* Wednesday C&C "No Theme" Thread #803 / Revived #023 on 2023 09 06 *

New toy. Brightin 10mm f5.6. Wish I had done more research. That's a fixed aperture. But, as you can see in the results...that's not a bad looking image quality.

Old China in New China

Over the last few weeks my free time became a land-fill, and one of the things dumping its demands on my time was an exhibition on Lijiang, a beautiful city in China, and with which our town in Germany has a friendship treaty. I am in an association supporting this idea to encourage contact and cooperation and throw some light in the dark corners, which can cause prejudice, and all the while trying not to be misused by interested parties. Quite fun really!

The exhibition is made up of my photos, and these are two of them. At first sight there is nothing really to connect them, but my title suggests the link. The first shows Baisha, an ancient small town, or even a village in chinese terms, on the outskirts of Lijiang, which has not yet been flattened by tourism. The stalls are there, but the produce is local and the people in the street could be local or tourists. A lot of the older women still wear their traditional costume, and it is not just for the tourists.
The buildings are old and traditional. The Jade-Dragon Snow-Mountain in the background is as beautiful as it was centuries ago, but we can sense the imminent change and tussle of trying to move with the times and at the same time preserve history and traditions.

There are 56 recognised minorities in China and 15 of them are in Lijiang, in fact the Han, the majority of the Chinese, only make up 42% of the population, and the traditional costumes of the other minorities are everywhere in the city. Some, especially the older women, wear them as their everyday clothes, others just for weddings and celebrations, others are simply in the tourist trade, or hired costumes for a photo shoot, regardless of whether they have any connection to the minority or not. The two people in the second photo could be any of those, although the costumes certainly weren't the very tacky tourist photo shoot type.

It is definitely food for thought. The old buildings, clothes and style are beautiful in my eyes and I hope they don't disappear. But do I have any right to wish for that? Is it fair on the people facing the impracticalities of old, just to look cool for a Westerner? And in any case, to what extent do they still really exist and are not already just a beautiful dream for tourists?

Pete

A really beautiful shot, very well framed and full of interesting details, colors and textures. I love the mountains in the background and it seems like an excellent choice shooting at the focal length + f-stop you used. (I would probably botch a shot like that by using a longer lens wide open 😅) The buildings are beautiful add some really nice warm tones with the help of the sun, contrasting perfectly with the green and blue tones of the trees and mountains/sky in the background. It's a wonderful shot and an excellent reminder how much unique history there is in Chine, which is probably in quite a bit of danger of being neglected or forgotten in the near future... Thanks for that!

Of course no one has a right to tell those people what they are supposed to do with their history, culture and rituals and tourism certainly is a bit of a double-edged sword... however I think it's usually better if some cultural aspects are kept alive mainly "for show", than to have them disappear completely.

As the photo is, the edge of the dumpster doesn't bother me. However, I'd want to lighten the shadow area to the left of the person's shadow. In this case the dump[ster edge would become more prominent and you might want to remove it. Another "however," I like the windows top left so I wouldn't want to just take a slice off the left to remove the dumpster, I'd use Adobe's fill replacement.
I found my eye's going from the person's shadow to trying to work out the details in the left shadow area and really, there wasn't much there to find. Therefore the dark, left area was a distraction. So, I'd lighten the lower left area a little and selectively darken the person's shadow.

Beautifully composed. The positioning of the various falls starting in the top left creates movement that splits and both take us to the logical, brightest point, bottom right. Something similar happens with the greens with the foreground, bright, sharp leaves in the same area as the brightest rock/falls.
Composition, exposure and control of dof are all outstanding here.

DAP? I'd never heard of it so I followed it up. A very very impressive bit of software. Scarily impressive.
Lou's example shows what it is capable of. Of course, it needs something worthwhile to work with and Lou's original had to provide this.
The red line of poppies against the green plus the dynamic use of the corners gave a perfect starting point. I also like the retention of detail in the nearer unopened flower buds.
Lou, DAP creates all kinds of ethical dilemmas for me that I'm going to have to think my way through.

Excellent series, and perfect in monochrome. The first is a master shot with expression, character, pose, background, simplification of elements - everything you might want in an informal portrait. The last one, with its well managed distortion, is classic as well. There is no better illustration of joy and relief than we see here - joy for the couple, for the completed closure of the circle of child rearing, relief that it all came off as they wished (weddings don't always, we know). Well done. I am sure these are treasures.

Beautiful image, frigid pastel blues and whites with the two contrast markers: the bird and the chimney, in a good thirds location of the frame. The triangular motif that is repeated in the mountaintops and echoed in the black chimney cap is an effective compositional structure. But the star of the show is the bird, whose shadow glides magically out of the frame lower right and left its echo in the snow lower left. Wonderful.

I have seen this one of your somewhere else and I still like it. This image taught me what a Dutch Angle is and it works so well here. There's a bunch of tiny detail to enjoy here, from the background art to the pie safe, the eggs to the tattoos. I want to go there and order a sea chicken. The reds hold down the center of interest and the yellows provide the frame.

I tell my grandsons random things about photography and must have mentioned something about this because the youngest; when he borrows my camera, always takes these angled pictures. His older brother told him he needed to concentrate on holding the camera straight. The youngest replied, "Don't you know anything about Dutch Angles?"

A well constructed photo with the single hay bale in the open field and a forest behind with one large tree that balances the lone bale. The clouds are well defined and appealing. The colors are, I am sure, exactly as you meant them to be.. They are complementary and contrast well with each other. But I confess they hurt my eyes, and I would not choose to look often at this color rendition. There is some bleeding of color from the trees into the sky, but I have no idea what you might do about that, even if you wished to.

A simple three colored composition comprised of three horizontal strips alternating yellow, green and orange. The detail of the darker stems with the glowing ethereal heads of the grass gives the image a dreamy look. The texture of the dirt road offers another contrast. Simple but elegant and quite beautiful.

A wonderful catch. The dog, the owner, and the wife all look just alike, as family should, right down to the sagging jowls, skin spots, droopy eyes and mournful expressions. The dog is posed just perfectly with a lean-in across the owner's lap. The monochrome conversion helps with this impression of relatedness by removing any color that might not fit the story, simplifying the scene and making the key players stand out even more. I love this one!

I find it a very arresting image, not just because of the shadow but because of the golden light that makes the shadow stand out. A duller or bluer light, or a monochrome version, would not have the same appeal as the golden one. The gold light impacts less than 1/4 of the frame but quickly gathers up 3/4 of the interest. We have to ponder whose shadow it might be (it seems unlikely to be the photographer's because of the angles involved). Unidentified shadows often feel sinister, so we feel on our guard in what looks like an almost abandoned back street.Once we wrest our attention from the light and shadow, we find there's more of interest here. The street art is remarkable - what is that? Rocket ships? Beehives? Tombs? Missiles? The blued paint winds its way into those windows to make it even more mysterious. Then we have hundreds of electrical contrivances, razor wire at the third story (???). I think I would crop out the blue dumpster at the edge and maybe a corresponding amount from the bottom but that would be all. I don't think it adds anything (the scene is grungy, and intriguing, enough on its own).

Against a backdrop of pastel painted Easter eggs, I see a human figure, head bowed in concentration, steering a medium sized brown boat with a rear tiller.

But, as always, it doesn't really matter what it is meant to be because such images let us make up the stories for them on our own. The bits and pieces of the set up are positioned well, focused enough but not too much. The colors set a mood, and there is a spot of sharp focus to tell us where to begin building our own story from the assorted parts.

Well done.

What a gorgeous falls! It's huge, and you had to be creative in how to frame it to get all those different levels in the image. The water is slowed down just enough to make it pretty and not enough to make it milk, so we can gather information about the strength of the thing. The textures of the rock contrast well with the water and the lush greenery. Nicely captured, it makes me wish to visit. I love waterfalls.

Bright and appealing artistic rendition of the poppies, which have symbolic meaning as well as visual beauty. The colors are perfect complementary colors straight from the color wheel. The program, in your hands, rendered them just abstract enough without losing detail and especially shadow. These artistic programs can give us lovely results, but only when we take the time to learn to harness their power as you have here.

It looks more like a whirlpool to me, with a bouquet inside. The whirlpool features have picked up the colors from the flowers, which had already been altered and retained in some very pleasing way. Somehow this whole thing is quite lovely. Little details of the flowers are hiding inside the rounded pool as it laps smoothly back across itself. The purplish background is a good choice for the tones. I really like this one.

This time, I think the discussion is more interesting than the photos. Not that there is anything wrong with the photos. I love travel and I don't want a world where it all looks, sounds and tastes the same. Neither do I like what tourism can do to a country. What I really want is a world where I and a selected few others can travel. The rest of you can wait at home and be gobsmacked by the photos while all the places we visit while they continue doing photogenically quaint things. Possibly there are problems with this position but I'm working on it.

Number 2. The implausible headdresses are shown to advantage against the dark background, The facial expressions are a delight. The curve of silver water droplets complements the curves and colours of the headdresses.
Another name for the bucket list.