* Wednesday C&C "No Theme" Thread #788 / Revived #008 on 2023 05 24 *

Doesn't bother me either. I also see it is part of the process and in the same basket as dodging and burning.
It had occurred to me that the new versions might have been done with the new magic but thank you for telling us Jim.
I'd still like to know how you see the two versions now Jim? Looking at them do you see each as saying something different? Do you see one as closer to the original idea when you squeezed the shutter release?

Bothers me Jake. Bothers me.

IMNHO, it depends on the purpose of the image. Creating images has always been part of photography. If the image is for journalism or evidence, that's a different matter. One of the consoling things about digital photography is that the general public are now more aware than they once were about what might have taken place in the making of the image. We know more about what questions need to be asked before accepting the "evidence" from an image.

Well, of course the square one is what I had in mind when I released the shutter, but I like the AI-enhanced one, too, especially with the cars gone -- I never did like the cars. But I'm having a hard time getting around the fact that it's fake. Did you see the tree that Ps built out of that one branch? And getting the shadows right? Pretty impressive.

I have no issue with humans, taking time and effort, learning, growing, and applying themselves, but this continuing devaluing of creative skills to button clicks is a forebearer of nothing but bad news for the arts and those trying to make a living off it. I love tech in the arts, but tools that replace effort and learning will not make a better artist or artistry and it will make a crowded market even more so. I can honestly see a future where photography is still a thing, but photographer as a paid job will be non-existent because tech will have fully replaced the job. Disney probably salivates at the possibility of droids running around taking pictures and charging customers $50 a photo.

I just spent the last 2 years watching people act like doctors across the globe are trying to con everyone and millions died over this all because people read something on the internet and ran with it. I wouldn't trust the public for much with being critical in thought about anything.

I like backs of people along the river .. people as entries into the picture, fishing, or interacting with each other … Here I find none of this. I'd like to see further out into the river. The wind is obviously strong and these people are sitting where a heron would like to be standing if the wind wasn't blowing so hard ….. Your talent made me think long and hard about this composition but I can't get there .. I don't get a story …others seem to have but then ….. sorry …

WhyNot

Love the colors and POV - a really beautiful image! Is it some type of IR/UV photography or are the colors part of creative post processing?

OK, but do you feel that there is a difference in what is being communicated in the two shots?

This is a pretty one. Your images are so often filled with colors that are not necessarily the colors we would have seen if on the scene, I don't know whether to assume these are "real" colors, or not. It does not matter. It's a pleasing scene with a straightforward leading line/vanishing point/balanced sides composition and no visual impediments to its geometry. The colors are startling but not jarring, and the cyan peeping through could be an intense sky. So it feels rich rather than confusing. Well done, in whatever way you might have created it!

That new AI did a nice job for you in the new version. I only had a few hours to play with it before we left home and computer for a week, but it seems promising. I asked it to put an alligator into a swamp photo, and it offered me several credible alligators, one of which was very realistic and even had a nice little wake following him in the muddy water. He was set upon a layer where I could fiddle with him further. I was impressed. It did not do well when I asked it to put a fairy into a patch of ferns; my little grandson could have drawn a better one. I'm looking forward to playing more with it.

Like you I have reservations about how to actually use it. I would never present the alligator as if he were "real", though the fairy, had she been successful, would have spoken for herself about what was done. Though I feel no compunctions about creating an entire fantasy scene, or removing a bothersome piece of trash from a landscape photo, I would never add an extra bird to a dam bird image, or rearrange fall leaves in a more pleasing pattern. I don't know why, my own "rules" don't make sense to me.

The bright red clothing, mom and son matching colors, stood out for me against the bleak gray of the dam environment, and the fact that, in southern jargon, both their britches are hitched up in the back. The little guy's is hitched into his diaper, which tells you how very little he is, and how bold she is to take him down those treacherous rocks on the edge of such rough water, and give him fishing lessons.

Thanks, Chris. You spotted the things that made me take the shot (I'm also adding to a collection of people I meet beneath the dam).

Thanks for your comments, and you are right, more right than you may suspect. The area under the dam is hazardous for fishermen. Boats are not allowed there because of the danger. Those who fish there are often subsistence fishermen. They, and the birds I photograph there, accept the dangers created by human engineering of a natural environment. It is very unusual to find such a tiny tot there on the edge of those perilous rocks with that racing whirlpool of water. But yet, they persist.

Thanks for commenting Mike. Like my birds, this pair is cheerfully fishing for their dinner in a risky environment, amidst sharp rocks and water that might not be survivable. Having observed them "up top" I think they were mom and son, likely immigrants from South or Central America. As a soccer aware grandma, I was interested in the boy's shirt. I don't know if his name is Deymar or if his shirt is a misspelling of Neymar, who wears #11 and has had a similar jersey. I suspect a soccer story somewhere.

Don't be sorry, I value your honest opinion! We will not like every image put before us, which is part of the reason we do this fascinating sharing of photos - to find out what things appeal or don't and why. I think this one makes more sense within the collection it belongs to: the dam people, which is an adjunct to the dam birds. A broader view would have encompassed the dam, with the herons and egrets working the concrete supports while the humans work the rocks, all of them having chosen a rather dangerous location to ply their trades, alongside water that could kill them.

Maybe in emphasis. The wider shot seems to me to emphasize the strangeness of the foreground drum major's actions, by showing there's nothing in front of him, but I never thought there was anything in front of him. I think that this is a case where knowing what was going on when I tripped the shutter might be getting in the way of my weeing how others might view the image. The conductor's hands are key for me in this shot, small though they are in the frame. I kept shooting and waiting for him to do something dramatic like that. The combination of that action and the bored look on the drum major's face is what I was going for.

Thanks Jim. I'm always interested in what a photographer is intending to communicate when they make an image and what a viewer feels when they view the image. Of course, by no means are these always the same things.

I couldn't agree more. But it isn't new. It is also something like what painters were saying as photography turned up. What happens next is that some things become devalued and other things become valued as we recognize the creative effort required according to the technology available. Education and knowledge play a role. Both are needed to understand the significance of a piece of art, no matter what the medium, at the time the piece is created.

I truly hope you‘re right… I really doubt it this time though!

If it should be the case that A1 so devalues photography that it becomes meaningless, I'd be confident that we'd have a resurgence of analogue and film as mediums for "art." Something like what has happened with vinyl v cd and streaming. With film cameras, it is probably underway. I'd be happy. Prints have always seemed to me to be the way to view photos. Could the increasing interest in monochrome cameras be a signpost?

I think it is an interesting story that you could tell …. I haven't been down to the dam here in years ,, but back during the Bush/Obama recession many here were out of work and found fishing along the banks - that had been populated by the herons – and from the rocks along the river that herons use to fish from a necessity …. and as financial things eased the people stayed and the herons moved across and down the river but still fished the dam site .. I'd like to get back to the dam sites but age and problems keep me closer to my yard and city …

WhyNot