* Wednesday C&C "No Theme" Thread #815 / Revived #035 on 2023 11 29 *

"Down"

We have had a bit of snow , so here we have a single snowflake on a black Perspex sheet lighting LED , Z7II with Laowa 100mm F2.8 2X macro cropped a good bit

That's beautiful. I have tried this in our rare snow events but never had nearly as much success as you've had. Exquisite, magically rendered detail. You say it is cropped - does the original, before adding the digital frame, have the full snowflake with the points on the top and bottom? It's too beautiful and perfect for those two edges to be covered up. I think it would benefit from showing the whole thing and giving it a fair amount of breathing room on those edges.

The digital frame was a failed sneaky attempt to hide the points at the edges 😀 No matter how careful I was or what I tried out the edges of the flakes { this is the bets of many failed attempts} either broke off or melted . I would have loved to get a full one intact but alas hypothermia was kicking in

Our craft allows us to be sneaky, and hide what we don't want to show. But I am a big fan of nature's imperfections. I seek them out deliberately. Might we see the full frame with the broken/melted edges?

I'm another who has had a full on few days and I haven't got around to my usual responses to the Weekly C&C. I did a quick flip through and discovered my backyard. I'm in Adelaide. That tree silhouette at sunset is what Ted Egan calls "Australian Lace." There isn't much of it here but it is distinctive and unmistakeably Australian and I'd guess that we are on The Murray. It's an area awash in vineyards so that fits as well.
Like Roel, I never use a flash, I wouldn't know how to set it.I'd have simply ytried to raise the shadow area in PP but if I had done that, it would have ruined the silhouette of the trees. Any way, this is a record shot of a couple thoroughly enjoying themselves at a particular place. The controlled light brings out the features that tell the story. The Zodiac is probably the tender for The Julie Fay and this hints at a bit more of the adventure.
Where are we travelling next?

"Backyard Colors"

We are in the ring with them and this gives the shot, cough, punch. Usually boxing photos tend to be from a lower angle with more balance between the fighters and it can't get the subjective feel that Roel has managed. The eye is fixed on the opponent and us. The black hair and beard line creates a frame for the face and eye. The white glove shows us a nose that could be in better shape. On the wall behind, the dream and the big time.
Outstanding.

A little masterclass in rule breaking. Three different possible subjects with almost no leading or connecting lines to guide us. It has the feel of an Asian brush and ink scroll painting and the buildings suggest Asia as well. I can't think of any examples of the style that would have attempted a composition like this
Finally, what we get is a puzzle. The missing details invite us to use our imagination to fill in the gaps. I'm hoping that Simplejoy will spill the beans and we will find that the scene has nothing whatsoever to do with Asia.

Fantastic capture and great use of texture and colors!

This is a fantastic composition - very effective and well balanced in every way, including the tones and subtle gradients. Excellent work!

Thank you for the interest. Here's what's really there:

It's just some roof I shot as a quick lens test. Rule-breaking in terms of composition? Yes, certainly. It doesn't feel right for sure, but at the same time, I felt that's actually a perfect fit, because of course you're gonna notice something's off when the proportions, distances and even functions of objects are significantly different in real life from how they're presented in a photograph. So I decided to keep it that way.

I'm glad you mentioned Asia, because some sort of temple was what came to my mind as well, when I first managed to create a suitable crop of the image without the real roof in there... Great to hear it wasn't just my weird imagination (as it often is).

Wanna know the real rule-breaking? The lens I shot this with is a mirrored lens. No mirror-lens as we know it, but a lens which is completely closed at one side and there's a mirror. I have no idea how lenses like that are used in real life, but of course they would be unusable on a conventional camera. So I unscrewed the mirror from the back of the lens, took the rear group of another lens with similar focal length and it was almost a perfect fit:

I guess no one would have guessed that a weird combination of Japanese industrial lenses (one supposedly used in a minilab in the US, the other one in some machine or application in Germany) would take an image of a structure reminiscent of Asian houses on top of an old farm house in the Austrian alps.... 😅

"Walking Alone"

I like this a lot. Whatever you did with the colors enhanced what was already there, and really looks nice. Sweet gum leaves are my favorites!

I like this, with the graduated colors and focus, but I wish the bottom of the front leaf weren't cut off at the bottom. Very fond of the little holes in the front leaf. I always seek out the imperfect ones. They are more interesting than the ones that look like they might have come from Hobby Lobby.

Makes two of us. 😂 Trying to take photos and do other things is always a struggle. Still, it's this beauty that begets the other one and there's certainly something to this process that is proving enticing. I've recently also figured out the A380 lies about its framing, so that doesn't help in avoiding situations like this where I frame one way, but the capture is different and crops the image in ways unwanted.

A building designed to say "Solid." It looks weighty and authoritative and your photo angles play on this. Square shapes with plenty of strong horizontals. Nothing but The Building. A couple of suggestions. The sky looks a little fark or oversaturated. Lightening it a bit would also isolate the building a touch more. Photo one relies on symmetry and right angles. I feel that the building verticals need to be straightened and the crop refined to give perfect symmetry.
Photo three works differently but it still helps the building to impress. It dominates the slope. The extra forms at the front give forward movement that adds to the assertion of the building. Maybe strengthen this further by cropping a little off the bottom?

Fireplace 33 says it all. One and two together showing the difference in the snow tracks with a 180 degree change of viewpoint is very striking. The photos make us aware of a phenomenon we might have missed.
Three deserves a space all of its own. Love the warmth of colours receding back to the snowy background. Love how the refelcion fills in the details of the upper part of the trees, love the curve of leaves in the foreground that embraces the viewer. It would be a crime not to print this shot minniev.