* Wednesday C&C "No Theme" Thread #952 / Revived #172 on 2026 07 15 *

Goodbye Mumbai

When I left Mumbai on an early morning flight, the city was disappearing into an early morning (sea-)mist.

A photo with a good eye and composition.
However, I have issues with the architecture.
I don't find it beautiful; it lacks internal coherence.
There are curved lines on the building, yet it sits on a razor-sharp triangular pool of water.
It may pass as modern architecture, but to me, it feels like a gimmick with shapes.

I’d say it’s an interesting attempt.
However, the point of focus isn't on the stacked wood, but rather far in the distance.
As a result, my eyes get drawn to the large tree trunks, which appear very soft—even though they make up the main part of the photo.

If I were you, I would convert the photos to black and white and edit them.
The first photo—the one I like best—would be the prime candidate for that.

They aren't boring at all; I find the last two photos particularly interesting.
In German, they say: practice makes perfect!

Is it just fog, or is there a significant amount of air pollution mixed in?
I haven't seen anything like this, even in emirates with very high humidity.
For me, it’s a very interesting photo—one that shows me which cities I’d be better off avoiding.

Lurking danger—very well spotted.

Excellent photograph of an unusual structure. Our eye can bounce between the points of the triangle and the pointed oblong, then rest in the water and the sky (both the gray hazy clouds and the more detailed ones in the reflection). The tiny dabs of pink and purple in the distance are relief from drowning in yellow. Very artistic image.

All these are pleasing and relaxing scenes with good composition. To my view, they are too dark for enjoyment as color images. I would either brighten them and retrieve some of the blues and details from the shadows, or go with monochrome images, maybe even silhouettes. They are minimalistic enough to look great in monochrome.

A well captured and very attractive building with a pleasing color palette. The cars are distracting but other than visiting on a holiday when fewer vehicles are present, or wiping them out with an AI Remove tool, there isn't much you can do to avoid them.

The winding road and fenceline are a perfect leading line, with the strolling human figures moving along to give a dynamic to the composition. The stacked logs make their own third leading line in parallel. Monochrome works great here.

I am curious what this place is. Great expanses of large felled trees always make me uneasy about where they came from and why.

Marvelous abstract inhabited by a prehistoric creature most folks find very scary.The shapes in the water look like a Picasso. But did you notice that the alligator himself makes a human face?

I really like this image. Dreamy, mystical, mysterious, lost in clouds and mist, with only hints of buildings, towers, bridges. There's a largely hidden leading line from the bridge taking us further into the fog shrouded scene. Beautiful capture.

Absolutely agree.
Urbanscape minimalism at its best!

Thanks Kumsal, that's interesting.
With a 14mm FL lens on Full frame at f/7.1 a DOF calculator says that even if I had focused all the way out on infinity, it should still be acceptably in focus from infinity all the way back to just under 1m in front of the lens. The lens is reasonably sharp even to the edges. I guess I focused on a point about 10m out, so I wonder why you experience it as so soft ?

Incredible environmental capture.

Thanks Minniev.
This was taken on a hike in Carinthia, Austria
I must admit when I first saw such huge piles of felled wood on our hikes in Austria I had the same feelings. But over time I’ve come to accept that this can be a good thing for the forest and also a climate-friendly thing to do.

I guess you personally, as a nature lover, are already well informed about such general issues, but maybe others here might find my next bit interesting,...

We have been on guided tours from the government foresters that explained over 45% of Austria is covered with forests.
Such wood stacks (usually) come from very large sustainable managed forests. Over many years, the foresters take care of the forests removing dead and rotting trunks, clearing away storm damage, planting new trees and generally taking steps to make them less susceptible to devastating forest fires or plagues of wood beetles. Harvesting allows us to put the wood to good use.
The trees have captured loads of CO₂ over the years and if the wood is used in buildings, instead of steel and concrete, then that CO₂ stays captured for a long time and means we need to make less cement which produces massive amounts of CO₂ during its manufacturing process.
Even just burning the wood for heat is “CO₂ neutral” meaning that although that “recently” captured CO₂ is released back again, less fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal fuels are needed for that heat; which would pump additional greenhouse gases into our modern atmosphere.

Of course there are also sad exceptions in Austria , where, say, a forest area is completely removed by developers to build a new shopping center. There are usually local protests about such projects, and they are often, but not always, stopped.

All the best
Trevor

It is encouraging to know your country has well managed forests, and that these are the result of planned harvests in them. We are not so lucky in our country. A massive array of big trees here in the US usually means some national forest has been converted to logging, often clearcut logging, or someone has loosed the timber industry onto their private land for very little profit.