* Wednesday C&C "No Theme" Thread #882 / Revived #102 on 2025 03 12*

Agree.
I am not much of a flower image lover, but this one works for me, because it surpasses the documentary view on the flower.

This whole exercize is riveting and fascinating.
It almost feels like archeology, but of recent periods, trying to figure out the lives and habits of not so distant forefathers (and other people occupying the land with them). Imagine what you could find if you started digging (carefully) around some of those places.
You are also documenting this effort quite well.

Eerie and funny and it could almost make it into a No people-series... but that is not for today and the people and the cyclist in the background have to go.
I like the image a lot and I also like the way PeteS looks at it and describes it. Spot on.
Further I like the star and the other figures made up by the paving stones. Everything seems to be cosy, but is it? I like that there are (almost) no other people in the image and the image make me think Dettie is wondering where the hell she has landed.

Technically I don't mind the leaning buildings but the common cell phone smear, the halos and the CA is disturbing. I know, most people don't care, it's not the kind of image where all that is important and as long as the image isn't too big it's OK.

All in all a cool and fun image I enjoyed looking at.

Ah, Barcelona again. And gaudi... and, wait, three (probably old) women in hats making the image! The left most woman is taking an image, perhaps a good memory of the facade of Casa Batlló. So my eye go from the facade to the women, to the cell phone and back to the faced. Then back to the women again as they are depicted in the right moment and its wonderful they are three and I hope they get along and have a lot of good times together! (You have to love them!)

The image is from 2016 (EXIF) and the facade was renovated in 2019. As a fan of Gaudi i have sen some interesting videos about the work. I haven't been to Barcelona since 2012 and now your images make me think i have to go back!

I like that the you tooke the image and showed it here, I like that it is square and as everybody else (I guess) I have been wondering what the group of people are doing and talking about and why is there a person missing? After that the Afghan girl is a mystery. What is she doing on the wall in the context of Leica? Why, o why, is the print that size? Too big portraits are, my opinion here, grotesque. In reality the image is everything but grotesque and it was great as a cover of National geographic. Here you have to stand at the other side of the room to get a decent distance/size.
In Wetzlar and at the Leica museum and none in the group has a camera? Lots of question marks! ...and a good catch!

Roel:
If you don't like it try to remove it: Sometimes it works. Below a total of two minutes of work.

A really good sunset. The right minute,the right crop, great reflections at the bottom of the three buildings to the left. Wrong ISO but perhaps can modern noise treatment fix that if you print it big some day! very cool!
A question: What happened to the left of the left most building, about 2/3 up from the ground?

I like it. I really like the sky, the waves, the beach,the ship and the rope. The composition is fine and when scrolling this far I reacted with a wow! I don't like that there is a person leaning against the frame (or the wind?) to the left. I understand we don't get the whole rope, things would have been differently arranged for that. This far it works fine as long as one look at a large version of the image.

But (there is often a "but") then again, you can't view it that big as then the processing kills it. What have you done? Is it heavy sharpening, a lot of added structure and then global local contrast enhancement before the final sharpening? Or is it artificial grain together with something?

OK, it's about taste of course but to me it is very disturbing with this kind of blotchy noise and oversharpening halos. I wonder if it could have been one in some other way - or if it is me being old-fashioned. In any case I like the image (as you understand). There are plenty details adding to the emotion. Black jack - really? But then I guess the ship is totally OK and will float just fine with the tide.

I admire your archeological and detective work and stamina. Great to follow and document the past. It's actually pretty incredible that you managed to find and record the items from not so distant past.
Waiting for more. Great discovery.

... followed by three paragraphs of intensive criticism!

@AlanSh for sending me in the right direction again, @ArvoJ for another approach giving me some food for thoughts and also a straightened building and @RoelHendrickx for a final comment "confirming" I wasn't way off.
It's great having the ability to get comments (and with pictures to boot!) like this.

Now, unless anyone pops up presenting something genius, here is the final version. At least I hope it is the final version...:

...and now I see I forgot the black border...

Thanks again,
Jonas

Well,

Not a masterpiece (🙄) but the strong perspective lines give a hint of adventure and desire to get going! Yea for the camera we can carry around in a pocket.

Rich

I like the strong perspective lines, the distinctive colors of the hats, the repetition of their shapes and the clue they give of the ladies' rapt attention toward the architectural oddity.

Rich

I like this radiating shot of a flora.. Great colours and texture contribute to very captivating image.

Thanks Jonas!
That was a good catch with the cloning error 2/3 up on the left building. I didn't notice that until you mentioned it.
Originally there was a very bright street light in the way and difficult to avoid on the left most side of the RAW image. I managed to clone it out, but made that sloppy error near the building by accidient :-(
I've removed it now in my original and also rerun the noise removal, Many thanks.
As to the ISO, with my chosen aperture of F4 I had to raise the base ISO to 800 to get to at least 1/15s which I needed for this hand held shot, and the noise reduction programs can just about handle ISO 800 with m43 cameras.
My Z7 would have collected more light and had less noise. But I didn't buy that camera until 6 months after this shot ;-)

Sometimes I suck. My apologies to xpatUSA and anyone else feeling I caused a bad atmosphere!

@LouPhoto: If my comments made you feel bad I'm sincerely sorry for that. I know it hurts when anyone is negative but I also know the feeling is temporary.
I do like the image. I do want to know about the reasoning about the choice of processing. I could have been more constructive but I didn't think it was needed as it thought it should work without saying.

Ah, I see. Such things happens when cloning, it's good you got it fixed.
About the ISO, I understood what happened and sometimes there is no useable support around. Great IBIS! A Z7 is of course a better choice for this image. There are pros and cons - all the time.

Very beautiful colors, good composition—these are two excellent photos.
What strikes me is how important contrast and shadows are.
If they are unnecessarily reduced—e.g., through AI—the photos appear flat.

This feels surrealistic. A bikerider surveys almost empty streets. The perspective distortion adds to the surrealism.