjoint. I actually wonder if the creator doesn't like bricks and was making a comment...

I do also like Andrew's brighter version.
But it is still a toss-up, because I also enjoy the bold shadows of the original.
Tough decision for me.

Thank you for showing us the raw material from which you crafted the warped mystery.
You had both Mike and me fooled, into thinking we were inside a silo.
Obviously, your title plays a big part in that wonderful deception : "escape" implies enclosure.
Very creative image-making, that is for sure.

Jim,
Thank you for these great thoughts: it is almost an essay (well, delete the "almost").

On your words about HCB, contact sheets and the footwork that good photographers do to explore a scene, allow me to point you in the direction of a favourite book : it is the "Magnum Contact Sheets" book, and it illustrates exactly what you also describe : the exploration of a given scene (often static, sometimes even a dynamic scene but then the photographer must think, move and work fast!).

And I was pleased to read that there are also HCB contact sheets that can be admired in some place.

In the book I mentioned, HCB is represented not with a true contact sheet, but with one of his own collages of images.
I understood from the book that HCB had a habit of destroying the bad shots from a roll of film and keeping only the good ones.
I always figured that this was related to his theory of the "decision moment" and more specifically, to maintain his own myth that he was the master of capturing those moments (and not the lesser moments before and after that).

Another interesting capture in the dam birds series. I like the different shapes and the almost black cube at the back, with it's own little waterfall. The bird speaks for itself.

Thanks you so much! That‘s a great suggestion. And you‘re right: it‘s challenging getting it right in camera with tilt + focusing on the right thing, so I probably shouldn‘t hesitate to get further away and then crop… feel like that would give me more to play around with. I think your crop works well - thanks!

If I would take a shot of someone else, I would have to consider a couple of additional things also, particularly the surroundings.

Having a short conversation with @JonesLongshot about his excellent portraits (joneshendershot.com/) in the Adapted Lens Subforum reminded me how important that aspect can be…

A wonderful shot! The shape of that bird in flight is pretty incredible - it almost feels like some sort of symbol or letter on the dark background. I‘m starting to get your fascination with the dam and the birds - excellent work!