* Wednesday C&C "No Theme" Thread #853 / Revived #073 on 2024 08 21 *

Vivid colors and details in warm sunset light are almost always a winner. A striped lighthouse is something that's hard not to love. Very atmospheric documentary shot that might appeal to the restaurant owner for a menu cover (clad in protective plastic of course). Or a reference image for a painting of the scene. Makes me feel like I've been there.

I think your revised version is indeed an improvement. I was about to suggest a crop and raising the shadows, here you've already done it in response to Mike's suggestion. The bikes, which are some of the main subjects in the photo, become more visible with these two adjustments. The scene becomes more interesting and the two distant human figures who are representative of the riders of all those things draw closer to us. The image is well balanced visually either way, but the cropped/brightened version is more alive.

Glad you and your camera/lens survived. All of us have suffered mishaps. With me - I'm sometimes distracted by the pictures I mean to take, and may not be paying attention to my surroundings.

Your dragons are cool, as usual. I'm fond of 4 and 5 because the background and bokeh balls add interest. They might could use some shadow-raising to find some more detail in darker shadows parts of the dragons.

You really focused on shadows in this photo, Mike.
Of course I only shoot my photos in RAW.
What were you thinking?
Shadows are set to +84 in Camera Raw, and in my opinion that should be enough.
At the end of the day, a photo is mostly about light and shadow.

What I should have corrected from the beginning: the photo is about the architecture and not about the bikes.
But this should be very easy to recognize for trained eyes.

Well, maybe it's during the day then, that it's also about subject matter and detail.

😮

Rich

We could happily talk about details in a photo 😄

I disagree.

For me it's subject matter first and then light and shadow.

Light and shadow on a boring subject still makes an uninteresting image.

When necessary I find it much easier to add interesting light and shadow to an image in post.

No, please no minniev!
The photo was never about bicycles, it was about interesting architecture.
Can't you see that?
Sometimes I despair in this forum.

You seem to struggle coping with the fact people are entitled to interpret images as they like.

It is up to the photographer to make it clear what the subject is in the scene and lead viewers' eyes to it.

The architecture is not interesting to everyone so they will try to find something else in the image to interest them.

As I posted earlier, for me it's subject matter first then light and shadow.

Not very nice ...

Yes, it seems to me there is a huge gap between Kumsal's perceived ability in his photography and reality.

Interesting conversation in this sub-thread...

Has lead me to view the image a bit more closely and appreciate it. Indeed the architecture is worth noting. There is a lot of variety. Each side of the lane has it's own period style, with the walkway? above appearing different again. The walkway looks like it may have been placed there by a crane as an afterthought, and the suspended light, in an abstract way, suggests as much. Now the best part. The terminated vanishing lines of the lane create a viewport in which there appears two more architectural styles. The shade of the lane directs us through the viewport to it's sunlit scene. That, I imagine, is the intent of the capture - would be mine at least if I was presented with the scene. The bicycles: There are so many they become at least a secondary subject with their own story. The attire of the riders suggests summer in an otherwise colder latitude.

C&C: Tone, Delivery. It's not about what Should be done, but about what Could be done. There is no Absolute correct way...

Actually . . . No . . . It was always about bicycles and never about architecture! Weird, huh?

The problem is that someone has seen something in your image that you have completely missed because you were so "focused" on attributes that were quite uninteresting. You apparently captured an interesting composition without having any awareness of it.

The "architecture" is quite mundane, somewhat chaotic and confusing. But the arrangement of the bicycles and the riders is very interesting, almost humorous and visually pleasing.

I don't think you can take credit for the accomplishment. After all, you're denying it. You missed it. But your camera didn't. Minnie noticed it right away. You complain that you despair in this forum. But you're despairing about the wrong thing. Despair that you don't take the time to see what's right in front of your eyes. Or that you can't simply accept that someone else can see what you didn't.

On the other hand, it's just a snapshot. It's not a big deal.

Rich

You were lucky they arrived soon after, as you say, because the cyclists and bicycles along the walls "make" the photo.

If your intention was to highlight the architecture then imo it failed big time because why would you put the subject of the photo in shadow.

At least put some light (with some dodging and burning) on the top half of the left wall in post to give it some character. A bit of selective lighting of the right wall helps to highlight that wall as well.

A tight crop from just below the bikes in foreground to the bottom of that walkway/bridge/whatever it is certainly helps to highlight the cyclists in the background and the bicycles on the two walls. The cyclists and the bikes on the wall are "the story" of this scene for me. The tight crop also helps to highlight the walls a bit more but as secondary elements to the scene.

Just to make me feel better. Trying to get something as good as these, I have taken countless shots of the little critters. How many shots, to the nearest 10,000, did you take to get these? I suspect the answer will not make me feel better.
Following them is hard enough. If the entire body is in the frame I'm pleased. Once I master that I'll move on to the frozen wing detail you manage in shot after shot.
Number two impresses me most. I don't recall seeing a dragon fly taken at that angle before. I imagine you needed to be stopped down on the tele to get the dof and the wing detail. But then you needed lots of speed to stop the movement.
Good to hear you and the gear are OK. Lenses that can catch dragon flies to this standard have to be protected.

I am aware of distractions leading to accidents etc and try to keep an eye on things. Hard to keep it at 100%...

Thx. I tried to lift shadows a fair bit but by the time I was seeing a result there was already some haloing evident. I don't have a tool that can properly select an object within the image to apply selectively.
I often tried to take backlit shots with reflections on their wings last summer with my FZ300. It just didn't really work because I could never get a fast enough ss. On the day above it just happened that I had more opportunities from the backlit angle. I kinda wanted the light reflecting off the wings more than anything - but if someone can do it...

Haha, I suspect the answer will not, but I will try...
For the record, when I first started trying to capture these critters, for a week or two I had zero keepers. Until I noticed that one particular species did spend a bit of time hovering in between darting about. Only then did I start to get some. But there was still plenty of practice needed. Having moved to m43 has helped a lot.
The other day my camera was on burst the whole shoot. Not long bursts, maybe 5 to 10 shots each press. I took ~400 [Edit 800 files Raw+Jpg] shots perhaps half birds of which none were much. There were not many other dragonfly shots that I could have included. So most went into the bit bucket. Most days with stationary subjects it is single shot and 200 for an outing is a lot. I read people say 1,000's of shots per outing - I just don't have the time / patience to go through so many...

There was plenty of light that day that gave me a good fast ss. At the distance I was shooting I didn't need to stop down from the usual f/7.1 to get any more dof - to be honest I wasn't even thinking about it as it was the first opportunity for many months. I'll say again, I don't try and track them. I wait till I see one hovering.

Too true.