* Wednesday C&C "No Theme" Thread #830 / Revived #050 on 2024 03 13 *

I can't make up my mind whether I like this or not. First, I want wider (and I know you were already using 24mm on micro 4/3). The shot just misses the detailing around the lower doors that is important with the architectural style. What would this do to the feeling of weight in your face that is very important here? I don't know.
Then there is the shadow. Sometimes I like it, sometimes I don't. The diagonal positioning is bold but the whole shaded area feels too much.
A thought would it be possible to lighten the shadow on the side of the right hand building and do so while leaving a sharp edge where it interfaces with the shadow on the rear building? I don't mean get rid of the shadow but brighten it sufficiently so the shadow on the right forms a distinct irregular quadrilateral plane?
If that works, you would need to consider the tree. Leave it in or take it out? I can't decide on that either.
I feel that the shot is close to coming off and is worth further work.
Anyone else want to comment on this.

Pre capture is very exciting tech for a photographer so I'm super pleased to see a shot using it here. In other places I have been bemoaning the lack of pre capture on Sony cameras (apart from the very latest A9iii) ie., in the following I'm as much interested in the processing and pre capture as I am in the image itself and that's not the way we usually approach things here.
The image. I agree with Pete S's analysis but I don't think it is sharp. This is where we talk techie stuff rather than strictly, the image. The kind of lack of sharpness issues are curious. Some areas look sharp. Others don't. Some areas have artifacts around the edges. Bird photos are traditionally where everyone goes pixel peeping because the feather and movement details are very demanding and as exciting for some photographers as whatever the image tells us about the subject.
The beak area is fine but there is fuzziness that I then wouldn't have expected across the feathers on the back. I'd have thought that your settings of iso 3200, 1/2500 and F9 should have been correct and should have frozen everything with lots of dof to deal with the plumage. With the beak as it is, I don't think camera movement is involved.
Are pre capture images on the Sony recorded in jpeg or RAW? Is this a crop from a larger image? I'd imagine that the original is jpeg but maybe not. Have you done any post processing on the image and if so, what did you use?
A favor. If you have a couple more from this shoot I'd very much appreciate it if you could post a couple here.
Many thanks.

Aw Pete, you have to leave me something to say. It certainly does suggest a lot about the lives of the people living here, for all the reasons you have given. All those inverted Vs and the apexes take us straight to the towers. Lots of houses and small chimneys and only two big chimney towers. They crush down on the houses below. But the towers are without smoke while we have flowers and trees around the houses. Score one to the little guys.

I too kinda liked this picture. .. I liked Pete's thought about Gotham but that would require putting the entire building in shadow or waiting to night and depend on how the building was lighted. ....

Personally I don't like the shadow! .. It can be opened up with some tone mapping but not with this posted image as it is much too small to do anything decent with ... and I really didn't like it much better with open shadow .. I like the symmetry and it would work in full light or full shadow .. I think ..

Sorry the camera was set up for pro-cap but pro-cap wasn't used here, this is a single shot ...

This image is not sharp ... maybe didn't quite get the focus dead on but the bird was quite a distance above me and it could be atmospherics or maybe a combination with the enlargement needed for this image .. OTOH I suspect it is sharp enough without taking it to 100% or more .... again the aesthetics of sharpness demanded on these gear sites ... Audubon and/or my Bird recognition books, none would pass mustard!!! ...

Again gear and not aesthetics! .. Traditional only since later digital days ( I think) ...The original is RAW converted to a TIFF for processing. I did some Neat Image noise reduction which may be where the artifacts were introduced (but then again even for these pictures I don't really worry too much about noise as I rarely look at them above 100% ) I'm even here more interested in the story than the physical details captured ( well less so when I actually do Pro-Cap .. I'll bring some of those another time. .... but they too will have artifacts!! ... )

I did take a second but I don't think that is what your interested in and no pro cap sequence of 15 pictures ...

Thanks for the critique

WhyNot

BTW I have brought several Pro_Cap sequences to this forum and they may still be somewhere in this site's memory ...

Stop it Pete. I can't think of a single thing to add to your comments.
Wonderful little critters. Watching them around a waterhole in summer gives me lots of joy. Theeyes, the little details on the legs, the lacy veined wings, the elegant bodies. Made for photographers.

That looks like a fascinating art installation you visited there.
I see it as a comment on global migration.
In this case, the bright shiny ideal world is not cold and grey Europe (as it is in reality), but a land of sunshine and children acting as children will.
And the people on precarious rafts floating towards that ideal, are the visitors to the installation.

I can vividly imagine a Batman scene taking place there.
The strong slash of dark shadow is well placed, with its sharp knife edge just touching the bottom of the frame.

I agree with all that Pete has said here.

This image could be used in a photography lessons textbook to illustrate the dramatic impact of lateral light.

It is the same installation that I have used for shots in recent weeks. One of many great things about the installation was the mix of historical images, photos from today, photos of landscape and enormous visuals of traditional and contemporary indigenous art from different parts of Australia. The editing of the components into a whole was brilliant. The soundscape, equally so.
The viewers are in Melbourne, a part of Australia over 3000km from the kids in the photo. The lifestyles are as distant. There's an ocean between them but little by little there are toes in the water.

Yes. It is also an exercise in shape and repetition. Variations on a theme. Rectangle after rectangle. Each is distinguished by a different tone. I'm in two minds about the face shadow and laughed when I saw LBJ. The face shadow breaks the simplicity of the rectangle study however.
Keep this series coming Rich.

Pete, Roel, Mike,

Thank you!

Rich

View in Pamukkale, Turkey. Hand held pano. White is travertine.

Unfortunately it looks like the panorama software has rather messed this one up. There are lengths of chain flying around in the bottom right corner, obvious clones of the same person walking in the bottom centre and even a chunk of land on the top edge of the sky. The foreground rock is messy with artefacts created from the same source, which means it is rather flat and uninspiring. Big Panoramas need to be viewed at a large size to appreciate the details, but, due to the problems described above, this will not stand up to that close inspection, which is a shame, as the scene is beautiful.

Actually, I don’t think this needs to be such a large panorama. I have often been mesmerised by the beauty of a scene and taken a panorama of the whole thing, only to realise back home that there is too much going on in the frame and the details are too small, so I end up cropping to leave only the best features. I think that is the case here. The most unusual and interesting feature is the top edge of the travertine, with its colour and shape and texture. It can be cropped so that the road leads to the town, which acts as a contrast to the travertine, one being human and the other nature, and also visually balancing each other. I have done it quickly and attach below.

The lake is lost, which is a shame, but I think it is worth the sacrifice.

Since the scene is good, it might be worth persevering with different software or settings for the panorama.

Pete

@PeteS
Thank you for looking and commenting.
Here is a single shot version

Very eye-catching and intriguing in its simplicity.

Great contrast between background and foreground make this capture very captivating.

Great juxtaposition make this shot very unusual. There are layers and layers of interest and interpretation in this. Brilliant.