* Wednesday C&C "No Theme" Thread #798 / Revived #018 on 2023 08 02 *

As others have mentioned, it is a great portrait !

Very good!
Nicely composed and processed, Good title.
The gentle pastel colours of the window and the B&W sculpture contrast well with each other.
That completely white space between them keeps the image simple, not allowing any distractions to cloud the message,...
For me, all the symbols make up a person of learning, still looking through the window for inspiration.

Thanks to everyone for your thoughtful comments and interpretations - I'm really glad you found it interesting!

As @RoelHendrickx correctly guessed, the main thing in this is glass. It's actually only glass (& light), but I get why a couple of people guessed there's metal involved. It's a beer glass shot from the top and there's a big crack in it. It's a glass like this, which creates the nice round shapes:

It was fun experimenting with the lighting and I was very surprised to find out that it's possible to get the shape of the crack relatively well defined.

I like the first best.
Maybe a bit ragged at the edges, but still strong enough to offer support and protection for that little spotted beetle ;-)
Hope the family situation can be solved soon!

Great compostion and colours here, especially the first. Well spotted!

Thanks very much! I've come to appreciate how many ways there are to edit this. Regarding the slight leaning, someone pointed that out in another forum, but my unorganized self chose the unstraightened file to re-edit for this critique. Next time 😀

Many thanks, Roel. I really like your description of the fog. And you're the first to mention a mohawk haircut!

Thank you!

One of the Fellowship is heading out of the Shire towards the Misty Mountains and on to the mountains of Mordor. If you have read The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit you will know the green, fertile, friendly Shire and the dangers in the Misty Mountains and the horrors of Mordor, and that is what this photo suggests to me. The foreground is homely and friendly, with a path leading to the mysterious, mist-shrouded hills and the high, gaunt mountains in the distance.

The pathway winds its way through the layers of landscape and takes the viewer’s eye with it and the image would have been fine without the mist, but it is so much better with it! We cannot see the entire landscape and can only guess what is coming, which is an experience similar to the walkers themselves would have, as every turn, clearing and summit of high ground reveals new sights.

It is a delightful landscape with a story, but very different stories for the walkers themselves and the non-participating viewers.

Pete

I enjoy taking photos from moving transport, both frozen and deliberately blurred, in fact I almost posted a blurred scene from a train this week, but it was taken on a snowy winter’s day and didn’t feel appropriate at the moment.
Your photos are recent, so they match the current season, of course. I like how the motion blur leaves enough information to work out what we are seeing, but leaves enough to the imagination to make that a bit of a puzzle. Or we just imagine the blurry scene as it is, and feel ourselves lost n thoughts at the window, mesmerised by the scenes scrolling past.
The beach scenes are unusual, since it is usually other landscapes, which are shot this way. They are flat, so the images are basically horizontal bands, which adds to the sense of motion. I think the first works best, as the detail on the Sun-shades is horizontal, which plays well with the motion blur. The second has more fine and vertical detail, which is more challenging to capture, so the image cannot be quite as blurred or abstract as the first.

Pete

This is another excellent travel photo from your journeys through outer space. As always, the selected plane of sharpness is very sharp and the lighting dramatic, tasteful and well-executed. I thought it was the surface of a liquid in a glass or a bottle, but couldn’t make the edges fit that theory, and didn’t think of a crack, which is actually a choice of subject showing creativity and showing skill to make it work.

Pete

It is a lovely scene, and I think either is a worthy candidate for a wall, and, seeing them both, my choice fluctuates between them.
High contrast and brightness are magnets for the eye, and in the B&W both apply to the point where the hedge meets the mist, so our thoughts are drawn to the landscape, and we think about the landscape and then we notice the church later.
Bright colour is another eye magnet, and in the colour version yellow is the brightest colour, so we see the church and think about that and then see it as part of the surrounding landscape.
The difference is subtle, but affects the way the viewer reads the image and may be a reason for a preference of one over the other, as well as the more obvious colour versus monochrome choice.

Pete

This is a very graphic image, and with so many interesting lines and few colours, I would normally say it would probably work better in B&W, but I don’t think that is the case here. The subtle shades of blues and purples are attractive in their own right and also help organise and separate the different parts of the structures, and, since there are so many lines and layers, that is important.
You have managed to find an angle, which shows this multitude of lines and structures in a pleasing composition and without it becoming a mess, so well done for that, and also for seeing the possibilities of the scene in the first place.

Pete

A nicely seen little scene.
I agree with others that the brighter and slightly less yellow sky is an improvement.
Mentally, I played with a version cutting off the sky altogether, leaving the water and bench as the filling in a green sandwich, but I discarded it. Graphically it was interesting, but it made me realise the importance of the sky, which seems to symbolise sleep and dreams. In fact the large cloud in the middle of the sky can be seen as the person sleeping on their back! Obviously this is important to the theme of the photo.

Pete

Many thanks for your informative, interesting comments, Pete!

Normally I try motion blur at 1/15 second. You are correct, it was the flat horizontal bands of beach, sea, sky that at first had my interest. Then I found I wanted a little more human influence detail so I increased the shutter speed. One other thing is going on. Have a look at 2. See that dark blue line across the horizon. That's the usual ocean colour. There was a disturbing amount of grey/brown water runoff into the ocean near every large town. I wanted that to form a band of its own before we get to blue ocean. The brown layer is too wide here to get what I really wanted in the shot which was a statement about beaches, people and ocean pollution.
I'll sort through the shots (lots of them) and I may find one that shows it better.

Image one is unusual. There is a very narrow plane of focus and that's where our eyes head. That plane is at the furthest edge of what we are seing in a close up shot. We have the insect, some petal and the edge of a leaf. The leaf/petal edges are highly detailed and we look at those details. What the subject is gets a little confusing. The wall of green across the bottom third is also unexpected but helps isolate the insect. If the shot had been taken from above to show the more orthodox view of the flower, the edges would probably have been lost against the background. The selected angle places them against the sky. The title suggests that the edges get more attention. I don't know the flower or insect but I guess that the insect may have been chewing the edges and is being pointed out as the culprit.
Shot 2 again has a flower with imperfect petals. It is a more conventional photo and it is photo 1 that means we give more attention to the edges here. Satisfyingly strong colours and contrasts. I like the positioning of the lower petal with its point towards the viewer.

Minniev, here's hoping family matters sorted out over the weekend.

I love photos like this. Flat blocks of colour like the paintings I like of Mondrian. It's hard to explain why. I seem to soak them in rather than interpret them in any way.

Formal wedding photos are just that, formal, and a lot of effort is spent defining the group, rounding up Auntie A and cousin B and tactfully telling Great Uncle C that he is not required in this one, and all that tension is often visible in the results. These photos are different and very relaxed. Maybe some or all of them are staged, but, if so, they have been done very well, and the wedding party are at ease and enjoying themselves. The formal photos are important, but it is these informal photos that the wedding party will like the most.
The dresses of the Bride and Bridesmaids are beautifully captured, showing details of their embroidery and lace, and the soft, flowing silk. The garden helps here too. It is beautiful, but is not overloaded with colourful flowers, allowing the dresses to be the centre of attention. The slight under exposure helps as well.
Excellent photos, Lou.

Pete