* Wednesday C&C "No Theme" Thread #954 / Revived #174 on 2026 07 29 *

These are surreal images. The water lily seems to be exuding light from within, and the brown exterior of the butterfly's nearest wing looks like fur. I did look it up on a butterfly identifier which says it is a European Peacock butterfly. They are brilliantly colored and deadly sharp images but slightly unsettling.That spot on the butterfly's farthest wing is the same set of colors as the lotus flower! Wonderful to display them together!

I would say 66-67, as a child of that era myself. These are cute and funny. You clearly had mastery of the camera you were using, to get results like these with improvised tools.

A big plastic fish in a big electronic sea. Examining the fish in closeup is fascinating - It reminds me of the great Pacific garbage patch but turned into an artwork. I'm curious whether the sponsors were promoting clean water awareness.

My local environmental group sponsors fundraiser art shows and fashion shows where everything must be made of recyclable trash.

While it may have been disappointing not to see all most interesting statues, the process yielded a fascinating (and well taken) photo. I know from experience how hard it is to photograph dark cathedrals and their beautiful windows from within. Though you'd be giving up the gorgeous colors, I'd have to play with monochrome conversion and toning to make the ghosts spookier. Love it.

I'm pretty sure that enviromental reasons like clean water awareness was a big part of that open air exhibition. Some was described in English
But a lot was written and described in Korean which I can't read.

Technically very well executed and very interesting.
On the other hand, I feel the photo is cluttered with a wide variety of elements.

These are drop dead gorgeous.
Photo 1 has an excellent composition that supports the beautiful colours. The purple petal, lower right connects to the unopened bud on the lower right and gives a line linking the flower with the unopened buds on the diagonal. The overall framing taking in the tips of the buds and shapes that gently link with the shapes of the petals, looks exactly right to me. I also like the focus movement with increasing sharpness as we zero in to the razor edged stamens of the flower centre.

Photo 2. It took me a while to realize what the text was. A butterfly sits on a flower in text. Love the concept and love the angle you have chosen plus the hint of background beyond the text. While I like it as is, perhaps the exposure could be experimented with a little to bring out more of the colour in the butterfly. Only a little.

This is an unusual idea for a series. All of them need to be viewed large to appreciate the light and water patterns. In a contradictory way, I feel 2 needs a little more space around the central rock while 3 would benefit from a tighter crop. Or maybe reorder them so 3 begins the series and we get progressively closer with each image?

I'm lost in admiration. There is so much here to like. Fascinating and enjoyable as the little stories with the objects are, they are only a subplot of the image. I'll mention only a few of the details that could be studied in great detail.
The positioning of the towel. The curve of the faucet, its position and relationship to many other curves here. The line created by the water and the importance of having the tap turned on. The photographer's selected angle. The use of line. The perfection of the exposure and tones.
A masterclass of an image.

A few years ago I saw an installation in a Portuguese gallery with a similar message and on a similar scale. After that, it was totally artistically different. I'll try to find a couple of my shots and add them here if that's OK Fireplace?

The Photo. The split in the image reminds us of the two, but related entities of the issue. There is the corruption of the sea. There is the corruption of an individual life. It's a potent piece of art. The photo includes the human viewers while ensuring that the artwork dominates. In this image, I wouldn't be cropping anything off the bottom. The photo makes the point about the size and significance of our oceans.
It's a fitting image for the subject.

Once again I'm in agreement with minniev. I'd be torn between B&W and a colour version too.
Cathedrals are repositories of history. A fitting place for ghosts. The warrior knight (Charlemagne?) seems to lead an army from the past.
The exposure holds the translucency of the figures, the glass window colours and details from the walls.
Again as minniev said, Love it.

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I wish I had taken care of the negatives from those days. I don't think there are any more to be unearthed.
In the 60s, photography was a much bigger deal and name photographers had pop star like acclaim. War and fashion were the places to get noticed and published. They were good for the ego and us twenty year olds had plenty of that. War scared me and I had contacts in advertising. Fashion and glamour it was.
I began teaching around the same time and it took over my spare time. Photography went on the backburner. I no longer had a darkroom and I wasn't interested in sending photos off to others to have them processed. For me, the processing was an essential part of the process. I taught photography at some of my schools. Street and travel photography excited me but apart from 1974, I wasn't doing much travel so my photography was limited. Digital arrived about the time I got serious about traveling overseas again. I no longer needed a darkroom. The bug bit again and here we are.

Agree.
They exude a playful “flower girl” or Twiggy vibe. Great connection, quite clearly, between photographer and model.

Thanks Mike.
Please add your photos from Portugal. Would be interesting to see the comparison

There's something very special about this image.
That gentle morning light has created wonderfully subtle pastel colours for you in the sky and it's showing off all the layers in the mountains very well. The colour is also echoed in the very gentle waves on the water's almost flat surface. Then there's the silhouettes of all the boats which still look quite sleepy, but maybe that tiny boat and the paddler are heading towards them to wake them up and start the day.

You have summed up my feelings about this photo very well. I would just add that resisting the temptation to emphasise the beautiful colours by darkening the sky or increasing the saturation or both, has preserved the subtle beauty of the scene.

Flowers and butterflies go together well and the colour links between the two make the pairing even stronger. The butterfly sitting on a text about flowers is very neat! The control of blur in both, but the first in particular, is well done.
It is definitely a case where the pair is much stronger than the sum of the individual photos.