* Wednesday C&C "No Theme" Thread #940 / Revived #160 on 2026 04 22 *

I'm not getting this image. The pose is spoiled by the out of focus grasses in the foreground.
A shot placing this cat somewhere identifiable as Kadikoy, Istanbul, would have been more interesting.
The sharpness of fur, eyes and whiskers is impressive. Perhaps emphasize this even more with a much, much tighter crop on the head/chest of the cat.

By quite a margin, I prefer your first photo. The line up from the river, through the snow V between the peaks which then opens into the balancing clouds at the top, is quite perfect. We travel through water, rocks, trees, mountains, sky and variations in light. The Romantic painting era indeed .In the second shot the mountains are truncated and I miss the repeated association of tree tops and mountain tops.
Re the painting treatment. It wasn't until I looked it it large that I got it. With this kind of processing, I'm impressed by the cleverness of the program rather than the image itself.
A "Romantic" aside. It's a style I see through Australian historical filters. Our national galleries have collections of paintings done by "romantic" painters of the period. Generally, they were visiting from Europe and attempting to capture "Australia." The results are significant for what they show, generally, about how we observe. By and large, these painters saw Australia through eyes conditioned to European light, trees and scenes. It took another generation of artists before painters here, also moved by "Romantic" impulses, began to capture Australia in scenes that look "Australian."

Am I correct in thinking that you might have show shots of similar waterlillies before? Whatever, They are magificent subjects and I can understand returning to them again and again. The pointed, repeating petals v the rounded leaves, the complementary colours, the sharpness in the stamen detail - irresistible.
It's a nicely selected pairing as well. In darker light, the first flower is still opening. Then in brighter light, the full display.

Have you ever photographed street cats?
What you're imagining is impossible.
Since when does an out-of-focus foreground ruin a photo when the subject is so eye-catching?

At first glance, it looks threatening for the women on the beach.
That's what makes the photo exciting and interesting.
Very well observed and captured.

In order.
1. Yes, quite recently in Greece where I was staggered by the number of cats on the islands and also in Athens. I was genuinely amazed at the number of cats and the number of people feeding them and building houses for them.
2. I don't see why.
3. IMNHO, the issue here isn't that something is out of focus, it is the positioning of the out of focus region in the image. The section I am referring to runs alongside the cat on the viewer's left. It creates an out of focus line close to, almost the exact length of the cat and parallel to the side of the cat. I find it quite distracting. In this image, I don't think the background is contributing much to the image.
Again, imnho, the strength of the shot is in the rendering of the eyes, whiskers and fur and I think these strengths could be better brought out with tighter cropping.

As Pete has said.
The "what is it?" element plays a big part here. Without the text assistance, I wouldn't have thought I was looking at rust so my interpretation would have been way off.

ICM photography always fascinates me. Lots of strong lines and contrasts to work with here. I enjoyed the trip through the differing treatments and the original scene.
While ultimately, I agree with Chris about number three, image 2 has lots of interest because the camera movement is harder to understand.

An appropriate photo for the times. Every day life and the innocent under threat from giant ships. A "we never saw it coming" moment.

👍 It's my favourite of these two too :-)

Yes, the programs are clever. When I made that "painting" version (simple click of a button for me with ACDSee) I was pixel peeping and zoomed in too much, so that you can't really notice the effect until you zoom in. Maybe I'll try again starting with a lower res version of the photo and see what happens.

That's really interesting, do you have any examples links to such paintings from the European romantic painters and the later ones, that really "look Australian" ?

Good question. The "European Romantic" vision of Australia is best seen in the paintings of Eugene von Guerard. He was an Austrian painter who migrated to Australia in the mid 1800s. He travelled here extensively and his works feature in the major Australian galleries.
Half a generation later we have a very different Australian Romantic painting movement. Check Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton and Charles Condor.
Google for all the names. Light is handled quite differently by the last three. Their trees - shapes and colours - don't look like European trees.
von Guerard was a fine painter and is very highly regarded here. He was just conditioned to see the world through a different lens.
It wasn't only painting. Similar adjustments can be traced in the other arts.

On the contrary, i find that distant view at bottom left and the falling rain really interesting. It's the right edge I would consider cropping. 😁

Cats are not my people.
This one has striking eyes though, and that makes me look twice.

The foreground makes me wonder: where you hiding or crouching in tall grass to catch the feline?
(I am definitely NOT saying that those few stray leaves of grass are a problem.
In fact the opposite: they create a sense of immersion: we are there with the photographer.)

I really like the layers in these scenes.
And they show best in the vertically oriented image (layering landscapes is one of the reason why I very often use vertical orientation in landscape photography).

The second image is good too, but I like the first more.
The main difference is in the top part: seeing the top of the mountains and sky above, makes all the difference.

I don't think that the painterly processing adds anything here.
If you go for such processing, just go big.

Shallow DOF creates a sense of disorientation here, because it makes us wonder exactly what we are looking at.
Our sense of scale gets blindfolded.
With almost everything but the bow OOF, this could also be a photo of an axe (that needs sharpening).

Of these three I like the middle one most.

It's good to see the first, in order to know what the abstraction is made of.

And the last one is not bad, seen separately (a nice design for a calm, soothing wallpaper for the waiting room of a psychiatrist).

But the second, with the movement not constricted to up/down but also some jerky spasm sideways thrown in the mix, feels like the most interesting to me.
In this one, I am getting Van Gogh brushstrokes vibes.

Really love this brooding, low key landscape, with the harbour town in darkness and a spotlight on the structure on the pier (a small lighthouse?)
I am not often in favour of cloning or erasing, but I would be tempted to clone out the double flagmast. It connects the earth with the sky and I think I would prefer to see that brightest patch of sky more empty, with just the pointed (lighthouse?) piercing the bright sky.