* Wednesday C&C "No Theme" Thread #927 / Revived #147 on 2026 01 21 *

I like all those thin layers and especially the light you have in the middle of the shot.
It works fine as it is, and would also work as a long thin panorama format by removing some from the top and bottom.

This works well! Simple and effective.
That texture in the dune is lovely and the orange colour is bold but not over the top.

Your phone camera did a respectable job! They are getting better all the time. You captured the amazingly vibrant colors of the sunset and the details of the beach arrangements and the human visitors in an exotic location. I particularly like the last one because of the cloud formations.

Your story reminds me of a similar mistake I made last year. I finally pursued a decades long wish to meet my most admired photographer, Freeman Patterson, and spend a few days studying with him in New Brunswick. But the night before the ferry crossing into Canada, I left my camera outfit in a hotel in Maine. So I arrived for this long dreamed-of workshop with only my phone. (I did eventually get my stuff back though a photography workshop without a real camera is frustrating),

Beautifully and simplistically composed of three elements with different forms/textures/colors, sharp transitions between them, and a wonderful flowing line to guide us through. There are subtle nudges from the lighting as well, to aid our passage. Lovely image.

Lilia in the glass

Nice group. Did you try a slightly looser crop ?
Ron.

The starburst immediately grabs attention. After that, the lines of the trunks and the shadows add many more lines. It's the repetition of lines that gives the shot presence.
The pathway provides a line of a different kind as it gives story and leads us into the woods.

I like this lots. Multiple bands each suggest stormy weather in their own way while working with a similar colour palette. The offset of the grasses to the right balances with the sky highlight to the left.
The foreground dark band seems a little too wide. It lacks the detail and texture of the other bands. I'd consider two adjustments and I'm uncertain which would work best. It's a great shot and worth some further experimentation. Either:
Reduce the width of the foreground dark band by about half
or
try raisng the shadows only in the lower band just a little. There is a sweep of lighter sand that goes right across this area. Bringing it out somewhat, not too much, could lift the dark area with another band. It would need to be kept darker than the highlights in the ocean to hold weight on the bottom edge.

I'm sure we all feel for you. That's a miserable experience and an especially miserable way to start a holiday where you had a specific photographic purpose.
Your Google pixel9 Pro has done you proud.
The sunrise orange hits us first and it's quite a hit. My favourite is the first. The line of the sunshelter peaks merges and transforms into peaks of the mountains. Very nicely composed. In 1 and 3y ou might consider cropping a little off the top and bottom to underline the panoramic lines and composition.
2 doesn't seem to work as well. There is no set subject. That's fine when the composition is built from pattern and lines. Here the horizontal and vertical lines kind of balance so the shot lacks the sweep that makes 1 and 3 so effective.

Beautifully lit. Exposed perfectly to retain detail in highlights and shadows across a wide dynamic range. I like the graduation in the background too. It adds interest without distracting.
There are lovely touches of detail in the rim and base of the glass, the surface of the water.
A wonderful record of wonderful blooms.

A simple and elegant juxtaposition (in B&W to eliminate all distractions) between nature and man-made structures.

As you mention yourself, it's the sunlight that makes this image special.
Not just the near-perfect starburst of the actual sun, but also how that light throws shadows, how it warms up part of the snow between the cold shadows and how it brings welcome rust and orange colours in the translucent leaves nearby and int the foggy distance.

Gursky could've made this image (although it is probably a bit too lively and dramatic for Gursky: he prefers his landscapes to be boring).
A seascape in clear horizontal layers, with turbulence in the waves and in the cloud cover and with a sunlit horizon at nearly the exact 50/50 division of the image.
I toyed with the idea of how the image would look with a much lower horizon (near 25/75), by eliminating the dark foreground.
I believe that such an image would also work well, but there is something to be said for having the image be grounded by the near dunescape (dark as it is).

I hope you did get your camera bag back.
An e-mail to the airplane operator should help.

About your images:

I like the first one best, with the sun over the parasols, whose bottom of the umbrella corresponds nicely with the horizon. The mountains in the distance are a clear bonus.

The second has a few things going for it, like that sun being hoisted over the horizon by two cranes, but some other elements feel a bit random.

The third is my least favourite : getting people in the shot is usually a good idea, but in this case IMHO they offer no benefit: their silhouettes would have looked good against the gold on the water, IF their heads would have been separated from the far shore and not "cut off".
I think I would prefer that image without the people, because all the vertical intrusions (smokestacks? mast of yachts) work well to pin down a fine sky.

It's interesting that you posted this minimalistic composition of three elements with just a bit of layering, colour and texture in the very next post after Tinternaut's, because it allows us to compare them. While I usually approve of images that have a lot going on, in this case "less is more".

You are right about the selection. It was probably the orange tones of Tinternaut's shots that pinged my memory of a shot I took many years ago so I dipped into the archives.
When there is an extended horizontal line to work with, I like to use panoramic cropping so again, probably, I was thinking along the same lines with my suggestions for crops on those shots. But it wasn't a conscious process. I was looking for some variation from my recent Egyptian posts.

Superb result with clear and bright lights on flowers and very subtle dark parts create very compelling visual interest. Excellent.

Agree that this is a very competent still life of flowers.
Reminiscent of the best product photography (as in advertisements) has to offer.

This is more than just a photo. It's a love letter to a place and captures the essence of Morocco rather nicely. The framing works well. A later or earlier shot with longer shadows might work better, but such timing is a rare luxury for the itinerant traveller.

This works well as an abstract image on, I'm guessing, a dull day. Monochrome works well here, distilling the elements nicely - grass, water and the reflection of somethig man made?

Not quite minimalist. Not quite abstract. It has an alien quality to it (at risk of stating the obvious - sci-fi film makers love deserts), and everything is in proportion. I like it.

One word: Sublime. Composition is nice and all the technical details on top of that are spot-on. 1/13... Handheld?

Thanks :-)
yes, it was handheld. With the IS on the Z7 1/15 is easy. 1/13 also works OK if you hold it steady :-)