Nice dream.

Mmm, you want that much sky and that sort of width, so I can see why you end up with that amount of blurred stuff at the bottom to balance the sky.

It’s pointless saying "Take the shot from somewhere else with a foreground that works better: the swans will be where they will be, and having the headland fade into the sea between the two swans seems right, setting the angle.

My only suggestions are to trim the bottom as much as your artistic sense allows (but I guess you’ve done that), and perhaps brighten and flatten it towards the photos average to de-emphasize it. Maybe vignette?

It’s a nice photo anyway, but any conclusions as to Lemmy’s limits? I’m sure somewhere there’s a simple pixel size/file size limit: there’s certain some sort of limit I do trigger - it’s just I’m not sure exactly what it is.

There’s something curiously balanced (or something) about this photo - I can see why you might post it.

Thank you - I was wondering whether I was missing some specific historical references, but your explanation makes your thoughts on this interesting collection clear.

There’s a significant melancholy to these, but I’m confused by your title of “Echoes” - echoes of what? Times past, or something more?

What did you use to shoot this? If a “normal” lens, it’s good, if with a macro lens, start playing with luminance histograms/tools on a RAW format form, as I suspect you’ll find detail lost in the “light”.

Mmm, I wondered if the 2.5s was from wanting to play with tripods :)

You probably know anyway, but the true joy of slow speed shots from a stable platform comes with flowing “broken” water. Fireworks and stars also have their moments.

Now play around with aperture (and then the other settings to keep the light right) to get greater depth of field, for compare and contrast purposes!

I am surprised you needed a 2.5s shot - were the panels essentially unlit?

No! A lesson I learned a long time ago: you definitely take this shot, it is interesting enough in its own right (more than enough!). Then you continue to watch the birds, finger on the trigger, and if you are lucky there will be a later better pose, but just as likely, they fly off :)

Always take what is put in front of you, and then optimistically ask for “More!”

P.S. it’s this sort of discussion I most miss from my days on the photography subreddits, but I really went off the site owner’s policies, and decided “no more of my photos for you” (even if they are not of the best).

This is really interesting to compare and contrast with the original, each has its considerable virtues.

This one has the bird really pop the moment you look at it, but then a realisation creeps up behind saying this looks a bit false, a bit like a model of a bird that you’ve lit and photoed in a studio, rather than a live bird out in the wild. In contrast, Tempus Fugit’s edit takes a little more time to appreciate, but then feels far more like a bird in its environment, with its colours more in tune with the background, and the wider crop helping with that.

Now, magazine photos (or, as you say, scrolling on a phone) need that “pop”, they’ve so little time to keep you on the page.

It’s the “in its environment” feel that I personally prefer for my bird photographs (if I did, e.g., portraits, my choices would be very different), and so I’ve not invested the effort in learning how to get birds to “pop”, but it’s very much a matter of taste and purpose. I still mess with global luminance, but that’s because I might know better than my camera a good light curve.

In passing, I feel a little regret you didn’t have the RAW format form to play with (which might well be why your edits saw the colour noise).

Picture worked (and worked well) in the end. Commonest cause for me is that there are file size (or possibly simply pixel number) limits in Lemmy. From time to time I have to resize the photo to get it posted. If you are lucky the “broken upload” image in Lemmy contains a hint of the reason.

Hmmm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nohkalikai_Falls#/media/File:NohKaLikai_Falls_V2_Wiki.jpg

So just a repost from Wikipedia.

If your software does have the right luminance tool, a little effort can really improve photos with light/dark issues, but it does really need RAW format to really work well (it needs the extra info that RAW holds).

Do you shoot RAW format photos? If so, I’d try looking at your luminance curve/tone histogram/whatever your software calls it. Any photo with a lot of sky and a lot of dark stuff tends to leave the dark stuff too dark - with a histogram tool, just applying to the whole photo, you should be able to brighten up the dark stuff, revealing more detail, without doing too much harm to the sky. Then your classic framing will be better rewarded.

Or take an entirely different approach and work out when the sun will be in the best position to light up the scene naturally.

Monopods (or indeed tripods, or even just bracing against walls) matched with slower speeds might also reveal more detail.

A good example of a photo where you study it for the unexpected details you’d never be able to see with your naked eye - even if the first impression is a CCTV dome on a ceiling!

It may be a “classic” shot, but you’ve done it well, and I particularly like that you’ve kept focus all along the length of the hall. Were you focus stacking or something?

It has the air of Rosebay Willow Herb in the UK after the seeds are gone, e.g.

https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/late-summer-stands-rosebay-willowherb-start-2684810343

But that’s a wild guess, especially since I don’t know where the photo was taken!

And yes, a curiously satisfying shot.

If you create good art, you’ve got to celebrate it!

They really do not look real, do they?

Though it comes across as a sales pitch for the gear, there’s a bit about what was used by Rumpf in:

https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/photography/awards-and-competitions/three-cameras-one-vision-how-the-most-stunning-landscape-photography-of-2025-was-created

“with a workflow built around Lightroom for most of his processing, Photoshop “for major spot removal and refined masks,” and Topaz Lab for sharpening and noise reduction” - I’d note that the Topaz product was probably “Photo AI” or one of that family of products all with AI in the name.