My picks. The ceiling fresco is amazing as ever. I always think of the artists stuck up there for weeks on end on flimsy scaffolding. Not a job for me!
All nicely done, I really do miss the image stabilisation of Olympus cameras. I found my E-M1 MKII quite remarkable in that regard and carrying a tripod everywhere is no fun at all.
This is such a really unusual, organic looking building. I like the symmetry.
It's "The Santa Cruz de Tenerife Auditorio for ants!" (To paraphrase Derek Zoolander, which will mean nothing if you've never seen the movie).
I actually prefer full shot better. It gives us tremendous view of the sunset in all its glory. It must have been very mesmerizing to witness this moment in time.
I agree that removing it and leaving it more balanced is better than just cropping it out. I was just making the point about what distracted me when looking at the photo. I'm surprised to hear that a landscape photography competition would prohibit that kind of modification. It is encouraged in our camera club critiques.
I like this one a WHOLE lot better than either your initial post or the modified second version! Seeing the houses more prominently enhances it greatly.
That's fair and I appreciate the initial comment, I was just replying with my thoughts on your suggestion and the thinking behind the image in general. It's always interesting to hear other peoples thoughts on an image I've made and often surprising. When I post a larger set, I often get the most positive feedback about images I nearly didn't include because I didn't really think they were strong enough and hear nothing about the ones I really liked, so it's always interesting to hear a spread of other people's opinions, although I will enter into a discussion about it if I think there's more to be said or disagree with the suggestion.
I believe it's very common. My only experience of this is Landscape Photographer of The Year. From what I remember when I entered a few years ago they allow light manipulation in line with what you can do in a darkroom, i.e. cropping, local dodging / burning / colour balance and so on, but wholesale removal of objects from a scene is considered a no no. Finalists must agree to submit raw files so that the extent of modification can be verified.
I guess the idea is you're supposed to be capturing a representation of the natural world, so adding or removing things isn't really true to that, so I suppose you've got to draw the line somewhere.
I guess at some point, after a certain amount of manipulation the image stops being a representation of reality and becomes art, which is a much broader canvas.
I think Thomas Heaton recently did a video on what's considered "cheating" in competitions. Some are really strict, others less so, but also some of the examples he shows really did deserve to be disqualified.
Just to clarify, this is a small full res crop from the centre of the wide image i posted earlier. I only posted this to show the amount of detail the GFX100S captures without posting the full res version of the complete image. The full wide image posted earlier has exactly the same amount of detail.
Here are the two crops side by side...
That said, if I'd brought a longer lens along on this walk, I might have also shot something like this too, but as it was, it was just a short walk up a steep hill and I didn't want to pack (or carry) a full kit, so I only brought along the 45-100 (35-80-ish in 35mm terms) which is a good general purpose lens.
The view of our judges is that we are creating art. We have a separate category called altered reality. You must enter it as that if you "add" anything to the photo that wasn't there. However, removing distracting elements, even people, is considered fair game.
I enjoy these kinds of discussions. Sharing diverse opinions. I wish there was more of that in this weekly thread.
And to be clear, I think the I think the gigantic crop is a better photograph. The advantage of today's high res cameras is you can make a photo out of a crop like that... certainly if you are posting it online... but as long as you are not posting a wall-size print you can be selective.