* Wednesday C&C "No Theme" Thread #883 / Revived #103 on 2025 03 19*

Collins St, Melbourne? The section referred to by locals as "The Paris end."?
A late afternoon ray of sun puts a spotlight on the warm old bricks spires and the last autumn leaves of the plane trees.
Yes, the RAW file was worth keeping. It's the spotlight of warmth surrounded by the blue greys that lifts the image. I like the curved trunk on the right as well.

I agree with that shot being the one that hooks most.
But not because of the fact that it fits within a "genre" or theme (Lonely Bench).
More so because of all four, this one has the clearest composition with a strong subject and a fitting background.
Most if not all of the other images are atmosphere and background but lack a clear subject (or conversely : shot 3 has a foggy subject with no real background).

I would never have guessed the location.
It could have been NYC or Boston for me.

I particularly like how the warm colours of spirituality jump to the foreground amidst grab and cool greys of what feels like a cold, economic of finance-oriented urban environment (and one does not have to be particularly catholic or even christian, or even religious to feel this).

I am not fan of the stray branch though. It is a distraction that is not big enough to be a frame.

Such strong colours : almost too strong to be real, and that makes this image compelling.
The SUR-realism invites speculation and narrative.

My thoughts with the footprints in the bottom right hand corner were that they give a bit more depth to the image. With the slightly more contrasty appearance they appear closer, and you feel the fog getting thicker in the distance and hence the depth. But I guess that didn't work, as I hoped it might ;-)

;-) some days on the winter mountains you do get that adventurous Antarctic feeling !

This is so extremely good.
The rigid pose, arms close to the body, that fits the stripe.
The faceless boy with his back to us, confronting the grinning face of the splash monster.
But also: the subtle way in which the horizontal striping on the polo shirt contradicts all that vertical dominance.
This boy will not be intimidated into verticality. Hell no.

The window feels a bit skewed within the photo frame.
I bet you could probably correct that if you wanted.
Some here certainly can.
But please, don't do it if it would mean that you lose that play of sunlight on the right and bottom edges.

Pan motion blur at work here.
You caught the deliveroo guy well, and he has just passed that red graffiti figure that wanted him to stop.

Thanks, Roel.

The image is from a Nikon D800E DSLR in RAW format.

I processed it in Adobe Camera Raw with a color profile of "Adobe Landscape," doing nothing but clicking "Auto" which adjusted "exposure, shadows, highlights, etc and vibrance, which brightened the image a bit (the door and wall were in deep shade and even though exposure was right for the conditions, it looked a little dark).

I didn't adjust the colors in any way.

The image required quite a bit of Perspective Distortion correction, though, due to strong, unequal "key-stoning" (I was shooting up at the scene and was a little off to the side). I always want straight lines to appear straight. Minnie was very perceptive in recognizing that the image looks (mostly) correct in one-point perspective.

Rich

I don't think it's skewed. Look at the border along the left hand edge and also the bottom right hand edge border.
The top blue edge isn't squared to the top of the frame but I feel this is one of the strengths of the shot and needs to be looked at within all the elements of the image.

Thanks Chris, it amazed me that the cat was so chill about it cruising through the Quarter in the wheelchair.

You spotted the things that most attracted me when I rediscovered this shot. I snapped it without thinking, just because that kitty in his chariot was such an anomaly, and yeah, so N'awlins.

The Quarter is full of street musicians, beggars, fortune tellers, mimes and other performers, strippers, drunks, goths, homeless, and eccentrics of all kinds. The cat in his chariot was a new twist even for New Orleans.

Thanks, glad you liked it.

The geometry of the thing appealed to me when I rediscovered it. And all those little details you pointed out, from the cat to the champagne slogan to the musician's ugly doll. The cat is a marvel to me. I've had cats all my life and mine would have shredded me if I'd tried to stuff one of them into a backpack and ride it around in a wheelchair.

Ah, with street, you get what you get! But a cat in a backpack riding in a battered one armed wheelchair with an IV pole attached is surreal even for NOLA.

There's similarities between Cuban and New Orleans architectures - Spanish and French influences from the 1700's gave both of them iron lacework balconies and decorative styling. I was astonished at the cat and was happy to rediscover it and share it.

I cannot imagine so much snow. We get a dusting about every 5 years or so. I really like the first one with the two ghostly figures in the distance, shrouded in fog and snow. The trees are just magnificent.

I just fail at this technique every time I try it. This shot is interesting in part because of the red painted figures reaching out to grab the delivery person as he/she speeds by. The blur of the slow walking passersby is just the right juxtaposition to call attention to the bike.

The warm light and backlit trees set off the architecture nicely. A good image will endure, but sometimes new technology lets us revive them and make them better than they were when they were shot. I keep all my old raw files and as I get older and can travel less, renovating them gives me great pleasure. Thanks for sharing a rediscovery of your own.

Evidently this is a "photo-based image" created with "help" of AI... So many strange, unreal components...

You said : "Evidently this is a "photo-based image."
What evidence? I have looked carefully t the image and don't see anything that makes me think this is an AI generated or adjusted image?
What are you seeing that leads to this conclusion?

What I'm seeing ?
These hands are typical for those created by AI :

The faces with anatomically strange parts and shapes :

The guitar (with missing parts) looks like it was drawn :

In the wheelchair some spokes are connected to the wheel some to the push rim :

The microphone stand grows from the musician's pants :

The asphalt has different structure behind the wheels :

Same "problem" here :

The strangely, messy shoe:

... not to mention that the man wears two different shoes (but it happens in real life) :

Not the same angle of shadows between the wheels and the hydrant and the lamp post :

The cat looks like a drawing - not like a photo :

Thanks for doing a lot of work to promote an interesting theory. But if you'd just asked what editing I did, I'd have gladly told you! Almost all your deductions are incorrect but you are right about the shoes. There was a parked bike between me and this strolling trio, and its raised seat intruded on part of the toe of the man's shoe, the one with the brace (there was clearly something wrong with his foot, it was much smaller than his other foot and the shoe was smaller and indeed different) and a bit of the sole of his female companion's right shoe (and of course the asphalt between those shoes). I cropped out the bike and cloned out the intruding seat with PS, though not all that well, as you pointed out. Everything else is as it was - the wheelchair, the musician and her equipment, the wonderfully sedate cat. I did consider cloning out that IV pole but decided to leave it as it was. In truth, a day in the French Quarter may gift a photographer with quite a few scenes that are rather unbelievable. Moments after this was shot, my photo companion gave chase to a naked lady carrying a frilly umbrella and walking a dog down this very street. Shortly after he caught up with her, he dropped and broke his very expensive camera while I was taking the picture of the hot dog stand I posted last week.

Some of the other anomalies you point out are likely the result of my using Topaz denoise to clean up the photo and Topaz sharpen to counteract what must have been some camera movement on my part. Those magic programs never seem to work as well as in the advertising. If I were trying to enter it in a contest, I'd tinker with her shoe repairs and the texture anomaly some more with the clone tool at high magnification.

For the record, I have no idea how to do AI photo based images, whatever that may be. I did once ask AI to create an alligator to put on my son's birthday card, but it didn't look anything like a real photo of a real alligator, more like a cartoon. It sounds like it would be a clever thing to know how to do, I'll have to google it or maybe you could share a tutorial. Anyways, thanks for spending SO much time on this one! Come back any time, and share your own images or discuss the ones we have here.