* Wednesday C&C "No Theme" Thread #788 / Revived #008 on 2023 05 24 *

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 (15 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 an image and get critique on it, and in return give other people your opinion of their images, or vice versa.
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. Let's hope it is coming.
For now, let us agree that you post an image 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 that you would like to get comments on (exceptions: see below).
Change the title of your post to reflect the image’s title or use a clearly marked title..

Look at the other images 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.

We will start with single images. Re-establishing our C&C for essays will be a next step.
Please limit any individual contribution to a single image. This avoids confusion.

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.
*It is understood that unless the original poster specifically states that they do not want an altered image posted that you are free to alter the posted image and repost it in a reply for C&C purposes (no use for other purposes!). That reposted image may remain permanently or you may remove it after a short period of time if you prefer. No copyright disputes here!

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

And finally, here are some useful hints for navigating and familiarizing yourself with the forum mechanics of DPRevived:

Unfortunately, there is no threaded view (yet).
We can’t simply keep images and their related comments together like we used to. So please make clear about which image you are commenting.
To do that, you may make good use of the “quote” feature.
This allows you to keep the image in your reply. Excess content can be deleted. The “preview” button allows you to look at what you are going to post.
There is a difference between the “reply” button that sits at the top of the forum, and the reply buttons under every post.

A few threads in this new forum with useful navigation information:
dprevived.com/t/how-to-use-this-site/387/ 
and
dprevived.com/t/how-to-embed-photos-into-your-post-directly-from-flickr/456/
(this applies also, with modifications, to other photo hosting websites)
and
dprevived.com/t/how-to-quote/1014/

Have fun and let’s stick together!

Shiva & Parvati

Tourism in our own home, 10 days ago.
Sometimes all it takes is to go down the stairs for coffee to take up to the bedroom.

Early sun lightplay on the little statuette of the 2-in-1 unity of Shiva and Parvati that adorns our ground floor staircase railing.
The god and goddess were engaged in a dancing competition in which the male Shiva had an unfair advantage over his spouse.
They made up in the best way possible, creating a new depiction of their everlasting unity: a representation that is literally half man and half woman.
(This is a —for us — very meaningful souvenir from our India trip.)

I'm not sure how this will show up on the forum. I'm trying to post a series of photos that have something of the madness of Naples at the time they won the Italia Cup. At the time there were photo opportunities everywhere. It's difficult to make a selection. I won't, at this time of posting, explain why I selected these as a group.

Sticks and no stones

You have certainly captured the real exuberance on the streets of Naples. Italians really know how to show their happiness wheather dressing a dog or outfitting a little kid in a jersey and painting his car blue or stringing flags across alleyes. Late Diego Maradona was a club icon after all.

Symbolism abounds. Great light and its curvature really accentuate the statue and gives us more meaning to it's nature.

A Golden Orb weaver with lunch. Relatively non toxic and not aggressive. So you can sleep easy...

Learning To Fish

Traditional knowledge tells us photos of the backs of humans are uninteresting but sometimes I try it anyway.

The people I meet beneath the dam do not have boats or piers to fish from. Like the birds, they work in challenging environments to make their catch. And the catch goes on the table, not back in the water.

Fuel City

WhyNot

I want to thank all who stopped by long enough to look and think about his picture .. particularly LindS, Chis, Minniev, and Mike who gave much too kind critiques. I can only say that as I have taken these pictures I seem for some reason to have become darker and more gritty in my view ... I always consider the file that comes from the camera as a sketch that I may accept or modify to fit my mood and how I see the world at that time .... and it does change ...

A Dawn

A time of new beginnings, new hope and new opportunities.

Pete

Nice PeteS,
You do see such performances, but often an airplane or something else is made to fly in front of the moon or the sun. However, swans and at that height are less common, but it can be a distorted image based on the photographic angle at which the photo was taken. Still a nice photo.
Lou

Brian Hi,
Do you have any idea what the prey is, it seems quite big for a web.
Nicely rendered and good background colour. It makes the spider stands out
Lou

Roel Hi,
You last said in thread 787 that you had an assignment or were working on it, my question is: Do you also use the iPhone for that?
Why this question, because I'm missing something but can't put my finger on it. Sometimes I've seen reasonable forums of that but also images where I have that problem, like this one and I can't help but think that photos you've taken with the Em1 evoked a more realistic feel.
I'm not crazy about this image, sorry.
Lou

CLOSED

Lovely. Reminds me of Ruth Bernhard's dictum about making photographs less than 50 feet from where you sleep.

Not sure the color is helping this image.

Hi Lou,
Always nice to hear from you.
The assignment is the photography for an upcoming book on Leuven.

Most images for that book are shot with my E-M1 and the Olympus lenses 8-25mm, 12-40mm and 40-150mm (sometimes with the X1.4 extender).
Zero images with the fisheye (although I love that lens), because the publisher wants "objective" images (nothing too fancy photographically).
The "real camera" gives me a wider range of focal lengths and images in RAW that I can process more in detail.

But I do use my iphone on the job (and quite extensively so), mostly for showing the author and publisher where I am, what I am looking at and what they can expect. (Also sometimes to show them where I am, eg in a cemetery where I need to photograph a specific statue, and to ask directions: should I go left or right from here?)
Occasionally, there are Iphone images that capture a really specific moment that I missed with the real camera and then such image would be used for the book.

The reason why I post mostly iphone photos in recent months/years in this weekly thread, is because they are finalized so much quicker.
And much of the things I do with the bigger camera are "under embargo" and cannot be shown until after publication.
Also, when travelling, I make probably a few thousand photos with the real camera but they end up in the backlog (that backlog is growing terrifyingly...)
(I hope to spend long retirement years going through all those photos from dozens of travels in the last decade...)

But while I am travelling, I also use the phone to make quick shots to show the family back home.
Those shots are ready and available immediately and for me they are often not 100% good, but 95% and that is enough.
They make it possible to show recent work here, without the hassle of the selection and processing work.

The phone is the camera that you always have with you. And that alone makes it a good camera.
Especially since some phones now have multiple lenses (Iphone 11PRO that I still use, years after purchase : standard lens, wide angle lens, short telephoto).
This flexibility has turned the phone much more into a camera I can use, especially with the wide angle (you know I LOVE ultra wide angles...)

But hey: we cannot fool a discerning eye.
There are always going to be connoiseurs who recognize smartphone and real camera images and prefer one of them.

I adore spiders! The light and color of this is highly appealing. Re the comment about the prey's size, I wonder if it is what caused all the apparent damage to the web or Ms. Golden was simply lazy that morning 😃