* Wednesday C&C "No Theme" Thread #900 / Revived #120 on 2025 07 16*

Fireplace33 and Jonas,

Thanks for the encouragement.

I find out on Friday, 7/25 if any of my pieces have been "juried in."

Rich

That's a castle straight out of legend and fantasy and epic romance. It should only exist in imagination.
There's an implied convergence of lines in the image that ensures that the relatively small buildings dominate. The foreground path and waterlines create one. So does the darker area of the clouds and the horizon. The eye is zeroed in. From there we move out to appreciate the impossibility of the setting. The large dark cliff face confronting us (nicely outlined on the top edge) is a visual block that's suggestive of its purpose as well.
I can't imagine why the publisher didn't use this shot. What was chosen instead?

Since my husband and I have spent the week in dr's offices and hospitals, and are only just now let loose from the grip of the medical-industrial complex, I have no pictures and no time to dig in the archives so I did what I often do: I played Lightroom Roulette, where I spin the catalog wheel and vow to post whatever it lands on. This time it landed on a rather bad photo taken with an old camera in Yellowstone years ago, in Lamar Valley. It is also heavily cropped. I did see what I might could do with newer LR tools to help it but not sure it worked. And getting closer to a wolf pack with babies is definitely not a good idea.

The trees are not the subject. The subjects are so tiny you can barely see them: a litter of wolf cubs. Their mother, an Alpha from the Druid Pack, had mated with a lone wolf, taken some other Druids with her and formed a new pack. These were the firstborn of that new pack. Sometimes bad photos can still be interesting?

Carefully arranged wilderness.

Minniev,

I hope the medical issues are behind you! Both you and your husband at the same time?!

That is not a bad photo! Wildlife is very hard to capture. Requires infinite patience.

Although this needs an explanation, it is fascinating.

Rich

Thank you for the remark. Always interesting to explore other options, and it allows me to expand on the actual situation.

The premontory would indeed tower more into the sky from a lower POV, but there were practical and aesthetic reasons not to take that approach.
Practical: The position where I was standing, was on the edge of a fairly steep (grassy) descent). As you can see on the image, there are some paths leading up to the rocky outcrop and the castle, but they come from the sides, not straight ahead.
Aesthetic: As that main remaining ruins of the castle are more concentrated on the sea-side than on the land-side of the outcrop, any lower position would result in less of these buildings remaining visible. To get a better overall (bird's eye) view of the structures, it is actually a HIGHER and not a LOWER vantage point that would be useful. I am sure there must be impressive drone images of the Castle.

I did not consider that for two reasons, again one practical and one ideological:
Practical: Very simple. I don't own a drone. (I am sometimes tempted to dip a toe into these waters though;)
Ideological: For the Hidden Scotland book (as for all those titles that I illustrate), I try to present the readers with the "best possible" shot that they could also achieve themselves when visiting the location. I try to find original or just optimized angles, but without more investment than just walking around, scouting out the place and choosing time of day. In this case, time of day was not even really my personal choice (early or late sun would be great!) because I had to get the shots I needed on the one day and the short window of two-three hours that we were there on our roadtrip.

Still, here is a drone shot:
www.dronestagr.am/dunnottar-castle-scotland-drone/
And another:
www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=5867675346578811&id=142627769083626&set=a.250085565004512

Maybe my mind and eye are conditioned by living in Belgium, but although I know that we are looking at the frets and strings of a guitar or other string instrument, my mind keeps telling me "WAFFLES"!!
Cool shot, cool effects.
I particularly like also the oval shapes in the lower left corner of the image. A very peculiar kind of lens flare, I think. They fill the empty space perfectly.

These images are the best possible illustration for the wisdom that you can achieve a lot with just a single (prime) lens.
I like all of them, with a slight (subjectively biased) preference for the portrait orientations, because IMHO portrait orientation is the killer option to show depth in landscapes.

I am not 100% sure (I still have to receive the proofs of the book), but I believe that this image of Dunnottar will be included (shown fairly small here because of exclusivity reasons):

It is a shot from almost exactly the same position and taken seconds after or before the other image, but near the other edge of the zoom range of my LX100.

I think the reasoning for the choice was that in the overall layout of the book, the list of Castles needed to be accompanied by a full page but single page image (thus a portrait orientation).

Bountiful and beautiful with full kaleidoscope of colours. I like the reflection s in the water
It certainly adds a lot to the image.

Commendable. Great results and I wish you well on 25th.

I wish you and your husband quick recovery.

On the image - yes your animal kingdom is very hidden, but that's tha attraction. One has to search and discover and we will be rewarded handsomely. It's rare to see the pack in the grasses...
Excellent.

That makes sense.
The second shot makes more of the cone foreground hillock and this creates a visual link to the castle. It's a good photo as well. I prefer the first because of the understanding of the almost island location it conveys.

Likewise. I'm very much pushed for time at the moment and I'll try to add more later.