* Wednesday C&C "No Theme" Thread #851 / Revived #071 on 2024 08 07 *

Removing the bars in post could still be argued as maintaining authenticity because since the bars were put in place after the cars were positioned the edited images could be interpreted as authentic representations of the scene prior to the bars being there.

I largely agree but it will take some time to explain and I'm sure you and others will want to comment and then I'll want to comment back etc. Understanding each other on this topic will take time. I wont have the time until some where in October.
A PS and a thanks Dan. Remember the emu photo? My work is currently on display in a gallery. When I posted the emu shot here I did it very quickly as I needed a post that week. After your comment on the red markings, I fixed the image and looked at it more seriously again. I liked it and put copies with some of my small prints and it has sold well. I'll post a copy of it in the gallery shortly.

So I'll take that as meaning you can't define the criteria you use to determine whether an image looks natural or not to you.

I posted the criteria I use and that won't change. If your criteria is different, that's fine. We all have varying criteria for what does and does not look natural to us.

No it won't 😀

I already understand what does and does not look natural to me and the reason behind it as described earlier.

Your criteria is clearly different to mine and that is fine. How other people define what looks and does not look natural to them does not influence how I see an image.

A STORY ABOUT WHAT THIS THREAD CAN ACHIEVE

Without diving into the discussion here, let me tell you a short story about what this thread can achieve to enrich different photographers' lives, and the story gets triggered by seeing these images of cars in a museum.
This happened many years ago, when the thread was still on DPR.

I had been a contributor for years (actually, from day one), and Andrew from Canada was another regular contributor.

I am a so-so photographer with (hopefully) a slightly above average eye for human interest and documentary photography and a focus on composition.
My postprocessing skills are mediocre: I can crop, level and correct distortion and I know about levels, saturation, contrast etc.
My skills in invasive PP (expanding the frame, cloning and healing, object removal etc are next to zero.
I can enjoy looking at a vintage classic car but I boast no knowledge of brands and history.

Andrew was (and is) a photoshop wizard who is also an avid aficionado of classic oldtimers (like, really into it).

One day many years ago, we visited the Louwman Museum near Den Haag in the Netherlands. It is a treasure trove of classic vehicles.
I liked the visit and snapped a few shots of cars I really liked, trying to get an OK image. I quickly gave up because of distractions (bars in front of the vehicles, background overlap between vehicles, etc. I decided to concentrate on "fun" stuff, like looking for visitors who resembled the cars, shooting a family portrait in a shiny chrome hubcap etc.

But then it occurred to me that Andrew would have loved the cars in that museum.
So I retraced my steps, went back through the collection and shot several dozen (I think even 100-200) shots more, just of the cars.
I did not shoot with my eyes, but with what I imagined Andrew's eyes would be.
I aimed to get shots of the cars with minimal distortion and just correct exposure with some leeway, and distractions be damned.
(For the previous shots I had moved e.g. very close to shoot over a barriers, but that required extreme wide angle.
For the "Andrew-shots" I stepped back, did not worry about the barrier and shot the car with as little distortion as possible).

Back from our Holland trip, I wetransfered the whole bunch of RAW files to Andrew for his enjoyment.
I have not even looked twice anymore at any of those RAWs.
Over the course of the next months, Andrew posted from time to time an image that he had miraculously made of my RAWs, showing the cars all perfect and shiny, with distractions removed and sometimes even in a completely different setting. I was blown away by some of his results. I trust that he enjoyed it. I did for sure.

The point of my story?
This thread brings people together with the most varied of photographic interests.
Some of us, when visiting a car museum, will at best try to document the experience (even with barriers).
Others hunt for shots of cars that they can have hours of Postprocessing fun with (removing barriers etc).
Ideally, we can help eachother and make eachother's adventure in photography a more rewarding one.
For that, we need to "remove the barrier" of our different views on photography, or just learn to live with it and respect eachother.

Although we advertize "C&C", meaning Comments and Critiques, it is actually not so much about Critique as it is about helping.
And in helping the other participants, our own skills (in photography and in civilized conversation) improve.

Such discussions are hard to have with flat view forums like this but worth attempting.

Whether the red color looks natural or not is one way of discussing your image. Whether you intended it to look natural or not is another. What you hoped to accomplish with how you chose the color values is still another. Whether you achieved your goals is still another. (I may have missed some possibilities). We can fall off the discussion train at any point where we make an assumption. Sharing what we personally like, or what we personally might do with a given image is a valid way to share ideas, but there are quite a few more. I think some of those others may be what Mike wants to talk about, and I'm all for it.

I sometimes tell you folks a good bit about one of my submissions when I'm sure what I'm seeking technically or artistically and want to know if I'm on the right track. Other times I'm experimenting with something new or unfamiliar and I just throw it out there to see what people think of it. Occasionally I put something out there to see if an unmentioned flaw is obvious to everyone or if I've mitigated it sufficiently. I once put together an entire gallery show based on online opinions (not just likes or positives) - I made up a little scoring tool based on certain criteria in comments that weighted interest and curiosity more than approval. And if I got several comments that the offering looked like a painting, it went right to the print shop because that was one of my main goals. All this to say, we can get lots of different kinds of help from each other here, as long as we are open to different ways of considering imagery.

I saw the red car as a playful, fun, in-your-face kind of image that wasn't trying to fit into "reality" but an exaggeration thereof. Art of all genres has always had a wide range from ultra realitistic to abstract. When we narrow it down too much we lose some of the joy of it.

That's all well and good and I assume it also refers to Kumsal and Rich42 who both in recent threads have struggled to cope with people who posted images or critiques they do not like.

Such discussions are probably more beneficial in the long term if they were held in a thread of their own because

1. Mike's proposed topic is off-topic in this type of thread.

2. In a weekly thread like this, it will be totally lost and most likely never looked at again or seen by anyond else after that week.

If Mike was interested in a genuine discussion he should start his own thread with an appropriate thread title. Anyone interested could then contribute to it.

Unless we all will be using same terms and definitions, any discussions are useless. It remind me of an old Russian fable how swan, crow fish and pike tried to move a cart. Swan tried to move it up, crow fish tried to move it under a rock and pike tried to move into the seaweeds. But cart has not been moved yet.

Thank you everybody who looked and commented on my image.

@Dan, I do not add or remove anything in the image unless I absolutely have to. IMO the part of the bench balances image. YMMV.

No problem Sagittarius 🙂

Not necessarily as long as people make it clear in a post what definition they are using for terms that can mean different things to different people.

For example, when taking about exposure I normally include the definition I use - amount of light striking the sensor per unit area during a shutter actuation - because exposure means different things to different people.

In Mike's case, all he needs to do is post the criteria he uses to determine whether an image looks natural or not to him.

I don't see any need for a lengthy discussion like he is proposing.

So in my post I had to explain that I do not add or remove from my picture because I had to predict that you might interpret my picture that way?

In your post you didn't use any terms that could be ambiguous, so I don’t see what you mean.

I posted that in my opinion the bench throws the image out of balance and you replied that in your opinion the bench provides balance.

We are using the same definition of balance but have different preferences and opinions for what we like regarding balance.

First, that emu again.
He's selling well. So well that I am considering redoing the image as a larger print.

Dan, if you take what I said to mean what you tell me I mean, you haven't read what has been said with either care or comprehension.
There are a lot of issues and trying to give one sentence answers doesn't do it. What is "natural" "realistic" "plausible" is only a small part of what this is about. The C&C Weekly thread has been running for a long time and no thank you Dan, I'm not (as you later suggest) going to start another forum. Believe me, I'm at home here. I'll write it because I think some of the newer contributors haven't fully grasped the thinking behind what goes on here and I think they would get more from what happens here if that was understood.

You're making things up because nowhere did I suggest you start your own forum.

I said it would be more appropriate to start your proposed discussion in another thread, not another forum.

You have the option to start your own discussion in your own thread here on dprevived instead of hijacking one of Roel's threads.

In any case I posted what criteria I use to determine if an image looks natural to me or not.

How other people determine if an image looks natural to them has no influence at all on how I determine if an image looks natural to me.

You are right in a small way Dan. Yes, I should have said thread not forum. However the rest of your statement re hijacking shows you still haven't grasped how this discussion group works.
Yes, I read your criteria and I'm not going to take up the discussion now for the reasons I have already given. In particular, I don't want to get into the kind of slanging match you are inviting here. There's a bigger picture that needs to be considered first. Patience.

Being right leads me to wonder where in the real world you might also have deliberately not told the truth.

This is Roel's thread, not yours. It should be up to him if your proposed discussion is appropriate in one of his threads or whether he prefers you start your own thread, especially since there is no threaded view on dprevived.

In any case, the criteria you use to determine if an image looks natural or not to you has no influence at all on how I determine if an image looks natural to me or not.