* Wednesday C&C "No Theme" Thread #899 / Revived #119 on 2025 07 09*

Getting just one of these (I mean the first and second image) would already have made my day.

We see the light playing tricks on restless water, reflected onto a textured surface. Instant abstract bliss.
The silver version looks great, like we are looking at mercury.
The golden version is even more luxurious: Auric Goldfinger would get highly excited here from this impression of a flow of liquid gold waiting to be poured into bullion.

Any of those two would be enough reward for a photographic outing.
Having both in a single sitting and even at the same spot (as shown in your "making of" image) is beyond rewarding: it is an almost unique phenomenon to have those two qualities of natural (!) light in the same spot and to able to capture it in a series of two images that are so perfectly complementary.
I am jealous (in a good way).

Really like these two!
I love to watch these caustic patterns, reflecting and shimmering off the water’s surface, they are so mesmerising!
I often look out for them myself. Having them in two different colours, in the same place ; silver and gold is quite a catch.

In that golden shot it even sort of looks like the ”spirits” are coming straight out of the wall :-)
The "making of" shot is interesting, but the two detailed shots are the stars of the set

General response. As a couple of y'all deduced, I was in Pompeii.
Beyond cropping, I don't normally do much PP. In this case I was tempted to do a lot more to reduce the image to more basic shapes. When I took the shot, some years ago, I liked the balance of line and forms here. If I get time, I might play around with it more and re post the result into the Abstract and Experimental thread. We have aa action packed week coming up with plenty packing and driving.
A question for history buffs. I've seen suggestions that the famous tracks in the stones of Pompei might not be accidental wear. They might be intentional grooves and wheeled traffic might have had standardized width. The grooves are therefore a form of rails. Does anyone know?

Yes.

Rich

Thanks Mike.

I had hoped you would notice the brass door knob on the entry gate.

Rich

Yes, I should have picked that nice little detail up. Thinking about it, I suspect I didn't because it's a little out of focus. Hoever the positionining against the darker background should have made the point to me. Having locks and door knobs at this end of the entrance adds significance.

Not my usual style

Very Scottish atmospherics and architecture! I remember seeing this place but for reasons I can't recall, didn't take any pictures (sometimes my husband drove right past things I would have stopped at because of his terror of driving on the left side of the road.) Nicely framed against the scenic mountains and low cloud formations. The white structures against the subdued hues of the foliage is striking.

You've given it a proper name for it is strictly textures and lines. The interesting story appears later in the posts, again making me wish for threaded view...

You have chosen a viewpoint that takes advantage of the tracks, whatever they may once have been. My eyes follow the tracks through the frame and into the distant unknown.

This is a lovely refreshing scene, captured with a fast enough shutter to convey the actual appearance of the falls, and thus the experience of being there. I like all of them, but the second would be my choice if I king only one. I prefer the portrait orientation for this scene, making a bit more of the falls itself than of its surrounds or its runoff. And I prefer the fuller view of the flat rocks rather than the more truncated view. Beautiful color rendering.

The first one is a bit of visual puzzling. Looks like contrasty shadows of some ironwork objects, with distortion caused by natural angle or some feature of the unusual lens you used. The result is like a series of crosses or a flock of stylized geese, quite interesting to study and figure on. The second is a lovely spinning wheel of foliage around the centerpiece of ironwork. Nicely done. You work each to its best advantage.

Interesting scene featuring a lakeside resort for cows. Their hotel appears at the other end of the property, on the edge of a larger body of water. Some of the vacationers are considering a dip, while others are napping or socializing. The napping ones have lost a bit of detail to overexposure which you may or may not have the ability to retrieve from a raw file. White cows, like white birds, are tricky, and require deliberate underexposure on sunny days. Luckily, they are small enough in the frame that we don't much notice. Nice colors and leading line.

I can only imagine the cost of such a palace by the sea in SoCal. Love the rich colors and the lines, shapes and angles here. My own preference, which certainly doesn't matter here, would be to retrieve a bit more detail in the darkest areas, and a bit more focus on that golden doorknob. But it's quite enjoyable as it is, just different choices.

An outstanding shot (imho).
I like the free flow of water over the stones.
Brilliant.

Thank you Minniev. Great story. Our weather is like Tropics: 33C or 91F with humidex of 43...

These reflections make beautiful, dreamy, artful abstracts. They remind me of the surreal things I sometimes find beneath the dam. Watch out, they can be addictive! The play of light on water and the reflections that stuff creates can be endlessly fascinating, and you show here, especially when the reflections form their own interactions with the often austere forms and shapes of an industrial structure.

The final image has its own potential too. I'd convert it to monochrome for simplification and then fool with crops and orientations, and let it find its own solution.

Not your usual style but quite nice in its own way, an abstract based on pattern (and texture, but the pattern is the primary compositional feature). Interest is enhanced by the occasional interruption of a green or orange leaf, bent to the shape of the stones that form the repetitive pattern. Well spotted and taken.

If you split this photo through the middle, both halves are good images.
The lower half shows the distillery with the manicured woodland rising behind it. The distillery is more prominent and begs inspection.
The top half shows an atmospheric landscape, with the grassy uplands becoming rocky and covered in a wonderful dusting of snow, before disappearing into the clouds.
Combining the two means that each half could distract from the other, and the subject, the distillery, is smaller in the frame, but it also creates something far more powerful. The distillery is now embedded in the beautiful Scottish landscape. It no longer dominates the frame, but has become a smaller, but very important, part of the whole scene. There is a symbiosis between the landscape and the distillery, which makes the combination better than the parts. There is a visual association between whisky and Scotland in the photo, and reflects the mental association we have - when we hear one of those words, we will probably think of the other.