* Wednesday C&C "No Theme" Thread #886 / Revived #106 on 2025 04 09*

Pleasing travel image. An amazingly detailed and colorful building.

The rich color and design of the buildings is showcased against the gray featureless sky. Though you could probably bring out more detail in that sky with processing, I am not sure I would do that. The buildings have a stark beauty that could be diminished by having them compete with a lovely sky. The first is my favorite of the set, for its soaring ornate tower.

Well, it looks like Spring is treading lightly there anyway, and as it has here, is quick to retreat when winter pushes back. We are celebrating the beauty of old cities here this week!

Pete,

I really like this series. Especially the last image - warm refuge against the chill outside. I would have warmed up the color of the lighting a little and included a cup of coffee in the foreground, steam rising! (Just kidding - very nice images).

Rich

You read my mind, once again.

Rich

Interesting series. Winter is still around and not giving up. Plants are really at the mercy of the weather. That frost is adding and taking away, all at the same time.

Great structure from foreign land.

Parched, old and very symbolic.

Eventhough there is a red tinge to the series all the shots certainly reflect the atmosphere.

Poland is on a map. All captures reflect both history and prevailing weather. Like the last shot showing old city from inside the apartment.

It's an amazing building with stunning colour that looks great against the pure blue sky.
As a photo however I feel it has a problem. Are we looking at the building or the tourists? The tourists seem more interested in the photographer than the building.
If this was the point you wanted to make (and it might be. If so, there's plenty of irony) then I think the tourists need to be larger.
If a study of the building is what you want, I'd suggests a portrait format crop with the lower edge a little above the tourist's heads, taking in about half of the roof on the right and cutting out the tree on the left.

This is an interesting study of different crops, which, as a series, gives the same mpression of motion.
As a single image, I think the third has the most impact and says it all.
I have just played about with the limited editing possibilities on my phone and have two more suggestions
Ok, Wi-Fi issues, I’ll try to post them later.

Very graphic. The image is very simple but then so is the message on the road. Just do it. We don't know what we are stopping for but the cracked surface gives a feeling of unease suggesting it is a sign that should be obeyed.
Up in the top left is a small detail that distracts from the simplicity. Perhaps remove it?
Viewed large, another possibilty emerges. The leaf. I'm not sure whether this is a monochrome or whether the leaf has a hint of colour? If the leaf was given a little more green, whole new interpretations of the photo become possible.

Right around the world, government buildings of the mid 20s to early 30s use similar figures with similar symbolism. I guess it was a reaction to events in Russia and governments of all persuasions deciding it would be prudent to make a gesture. There's a book to be put together on this.
A suggestion. Arrange them more as a series. The last photo gives something of the whole building. Perhaps start with the complete building and then zoom in on the individual figures. I found each figure a lot more interesting when seen large on its own.

As Chris says. The progression works well. In 2. the old brick walls and black clothing give a backdrop making the snowflakes stand out. The last shot with its warm domesticity and view out onto the street is all the better because we have been out on the street.

Thanks, Mike.

It's a color image. I deliberately did not crop out the yellow dividing stripe in the street. Other "real" objects are simply where they were when the shot was taken. Everything about the image is real, especially its imperative.

Rich

A good series. I think I prefer the last one best, where you can see the expressions on their faces better. The guy with his tongue sticking out shows just how hard they were working :-)
The middle crop shows better just how many riders there are and is also very good.

You just gotta love the leading line here, because it does not lead our eye in a straight vertical or diagonal, but rather allows the eye to meander through the whole image towards the reward on the horizon.

Only a minority of landscape photographers use vertical orientation regularly in their images. (I am one of them, maybe because I am not really a landscape photographer...) I think it is a underrated technique to bring enormous depth into an image that would look flat and borderline boring in a horizontal orientation.

This is a prime example of how effective the orientation can be to create depth and tension and (yes) a narrative.

Your description is another good factor here. Without it, I could have thought this view was from any small stream leading into a bigger one. The description makes me smell the jodium-infused, seaside salty smell.

Your use of light and shadows brings out the neo-gothic features expertly.

A stop sign painted onto heat-cracked tarmac, that could easily be mistaken for the dried-up and cracked mud of a river bed.
There is a big ecological message hidden beneath the surface here, about pollution and the wasting of natural resources (especially water).

You may consider yourself a person not good at closeups, but you manage to hide that defect very convincingly here.
I think some of the compositions could use just a bit more tension (maybe by daring to use dutch angles a bit more).
But the macro-capabilities are quite good (focus could be a tad deeper on some of them, but at least focus is where you wanted it).
Looking individually, my favourite are the glass-splinter icicles on the turnips and the mustard.
My least favourite is the dewberry, because I feel that you could have separated that better from the background with a slightly different POV.

You've created quite a uniformity of style and processing here, and it elevates all three images to form a higher ideal together. Like 1+1+1=4.
If you had not told me that this is Gdansk (where I have never been, so far), I would have guessed at Hamburg (Speicherstadt specifically).
The warehouses (Speicher) are very similar.
Goes to show that commerce does not end at borders (and in fact, there was not a border for long periods of time between Hamburg and Gdansk/Danzig).
Thanks for giving me another reason to put Gdansk on our wishlist.

I sense a conspiracy here to lure me to Poland again.
On our single visit, we visited only the area around Krakow.
Gdansk and Warsowa are on the list.
I like how you illustrated how quickly the weather can turn in a continental climate.