* Wednesday C&C "No Theme" Thread #792 / Revived #012 on 2023 06 21 *

This has a lot of appeal based on the color contrast (complementary colors on the color wheel), but the interesting macro technique, the clever composition, the amazing foreground/background (what is that stuff? beads of some kind?) the playful language in the title, all contribute to the visual pleasure. I love how the beads (or whatever they are) melt into bokeh and are reflected on the bottom of the silver spoon.

This photo works because you included the weathered and rusty yellow boat tie-up and placed it close to the front of the frame. So now you have a cue about what yellow really is, and we can appreciate it as it floats about on the water which is a nice contrasting color of blue, complementary colors on the wheel like SimpleJoy gifted us with. A nice, semi abstracted image with a simple 1/3s composition. Very soothing.

Love it! That song was, for some reason, one that my mother was very fond of, and one of the few I ever heard her sing. She was a nonconformist by nature, and is to blame for me being that way, and indirectly for my children and grandchildren. This song represented cookie cutter culture to her.

It looks like a mirrored image that is layered on top of its original, I hope you'll explain how you did it. However you did it, there is a lot of visual geometry that works quite well, lots of repeating shapes like triangles and ovals and trapezoids that are laid out in perfect order and mirrored, but enough underlying mystery to make us want to look closer. I have not seen the color version but I'd bet the black and white is best for this. Great tonal range and detail. A superbly fun construction.

I have no idea what matlab code is so I'll just respond to the images. I much prefer the second versions to the one in the initial post. They are much more accessible. In the second pair, one of them has brighter, more clarified colors (and the reds look a bit more like blood) but they are both accessible. The one in this first post has way too much jitter for my brain to process, and reminds me of radio static or dealing with a dot matrix printer - there is just too much signal interruption for me to enjoy it. While the second batch has some of the jitter, it is less bothersome visually, and is rather interesting - and I have no trouble making out the pattern beneath or differentiating it from the pattern of the jitter itself. I know I'm explaining this in an inexpert way, but it is the best I can do with my non scientific mind.

Thank you for an interesting exercise, and for making me work to think my way through the images!

The first is a pleasant documentary image of an odd duck if you'll excuse my pun. It might have been more interesting to see her face than her rear, but you can see her weird orange beady eye, and the unusual colors of her tail are pleasing.

But oh that second one! A piece of nature art. The elegant curve of the swan's neck and the curvature of her wing almost suggests a Fibonacci spiral. The young one tucked beneath her is a small curved echo of the mother - exquisite. We have great detail in the feathers, the beaks, the nest, so the unfocused vignette works wonderfully here. The gentle conversion to monochrome suits the subject matter. Well done.

Would dearly love to see this painting in person. Botticelli is my favorite of the Italian Renaissance painters. Good spotting to find a woman with tangled blond Renaissance hair standing in front of it.

Do not worry Pete, it is so easy to miss one or two in this kind of formatting.

This is a very nice travel photo. The warm light is almost surreal in the glow it brings to the plastered and ornate architecture of the palace, and the color palette is so perfect it's hard to believe it is by chance. The woman's skirt is the same peach, tan and red colors as the walls, the floor, the pillars, the men's turbans, even the shirt of the person across the street. The compositional sight line seems to follow the line of vision of the subjects you've included, beginning in the left corner and moving rightward/upward.

You have shared a subtheme with us in your India photos, of men looking at women, and this one is in the same subset. The three men in formal garb of guards or some other official capacity, seem to be looking at the back of the woman, who may be a tourist, as she kneels to take a photo. A visually very engaging image on multiple levels.

You have chosen a very pleasing color pairing here, simple and effective and suitable for your subject matter. Because of the well chosen angle, the tree seems to soar above us from the surrounding foliage frame in a gentle curvature. There is softened detail in the frothy foliage in the lower part of the frame, with the limbs leading upward into more clarified detail in the leaves at the ends of the branches. The whites with a delicate touch of pink contrast nicely with the deep but realistic blue of the sky with its wispy offering of clouds. There is an almost musical feel to this image. I like it very much. (And I notice you have avoided or solved the challenge of the halos on this one).

I want to repeat what I wrote in an earlier post in this thread, "Utterly delightful!" I know some bird species do play, whether in air or water or on land, and this image feels full of joy and freedom. Who wouldn't want to be able to fly?! The slight lean of the foreground wall doesn't bother me in the least - mostly because there is chaos and motion all around. If the scene was serene and static, I'd want the wall to be parallel to the bottom edge of the image frame.

I like the Egyptian Goose for the feather colors and detail. I could imagine it considering its backside as its best side and presenting that for your photo op. The parent doesn't seem to be interacting with the young'un and the baby isn't very clear to me, so I don't see this as a photo of "with young."

The swan photo is exquisite. The ones I've shot and shared online I call "swanlets" instead of cygnet just because I like the look and sound of the made-up word. The curves of the bodies feel like safety and elegance and love. A very special photo.

The contrasts and point of view (perspective) are highly appealing. When I enlarge I see lots of individual leaves, which makes me want to view as a very large print hung in a very large room. I could imagine sitting in front of the print and meditating, or just thinking about the awesome nature of trees.

Well your photo is certainly well titled, magenta it is for sure. Not sure what kind of structure this is, but it seems like something Steven Shore or William Eggleston might have been drawn to photograph, all geometry and color. You have a great set of diagonals headed into the distance on the left so we have to look that way and get pulled to the orange door. The other odds and ends: a mat that is probably not a mat, an odd array of railings, an electrical outlet and a water hydrant, all fail to answer the question of what we are seeing. An image that is more interesting than it initially seems to be. Nicely spotted.

Excellent! It looks like a choreographed dance. You managed to capture those birds in really unusual, almost unbelievable stances, which gives them the appearance of acrobats. Your framing does an excellent job at creating a believable stage for the ballet unfolding.

Before I looked closer I thought that this showed some japanese temple complex. Great work on creating something completely different by you very effective processing. Looks wonderful!

Yeah, looks great!

Minniev,

Thanks for looking.

It's a first floor garage in a small apartment building in Carlsbad, CA. One of many funky coastal towns along the Southern California coast.

Someone had a lot of fun with paint!

Rich

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Beautiful picture of a beautiful bird. You Aussies have the most wonderfully colored birds anywhere, we only see such as these in zoos. Nice and sharp, colorful, great profile stance, sharp little catchlight in his eye. It looks like the other image you posted is perhaps the original, and you edited out the blurred foliage on the edges? Looks like you did a good job and it definitely improved the image by removing distractions that did not add anything to the image. Nice work.