* Wednesday C&C "No Theme" Thread #942 / Revived #162 on 2026 05 06 *

Could be personal, but to me full version gives the viewer more complete scenic approach to the site. Very atmospheric.

Deep and bright red is always attractive and eye catching. Well seen.

Kite Flyers of Dharavi

Dharavi is a slum in Mumbai and is the largest in India, indeed in Asia. About 1 million people live in an area less than 2 square miles, which is 717 thousand inhabitants per sq. mile compared to New York's 20 thousand, so it us very crowded with just alleys or narrow roads between the buildings, and sanitation and the supply of fresh water is a problem. Despite such issues, there is a very strong sense of community, industriousness and a sense of making the most of life. The businesses run by residents in tiny rooms and primitive conditions produce a total turnover estimated at over 1 billion US$ per year and the crime rate is extremely low.

The children I met there reflect this quite well. They were bright and very friendly and most spoke English confidently. They were keen to be photographed and were disappointed to hear I was not a You Tube influencer and did not have a Tik-Tok channel.
There is not much room to play and no money for endless Lego sets and Playstations, but on a windy day, a rubbish heap delivers all they need for an afternoon of fun. Raised, relatively open, ground to catch the wind and all the raw materials needed to build kites and doing so showed the local spirit of recycling waste and making the most of what little they had and finding enjoyment in life.

I find it interesting that every lady in these photos is wearing a dress made of intensely flowered fabric, even though that is hardly in style. I like the second shot best because of the reflection.

This is one of the most mind boggling and captivating photos I've ever seen. When I first looked I thought it was two images somehow posted side by side. I still can't get that out of my head. Placing the "dividing line" smack in the middle does a lot to create the optical illusion of two separate images, but once you see it that way it is hard to integrate the two halves - the interesting garden patio scene with large flagstone paving and the street shot of the man and his donkeys making their way up a cobbled alleyway. Bright rich colors (lavender and orange on the left and blue and white on the right, with the lavender echoed in the man's hat and the orange echoed in the architectural details on the right. I guess the loop gives us something to grab onto so we don't get fall down the rabbit hole.

Wonderful!

You have done well here capturing the rich colors and elaborate details in this temple. I like the second best because of the people - the monks and the other participants and visitors. I like how you've composed the images with the sharp angles and rows of objects guiding the eye through the frames.

Nice collection of flower images, sharply shot for maximum detail. My favorite is the 5th which I think may be cherry blossoms though I have seen very few in real life. The next to last one is also special on account of the bee. It is not easy to capture one of those guys doing their work. They don't sit still long especially if a human is near.

I love still water reflections like this.

I am not at all bothered by the sticks, which seem to add something because they are creating their own reflections, and neither of them are cut off.

What I am bothered by is the electric tower and lines. I would get rid of those. Easy fix in Lightroom. Also, I think I would try recovering some of the detail in the clouds, since the reflection in the water suggests there is more there to get. It's pretty normal for the sky to be more exposed than its reflection, but it can be mitigated just a bit without looking overdone.

This is a wonderful set. My mind hops from Kite Runner to Slumdog Millionaire. The concentration and animation on their faces draws us into their world, past the poverty, past the overcrowding, past the garbage dump. You make these children's lives real for your viewers, showing just enough environmental context to let us know their situation. Technically well done in spite of very bright sun. Excellent work.

Thanks.
Yes, this one is a cherry, but it's an ornamental cherry tree, no cherries on this one but a huge display of pink blossom at the beginning of May.
Lower down in the garden there's a large "real" cherry tree. The blossom on that one is white and the cherries are dark red :-)

The white blossom has disappeared now, but the cherries 🍒 are on their way.

Here's a shot of that real cherry tree while it was in blossom a couple of weeks ago

And one more from the garden a week ago with some more trees :-)

I was immediately thinking of the exact same two movies! (Not really a surprise, though).

And I agree with all praise.

Maybe I will elaborate once I am back at a real computer and not confined to a phone keyboard.

Am I discussing the images or the flowers with art concept? I don't know. The idea of adding cut flower arrangements to artworks makes me uneasy. Especially wildflowers. Consequently my gut response is to try to see each photo as a negative comment on the concept.This is very much a me forcing my predispositions onto both the photographs and the artworks and that's hardly an objective position.
I like 1 for the simplicity of the composition with the man turning his back on the statement about nature to study a painting that couldn't be more different.
I don't get 2 at all.
3. The flower additions at the gallery. Why?'
4. The dress and the large basket association get a photographic wry smile but the other gallery connections bemuse me.

Indeed. Colours like this and the end of day... irresistable.
The panorama format accentuates the horizontal line cloud formations and there are lots of fine more or less vertical lines intersecting with those clouds to create the image.

Overflowing with sumptuous detail. Likewise the colour. We drown in red and gold on a scale like this. It creates awe exactly as intended by the temple interior.
The photos consciously uses very strong receding perspective lines to connect foreground and background and draw us into the scene. Extreme depth of field does the same.
I enjoyed these for the atmosphere and the pleasure in exploring the details.

The artwork. I'd have been confident that I was looking at work from a central Australian indigenous artist. The use of dots of colour, the colour palette choices, the association with strings of beads. Even the metal figures. I'm yet to see robots on our local scene but figures from found metal and wire are much used. Repurposed found objects are increasingly seen. Adding text to make points is also happening. If this exhibition was seen around Alice Springs I can foresee a whole new genre emerging.
The photos. A collection of different angles that adds visual interest while exploring the subjects. We get the bigger picture as well as closing in for the text. In both the dispays and the photos I like the association of the pint dots with the beads. Of course, minniev let the attached links tell much of the story. As a standalone series some of the exterior would round out the essay.

Fireplace, there are too many shots here to do them all justice with C&C so I'll be a bit selective, 2 and 6 are in category of theor own because they give us a peep at the whole garden.
Positioning flowers towars corners and using the flower structure to suggest lines into the rest of the frame, works well. Especially with 8 where foreground and background colours are subdued and similar.
My favourite is the first.Superbly exposed to create the dark vertical line without losing details. The same for the red flower with a little more light falling on it to light up the reds without breaking up the pattern established by the leaves. The icing on the cake - the further touches of red adding balanceand framing without distracting from the subject bloom. By and large, I'm not a fan of extreme depth of field as a way to "pop" a subject. In this shot I like the gentle progression of focus differential to the background.

It's a close call. After much backwarding and forwarding, I'd go with one. Generally I'm an unrepentant cropper. The objects, foreground left, set up sightlines that give visual movement into and through the image. This is helped by the deeper inverted V of the water. The cropped version feels more static.