* Wednesday C&C "No Theme" Thread #856 / Revived #076 on 2024 09 11 *

Apart from some very nice Monet's inside, I knew nothing about the contents either. It was the building itself I was chasing. It uses planes of concrete that are carefully arranged for the light and lines. It isn't the same but there are overlaps with the way light works on the concrete masses of your Dam bird series. A couple of the other venues have similar thinking in their use of concrete and light and I managed a few shots in these.

It would be fairly easy to emulate the lighting in the windows but would require some manual tinkering. AI is not as clever as a human. I was surprised it copied the windows so well, but human fiddling would be required several places in this one to finish it out in a convincing way .

Working backwards to construct the sky from the reflection -that's clever minniev. I wasn't fussed by Roel's original.

Dan, you are arguing with yourself. Right from the outset I agreed that ETTR could have been used and I suggested that Chris look at your suggested steps for future use. I have previously suggested ETTR in connection with other images posted here as well. Chris thanked you for the suggestions and said he'd consider them in future. In the case of this particular image I think the better noise reduction programs will work just fine. minniev applied it and I don't think she was even working with the RAW files. Unless Chris has plans to make this into a largish print, I think it works just fine.

G'Day MikePDX
It has taken me a while to get around to these. I've been hopping on and off ferries and trains and buses and sitting in various waiting places trying to write responses where I can get net access.
I like them individually and collectively. Each has repetitions of colour and form that make it worth looking at in its own right. Collectively there is pleasure in the variety of forms rust can take. Rust can produce such strong colours.
In the next day or so I'll download some shots I took yesterday at an expensive art installation. Keep your eye on your second example.

Nice set of this beautiful bird in flight from a three quarters angle that shows all his lovely features, and his flight movements. Well caught, for sharpness and detail. I'm still intrigued with these white faces on a heron that otherwise looks much like a paler version of our great blues. Well done.

The reflection of a classically beautiful old structure reflected in the chrome and glass and concrete modern day structure encapsulates the change in style without being explicit about it. The framing - umbrellas on the right and tree on the left offers grace and balance in contrasting colors. My favorite part: the tiny green scooter that matches the color of the foliage.

Oh please don't make it your last. I'm thoroughly enjoying getting lost in the details and forms and textures. The middle two remind me of ancient cave paintings or petroglyphs. Beautiful colors and flowing lines in the last one. Excellent series.

That is a wonderful intervention.
I wish I was able to do things like that.
But I am (a) a bit too lazy and (b) a bit too stubborn, insisting that in principle, I try to avoid digital manipulation in the sense of content replacement.
It's not like there are pulitzer prizes or World Press Photo rules involved (it is "just" guidebook photography), but I still always try to get the shot that is required, working with the situation that presents itself, selecting angles and vantage points etc to hide distractions. It is a big part of the fun and challenge for me.
Sky replacement has probably become always easier, but somehow it rubs me wrongly (not in other people's images but in my own).

I feel much the same. In general, I don't do sky replacement. I have probably done it less than a half dozen times before today, and then only for play to see what would happen. Once I did it for pay because a fellow wanted a particular image of mine "with puffy white clouds", and all the factors in the image would never be available together again, ever. So I went back to the scene and reshot it on a day with puffy white clouds, then dropped that sky into the image he liked. He was thrilled. I still felt kinda weird about it.

This image was a unique opportunity to actually try to replace a lost sky with itself because of the clarity of the reflection and the other information available in the image about what the sky was like in real life. I just made a patch of the reflected sky, turned it upside down and dropped it in place.

I don't see the point you are making.

Your opinion was that a noise reduction app was a better step than ETTR and earlier you posted that you wouldn't use ETTR for that scene.

I posted why imo ETTR was a better first step to minimise noise in the raw data and then use a noise reduction app to remove any residual noise.

I don't quite understand.
Do you want to pass on your frustration to us with this photo?
Even though you didn't want to share it with us?
I assume that there are definitely much more interesting things to photograph on the island of Naoshima.
I'm waiting for it.

These are all mine, don't even think about it.😀

Please do not edit

It's a pity the left corner of the eggs is missing. I feel the missing eggs completing the egg display would have more impact in telling the "These are all mine..." story.

The car is a bit of a distraction. Either cloning it out or a gradient blur to blur it significantly more will help highlight the eggs and bird more.

The following is a wall from one of the many art installations on Naoshima. In one village, complete old houses scattered around the town are preserved and turned into works of art. The Art House project. The wall is in the Ishibashi family home site. Compare it with MikePDX's second rust image.

As I showed earlier, ETTR would have helped immensely in reducing the visible noise.

Fwiw, I straightened and denoised and sharpened as much as I dare to push it using Topaz Denoise AI. Photoshop's denoising outputted a far too grainy sky with considerable artefacts in the foliage on the left which are too noticeable for my liking.

I used ACR and Photoshop Elements for some tonal adjustments which work better for me. The screen really needed a separate shot appropriately exposed to be inserted into the final image.

If I had a nearly noiseless raw file which ETTR would have provided the image would have cleaned up much more.

Anyway, just some food for thought 😊