* Wednesday C&C "No Theme" Thread #800 / Revived #020 on 2023 08 16 *

Oh that green and the mountains and the mist! You certainly captured a dream scene!

Yes, the textures and colors and shapes are the stars here. These are almost abstract in nature. My favorite is the first, which has a co-star, the hardy little plant which is stubbornly thriving in one small crevice of that jigsaw puzzle of rock that's typical of basalt formations. The more you look at basalt formations, the more fascinating they become, with their complex but predictable and visually rhythmic honeycomb structures. This is a place you can find many more images that you haven't even thought of yet.

This is a disturbing, confusing, and impactful image. We are accustomed to seeing cemetery statuary representing grief as a prostrate female figure, usually clad in flowing robes. This piece, while recognizable as such, is far different. The figure is largely unclothed, had neither head nor arms, and seems more modern than most such pieces in graveyards I've seen. Most disturbing, however, is the figure of the man emerging from the stone reaching out as if to comfort her. Clearly he is a modern sculpture, seemingly bronze, outfitted in day clothes and eyeglasses and a modern hairstyle. The whole effect is unsettling and mysterious, yet it is presented in bright realistic colors which contributes to its eeriness. Quite a strong image.

I do think there are some alternate edits that would be no less worthy, and could explore different moods - with more subdued colors palettes.

The first feels confused. The white frothy area at the base is quite large and doesn't have sufficient detail to add meaning. At the same time it doesn't seem to relate to the main lines above.
You'll get used to me saying this, it's a thing of mine and we regularly find that others here don't agree. I'd be cropping. I like the shapes and textures on the vertical radish root like structures and I'd be getting in much closer around those forms.
The same for the last shot. To me, the repetition of the sailboard and rider shapes is what it is all about. Perhaps try zeroing in on it by cropping from left and right and a little off the bottom to a more portrait format that emphasizes the vertical lines of the sailboards. A case might be made for the strong horizontal elements here with the bands created by the sea, hills and sky that are intersected by the sailboards.. If that's the way you see it, consider strengthening the horizontal lines by cutting a bit off the top and bottom to increase the panoramic proportions.

Plenty to chat about before we get to the image. I enjoyed another your little anecdotes about one of the rarely mentioned perils of long exposures that you shared with your original posting of this set. Some four years or so ago I posted a shot here that also featured the handrails on a ladder going over the edge of a jetty. A very different photo to yours but we used similar handrails in a similar way. I was dumb enough to think I could go down those steps and get a shot of the piles beneath the jetty with the water breaking into them. This was not a good idea as I discovered someway down the ladder. Your "feeling tottery" brought it all back.

This is wonderful. Along with others in your series, it should be made into a print.
In no particular order. The complementary colours with the delicate touches of the warmer tones against the darker.
The lines of yellow/gold that intersect on the rails and then a similar intersecting line along the edge of the stone.
The highlights on the steps paralleling the edge of the stone.
The subtlety of an intersection we don't see but we know it is there - on the continuation of the horizon line and the stone edge.
There's a wonderful tension between the total tranquility of the scene and the ladder rails. They speak of action and danger that has been and is to come. But not now.
When I looked at this as big as I could get it, I was puzzled by many white specks that go right across the image in the lower half. I can't see them against the dark sky at the top? I don't think it was on the lens? Possibly on the sensor? If you are going to (and I think you should) make this into a large print, you might want to check this out.

I would like to add, the perceptions of this image are a complete 180° of the words used to make that face with the Adobe fairy blood extractor prompt.

Here's where I go all croppy again. I like lichen too. Have a look at these cropped in much closer so the lichen colours/textures plant are detailed. In both shots that qualities of the rock textures and planes still comes through when you are up close.
Number 2. Again, if it was me, I'd be looking to crop to get closer to the lichen detail and colour. The fan like forms centre right are eyecatching as well. What I have tried needs polishing but something along the lines...

There's considerable irony here. Generally, it's me suggesting crops to other people's photos. I do this so often it becomes embarrassing and I'm already at it in this week's thread.
You are both right. It should have been cropped exactly as suggested by Rich and then completed by Simplejoy.

Thanks for the feedback Mike.
The shot has a lot of contrast with the b&w nature of the light. In addition it also has the contrast of the solid stationary form of the icicles with the flowing frothy water running below. I 'm also for cropping to highlight the important parts but IMO this image would lose out if cropped from below.

There are two opposing principles at work here. One being to crop out unnecessary background. The other being to give the subject "room to breathe". The photographer must make a compromise to satisfy both in a reasonable way. I think it works here. Maybe a little crop could be made but I wouldn't want to lose much of that nice b&w sea.

Good capture!
At first, looking only at a small screen on my phone while on holiday, I didn't really notice that it was a big ship between the buildings. With a second look, especially after seeing the crop, that was posted later, it became obvious even on my small screen, and the image grew on me.
It reminds me of a shot I made a few years back in Budapest during an air show where I got lucky and caught a WW2 bomber between two rows of buildings like this. Maybe I can find it and post here when I get home

That's a scary birdhouse !

Good shot. Seems the worshippers here don't mind photographers. In churches you would shooed away if a mass was taking place.

Cool shot. The processing works well

Nice memories and a great photo to keep them alive.
Lush green and the mist, separating all the layers of the receding hills. A good combination.

White specks: good spot, I hadn't noticed those. They don't show up in an A4 print, they are quite small. I can see them in a couple of other images as well. I suspect they are very fine grained noise exaggerated by the processing. I can share another anecdote as well. I use a small collection of ND filters - usually I two or three in use. On this trip I couldn't find one of my most used filters in my bag so I had to wing it a bit, really stopping down much further than I would like. I also miscalculated the required exposure and the resulting files were extremely dark. I think that led to some noise I'm not accustomed to with this camera that my processing has exaggerated in a selective way so that only some of the noise became visible. Maybe. Can't think what else it might be. Attached is an unedited version of the file: you can see just how much processing was required!

Update: The cause of the white specks is hot pixels. They're not really white, at 400% you can see they are coloured speckles. I've largely (but not completely) dealt with them in post using "Astrophoto denoise" and "Hot pixels" fixes, applied through masks to restrict operation to the bottom of the frame. In the field, Long exposure noise reduction is good at suppressing these, but doubles the exposure time, which I don't like. The GFX50s can normally cope without LENR but I guess the underexposure here was asking too much. Thanks for pointing those spots out. When I have tried long exposures with my m4/3 cameras or my Fuji XT100, I get an absolute blizzard of "snow" from hot pixels from almost every long exposure. LENR is mandatory with those cameras to suppress the hot pixels. Interestingly, my older 16MP APS-C cameras didn't suffer from the white speckle blizzard even without LENR. I wonder if someone can explain this...(in a separate thread possibly).

I like all of your shots - the last one is the most interesting to me though! Love the interesting silhouettes and the use of color. I feel like the colors on the water look like a lens defect to me, which is why I would get rid of them and go full B&W there, apart from the reflections. I'd also crop it slightly and adjust the color of the sky. To me it would feel more balanced that way, but I suppose it's always very personal when it comes to colors...

An outstanding shot either way - really well seen and captured!

I very much enjoyed the backstory about this spectacular image. One of photography's gifts is its time machine ability to take us back to a specific moment, and to recall all the details. A gift from the photographer is when he/she can express all those memories to us in an engaging, fun or poignant way.

Thank you, Lou. No, I wasn't familiar with Nan Madol. What an incredible story; thank you!

Your edit is beautiful and offers much more impact than mine. I'm smiling because for the past couple of years I have not been the least bit shy in pushing the vibrance and saturation of colors. I love that look! For these two photos, I purposely went a bit more to reality. Of course, now you've easily convinced me to return to my happy place 🙂

Thanks so much for your time and interest, Rich. I think what is difficult for me with b&w of this photo (and some of the others I tried) is that it feels so "busy" with all the tiny specks of lichen in so many places - especially with the rocks being their own kind of photo op with forms and shadows. However, I did try one more b&w edit this morning (Thursday) with the other photo. See further below.

Thank you so much, Chris! The first couple of times I photographed years ago, I tried to get a wide view - basically, the whole cliff. I was very disappointed with my results. A couple of years ago it hit me I should be looking for smaller stories, so I was more prepared in June when I found the swallows nesting, and even more so this week. The cliff is north-facing, so living at latitude 46 degrees, it doesn't get winter sunshine on its face. I'm going to have to brave slippery roads, I think, because now I want to photograph these rocks when icy or snow-covered!

Thank you Minnie! I just wrote to Chris that I want icy or snow-covered this winter - maybe I can hire a driver 😁

Thank you very much, Mike. I happened to have a closer shot of #2 and I happened to have already done three edits, lol. This morning I decided to go a couple more times, including attempting a b&w (thanks to Rich!). I cropped it somewhat, to be similar to yours. I've learned so much from you folks about these photos already, and I learned more this morning about how the colors are displayed when converted. For example, I don't recommend going heavy on color saturation prior to conversion because some of those yellows are extreme 🙂 I also learned that I don't want super clarity or sharpness because that just brings out the "little bumps" of lichen that I don't care for. I might have to try more abstract, but here is this morning's effort.