Wednesday C&C * Wednesday C&C "No Theme" Thread #905 / Revived #125 on 2025 08 20*

Welcome to the Wednesday Comments and Critique (No Theme & No Brand) thread!

We are dedicated to continuing the great tradition of this C&C thread because we are convinced that looking at, and talking about images is vital for better photography.

Our tried and tested concept (almost 17 years and running!) is a weekly "peer-to-peer" photo comments & critique encounter, in which you GIVE and RECEIVE.

The idea is simple: you post a photo or photo-based image that you have made and get critique on it. And in return you give other people your honest but constructive opinion of their images.

Any Theme, Any Camera, Any Style, Any Subject.

We are still figuring out how to create the convenience of threaded view on this new forum.
For now, let us agree that you post an image or essay with a title and short explanation, and that all comments include the image as a quote.
Replies to comments may or may not include quotes.

THREAD GUIDELINES – THE SHORT & SWEET VERSION
• This thread does not care about brands. It’s not about the tool, but the image.
• Post one image or essay that you have made and would like to get comments on.
An entry can either be a single image or a short essay. With an essay we mean not a collection of random images without any connection, seeking C&C on more than one of them. We mean instead a limited number (3 to 10) of connected images that together try to tell a story, create a fuller picture of a situation, event or location, etc.
• Add a clear title to your post to distinguish your entry.
• Look at the other images/essays and give your comments on at least one of those.
• For comments, try to go beyond a simple pat on the back or a short dismissal.
• Do you like an image (or essay) ? Try to explain WHY it appeals to you.
• Negative feedback is OK (we all want to learn), but be polite and constructive. Try to explain why the image (or essay) does not appeal to you and how it might be improved.
• Please stay on topic, i.e. concentrate on the image and the photographic comments, without getting into politics or other distractions. No non-photographic arguments.

The critique you give is vital.
What was your first impression? What catches your eye about an image? Why?
What do you like, and what distracts you? What would you change?

Fiddle with the image in your head - composition, perspective, color balance, exposure.

PLEASE NOTE CLEARLY:
Unless the original poster specifically states (for every individual posting offered for C&C) that they do not want their image(s) to be downloaded, altered or reposted, it is understood that within the context of this thread, other participants are free to download and alter the posted image and repost it in a reply for C&C purposes. That reposted image may remain permanently within the week's thread, or you may remove it after a short period of time if you prefer. The downloaded and altered images are not to be used for any other purposes nor uploaded anywhere else than within the context of the C&C in this thread. No copyright disputes here!

Encourage - it is a scary business putting your work up for other people to judge!

More general feedback is also welcome.
Do you know something about taking the same sort of image that would make matters easier - share your own as an example in your reply.

Have fun, be respectful and let’s stick together!

The UNIVERSE of PANAMARENKO

Quick visit to the MuHKA yesterday. That's the Antwerp Museum of Contemporary Art.
Summer is nearing its end and new exhibitions will start in September so I still needed to visit some shows that will soon close.

One of them is part of the "Panamarenko85" celebrations, marking the 85th birthyear of Panamarenko (deceased 2019), a very colourful figure in the Antwerp (and international) art scene, who had his home and studio in this city (a few miles from my home - currently easily recognizable from the flying saucer that has landed on its roof). Panamarenko is one of our true 20th century greats, who gained worldwide fame with this fantastical creations and theories.

Fascinated from a young age by Jules Verne, physics and science and space travel (as well as Einstein relativity theory, flying saucers, perpetuum mobile, man-powered flight, Icarus, time travel, electromagnetism and numerous other scientific and science fiction subjects), Panamarenko made a name for himself with this playful and highly imaginative creations that were always shrouded in a veil of scientific seriousness. Most of those were cobbled together with waste materials, spit and string in his own backyard. They were always accompanied by elaborate blueprints, notebooks full of calculations and clippings etc.

The exhibition contained a few (lenghty) video fragments of Panamarenko in the 70s and 80s, appearing on television and baffling his interviewers (and both art experts as well as science professors) with his ability to drone on forever in seemingly all serious pseudo-scientific babble, laced with formulas and quotes, with which he almost always managed to sell his incredible ideas as based in hard science. The beauty of it is that he always seemed totally confident and that he seemed to believe what he was saying, although most of it sounds like Doc Brown fever dreams, or conspiracy theories that belong in Area 51. And all of that in his very colourful Antwerp dialect with quite a few tics and speech defects. Truly wonderful example of the idiot savant. You should really find some clips, preferably with English subtitling (although native Flemish speakers don't necessarily understand more of what he is saying than anyone speaking any other language).

Anyway, so I went to see a (small) selection of his works yesterday.
Some of them need an airplane hangar, but in the MuHKA the selection was limited to two rooms.

I was immediately totally sucked into his wonderfully crazy universe and transported back to my own childhood.
Fun personal fact: visiting an exhibition in the Brussels Museum of Beaux Arts that combined René Magritte with Panamarenko, is actually my personal oldest memory of coming into contact with art: a friend of my mom who was interested in my boundless curiosity took me to see that show. This was in the 70s and I must have been a bit younger than 10.

One room contained numerous drawings, blueprints, videos and small experimental installations, as well as a selection of the sources he always kept close at hand (including comic strips and Revell scale models of actual spacecraft).

Here are shots of the second room. This one contained a few of his mid-scale creations.
I think the MuHKA's dark and circular exhibition room was a perfect match for the subject (and my fisheye on the E-M1 the right lens to capture it).
(And yes, I had to lay flat on my back on the gallery floor for that last one.)

New bridges

International award winning for design and engineering new bridges in Toronto, Canada Port Lands. Manufactured in Canada and Netherlands very innovative and pleasing to the eye bridges are part of massive $1.5 B infrastructure and development for flood control in downtown Toronto.

There are 4 of them and I will visit the rest in the near future and post the results at some point.

I see the fascination. Your photogrphc effort is well deserved. We certainly see the scope and depth of your interest. And the fact that one shot required you to lay on the floor...Well that alone is amazing. Excellent.

Herd

Art

Collected images of different kinds of art over the past 2 weeks...

Art in Nature
The swallowtail is the most magnificently artified butterfly who visits my equally magnificently colored lantana.

Art By Nature
A tiny crab spider has spun a magnificent web in my patio umbrella.

Art By Human Hands
My grandson thought I needed a decorative windchime over my sink so he made one from household discards.

Art by AI
My cousin made me that cushion from a discarded curtain, and on a whim I asked AI to add in a similarly dressed monkey reading an upside down book.

Precious

The low brick and concrete building on the right is the Großmarkthalle (Wholesale Market) in Frankfurt, which was completed in 1928 and is now protected by a preservation order. It was linked to the railway, which brought mainly fruit and vegetables and care was taken not to cut, bruise or split the skin of the precious cargo on its way to the tables of the citizens of Frankfurt.

Fifteen years later, the buildings were used for something even more precious, but criminally rejected. The Jewish citizens of Frankfurt were rounded up, kept in its cellars and the railway distributed them to places such as Theresienstadt, Majdanek or Auschwitz. This time cuts, bruises and split skin were not avoided, but welcomed.

In 2004 a modern centre took over the function of the Großmarkthalle, built far away from the railway, but right next to the Autobahn, and the Großmarkthalle was disused, except for the office blocks at either end.

The European Central Bank integrated the Großmarkthalle into its design with the sloping-sided tower and opened in 2014. It protects the Euro, the precious currency of 350 million European citizens. Split skins are no longer a danger, but they try to avoid runs and scrapes and crashes at all costs.

Just so. I relished the story and the photos. Photojournalism is an art form that deserves its own site.
The photos. Was White balance applied either in camera or PP? It doesn't matter, the other worldly tones are entirely appropriate. Every shot uses a sci fi/space technique that has taken my breath away ever since I first saw Kubrick's Space Odyssey and a giant structure drifted in and hovered, partly revealed, from the top of the frame. Likewise, the use of smaller objects in the foreground that might be overwhelmed by what floats above.
More please Roel.

A perfect follow up to Roel's initial post this week. Shot 1 uses much the same "hovering above" sc Fi technique I referred to in my response to Roel's images and it works here for the same reasons. The fine vertical lines create a spider like presence.
2 might be improved with some cropping from the bottom. It would still retain the triangle on the left and the important road edge that takes the eye to the towers behind. I very much like the juxtaposition of two types of modern in this shot. It's a new and different take on the modern building/olde worldly architecture technique that is often used in city photography.
3, Curves and leading lines plus. The soft, dark skies contrast with the hard, bright bridge lines. It's a pity that the designers didn't give you something more exciting as a subject at the end of all the sight lines. The location promises something more significant than light poles.

Cough, splutter, outrage. LANTANA. In Australia, Lantana is an invasive, destructive menace of epic proportions. Any googling for Lantana Australia gives more detail. I have a personal grudge. About 45 years ago I spent my Xmas holidays helpng friend clear lantana from a property in NSW. The work destroyed my hands and they were painful for weeks after
Oh yeah, I just noticed there is a butterfly in photo 1 as well. Didn't see it at first. Couldn't get past the lantana.

I really like this one - excellent framing and abstract feel with the patterns. I usually still fail to recognize these kind of opportunities. Well done!

All are nice - that's my favorite. Probabl because it captures enough to give a good impression, without the need to show everything. The lines and balance between the dark sky and the white and red structure works well.

Wonderful! I like the theme of different kinds of art and within the context I can even tolerate AI, but this one is the most interesting shot to my eyes. Very nice colors, great detail and a beautiful and elegant creature. (We have those here as well from time to time, I'm always delighted to see one).

I did not set WB in camera because the light sources in the room where quite varied in temperature.
I did fiddle a bit with WB in post-processing but not very much, because the result soon felt unnatural to me (having seen the scene as presented.
The ceiling of the room is almost white, so I could easily have used that as my baseline for a strict WB correction.
But when I did that, everything felt sterile and that is the contrary of the feeling that Panamarenko art should give you: it is all analog and organic.
The materials used are mostly earthen and ocre in colour tone (sheets of epoxy etc).- so I wanted to make sure and keep that.

Yes, you kept it and the results are all the better for it with this subject.

Speaking of such things and I'd welcome thoughts from others on this diversion, what do we all feel about the current craze for a "cinema" look in photos? It's a look I've also seen in some recent tv shows. I'm talking about a kind of slightly faded golden glow kind of colour. It isn't a colour I recall/associate with movie going days when the films were projected from real film. To my eye, it looks more like what we saw when the stock had faded, as it did, and was due to be replaced with a new print. Sometimes, better theatres would tell us they had a new print of a film. Or am I not remembering what fils used to look like?
While I like old cameras, I have contempt for new digital cameras that try to look like old cameras. A working replica of an old camera is a different matter.
In Japan last year I saw many "youngies" sporting old film cameras. They often looked more like fashion accessories and I didn't see many shots being taken with them. I hunted for, but never got, a photo of a person with a film camera dangling from a strap taking photos with a phone.

Great assembly. This one appeals to me most. It has this unmistakable atmosphere of nature.