* Wednesday C&C "No Theme" Thread #856 / Revived #076 on 2024 09 11 *

Thanks Chris,
Initially the 2nd was my favourite but that one has grown on me.

Thanks Mike,
Exposures can be hard to nail as I might be capturing something else and then see a bird coming along the lake with very little time to change anything other than get focus on a similarly distanced object. Still learning pp...
I purposefully cropped them all the same size and ordered them to give the sense of climbing. Not the first series I have shown where they were actually taken in reverse order!

Thanks minniev,
They are more graceful than many of the other birds that seem to be on a mission to escape the human predator.photographer... I looked up the great blue. Quite some differences and I've seen a few photos of other species with a lot of variation too. These ones are on my bucketlist to fill the frame a bit more and hopefully try for some finer detail.

The sky is a beautiful gold, but could also be seen as the glow from a burning city, and the crow is often seen as a negative symbol, even if it has a certain grace in the image. So there is a certain schizophrenic vibe here, but those eyes are definitely trying to push it in a dark direction.
A thought provoking image!

If this had been labeled as minimalism by a Japanese master, I would have believed it! It shows a stark beauty, with lovely textures. It is also a fine metaphor for being blocked photographically.

Interesting building and story, and the juxtaposition of the old building and modern screen is odd and adds interest. You have chosen a time when you able to balance nicely the exposure for the lights and sky and building exterior

I love these, especially the second one, which reminds me of a Chinese or Japanese landscape painting.

That's where the problem actually begins.
Whether you're taking photos or editing them, you need a certain level of quality.
It's slowly becoming a case of mutual back-slapping in this forum.

I would think that goes without saying.

Who do you think should set the criteria for the assessment of the quality and quality threshold levels when anyone is taking or editing a photo?

Hmmm . . .

A member conversing with himself. Or arguing. Or whatever.

What is it now? Dan-Kumsal or Kumsal-Dan?

Oh, dear. It's all so confusing . . .

Rich

I think Kumsal and Dan are discussing a valid and relevant point.
Yep. It's confusing and there is a lot of ground to be considered. It's why I didn't want to rush into statements in the piece on current C&C that I'm trying to put together (slowly.) It is too easy for them to be out of context in what needs to be a very broad range discussion.
Meanwhile, here is Mike Johnston sharing some relevant thoughts this morning. He starts from a similar point to my present starting point - the nature of an image, the fixing of an image and its relationship to objective reality. I put this link aside to include in the piece I'm writing but it is timely to share it now. For those who don't know Mike Johnston, he has been a leading voice in photographic discussion for many decades.
theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/blog_index.html

The guidelines for this forum are pretty broad and always have been, at least since I started participating a dozen years ago. Just about any kind of image captured with a camera, regardless of what we did to it afterwards, has been welcome. Not everyone likes images with "creative" editing, and most are quick to say so, but they are fair game for sharing and discussion. Personally, I'm a photographic omnivore. I create and enjoy journalistic type images, but I also create and enjoy composites, texture overlays, blended exposures, digital paintings that started with photographs, and all manner of other photo-based art. Everyone is entitled to their own taste and preference, and our taste and preference does indeed impact our reviews of each other's images and is to be expected and appreciated. This thread and similar on other forums have helped me learn what appeals to other viewers (very helpful when preparing for a contest, gallery show or sales event).

As for this particular image, I suspect my edit, though imperfect, may be closer to the real scene, since to the natural eye, the sky would not have appeared featureless or gray. Lost detail is an artifact of the camera, not the scene, and in such situations I'd usually repair it rather than leave it flawed, if it was an image I had no better version of. I copied the actual sky from the reflected image, raised the luminance and reduced the saturation slightly, then knitted it into the scene. In traditional art, that generally is how we are taught to paint sky reflections in water, though with a dozen other caveats that have to do with the water's depth, surroundings, etc. So it is a close approximation. Photoshop is a remarkable toolset, and photographers have to make conscious decisions about how many of its tools they want to use, how to ethically employ them, how/whether to disclose their workflows, and that gets more complex as AI worms its way into the toolbox.

Defintely a set of discussion topics worth exploring.