April brings the sweet spring showers...

Flanders and Swanne have a great deal to answer for; and in the same breath, to be thanked for as well.



Here it is not so much sweet spring showers, as promised autumnal downpours. It is the continuing story of an La Nina summer; warm, wet and windy. Perhap that is what has gotten into the ol’ probligo brain and growed a fungus that has brought all of these together at the one time.



F’rinstance, the judging of set topic competitions. I eventually caved in to the pressure and posted a minor rant on the club Flikr page. There are no replies as yet, nor do expect that any will take up the glove.



CT was very fair on my two efforts. I got the HC and M that I expected; merit for the wave, HC for the cold morning. The interesting things came out of his comments.



For example, he saw the wavebreak as including quite a bit more than it needed. The before and his idea of what it should have been cropped to is shown. In view of the Merit score, I am not going to argue that one.







The Taupo cold morning went the same way. Before and after are below. Perception is a deceptive rather than constructive mental force. There is recent research reinforcing the idea that the normal brain spends a good deal of its time telling fibs to the rest of itself; this most particularly through memory and recall. The idea behind the original frame was to push the depth of field to the limit by getting the rock (bottom left) and boats in focus. I reckon that was achieved, so I am fairly happy on that score. I don’t think that the image lies entirely with the boats. It is the relationships; boats, distance from shore, coming fog… But, as I said, perception is a cruel mistress.














Set topic this month is “reflections”; some very good efforts were presented in Prints Monday night. I spent some time over the weekend seeking out the reflection of trees in a mud puddle taken down Whangamata way last spring. It was a vague attempt to replicate the Escher drawing of a puddle with tyre tracks and footprints. Very poor in that light and the more I look at the original frame, the less that survives the crop tool.



There was a series of images that I took some years back in Cornwall Park; autumn leaves sitting in the road channel with water. One or two of those would go close so I am going to try and get out there in two weeks to repeat the exercise. Not sure that SWMBO would appreciate sitting around whilst I go puddle jumping. But there y’go.



I think this month is when I shall submit the “Buddha brings Enlightenment to Chaos”. Time I got that one off my chest. That kind of implies that I expect my reflections image to be weak. I hope not.