Anything goes as far as editing. Add, manipulate, twist, crop, or create a fine piece of art. Please show us your editing that might improve the picture OR POSSIBLY create a piece of art using some of the latest software actions to create different effects. ANYTHING IS ACCEPTABLE. If you use some special software or action please let us know the software you used.

When you are finished, post your edit in this thread. Edits will be accepted until 9 pm Eastern time on Thursday. No edits will be accepted after that time, voting is done Thursday 9:00PM - Sunday 9:00PM. Voting will be for the one image voters like best.

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As I see it, there's an almost limitless number of reasons why people might 'revert' back to shooting film. Some may be technical, some may be aesthetic, and others may be purely idiosyncratic and/or psychological. Nevertheless, I'd bet that regardless an individual's reasons, the end result --be that a print that gets traditionally (darkroom) printed or whose print (or negative or positive transparency) is scanned or reproduced in-camera then subsequently gets digitized-- is the primary motivating factor. The 'end result' is what would be key in such a scenario, and the ability to pre-conceive an end point before even choosing or loading the film is no simple matter. That ability is, in fact, what elevates a camera operator/picture taker up and into photographer status. While aspects of that 'ability' might be taught or learned, other aspects depend on more innate factors.

Nothing approaches the visual 'photographic' perfection of --assuming a neg had been purposefully exposed, developed, and printed, and the 'subject' had been sufficiently actualized such that it's become compelling and possesses the qualities that elevates the image into places that are both real and ideal, subjective and objective, personal and universal-- a large format (4"x 5" or preferably larger) silver gelatin b&w, or similarly, via whatever color process (E-6, Ciba, etc., etc.) print. Nothing. Medium format contact prints, and moreso small format contact sheet 'prints', though they can share to some extent a similar sort of sublimity, are simply too small to view as one would want, and can only be considered as preludes to larger viewing versions. Plus however 'good' these mini-views may be, they've lost aspects of what could've been their 'perfection' by requiring enlargement. (Which is NOT to say that enlargements can't be great; they obviously can, but....)

So --for me, if for no one else-- however 'good' any of my small format film efforts may or may not have been, none of those efforts approach the sorts of results I can achieve shooting FF (or even crop sensor) digital. But the film efforts are not without their own sorts of merits, none of which could have pre-visioned when I shot them years ago: they make great starting points for what I prefer to think of as digital 'manipulations'.

A digitally manipulated in-camera reproduction of an Ektachrome transparency I'd shot in the 1980's.

Eight or ten years previous (to the time I'd shot the slide), I'd done a pen & ink drawing of what effectively is this same exact scene.

Comment or critique as you may.

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A total of seventeen images were used to produce this image. Four series of focus stacked images were first produced, then the results of those were merged together as a pano.

Early this morning.

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Okay, since "anything goes...."

The wrist and hand were AI generated (using the text: 'hand holding corner of a photograph') using Photoshop's 'Generative Fill' entered into a selection I'd made in the lower right-hand corner of the larger image, alongside and on top of a separate layer that contained terryMc's original image. I did not alter terryMc's image --apart from resizing and tilting it several degrees-- in any way. The larger 'backdrop' image is, however, a four-exposured set of images merged into panorama (in LrC) I'd shot (and 'edited' [i.e., I'd made a variety of local and global adjustments] in Lr, Ps, Aurora HDR and five or six minutes of my time) one evening several years ago at Utah's Dead Horse Point State Park.

A valid criticism would be: terryMc's photo and the hand/wrist are much too 'bright' --i.e., are overexposed-- to have been what one would naturalistically have seen in any post-sunset light.

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Yes. What you said makes sense. The part about 'certain things have to be in unison' in particular.

[Bleepin'] killer, Vertical.

And ayup. Being there --whether you hung on in there from a time earlier on, or whether you preplanned your arrival just right-- for conditions to become [bleepin'] killer is 99.9% of that which makes the ayuptitude right.

'Nuther words, Vertster: Good Stuff. Very Good Stuff.

Generally speaking, ICM doesn't typically 'do' much for me, very possibly because though most tend to be fairly subtle, 'the effect' is so obviously an identifiable effect that it seems somehow predictable and is therefore slightly trite. That is not to say, however, that I can't or haven't appreciated the works of some who ICM well. (There is, for instance, a woman in town who's been doing ICM's for years, but having never actually met her, I know nothing about her background or training much less how she might describe or explain her intent were we to meet and speak together. Regardless, it's abundantly clear that she has a keen awareness of composition and color theory (and rather more, I'd wager) --and these are qualities I genuinely respect-- and I've yet to see a work of hers that I didn't find it excellent.) In any event, for me, despite having done a few, on neither the shooting side nor on the processing side has my interest been sufficiently piqued that I'd devote more time or effort toward continuing.

Multiple exposures, on the other hand, include processes that interest me greatly. They do so for their quasi-abstract/graphic qualities, and that is something that's interested me for a great many years. Why that may be exactly, I do not know, but I know that I'd been doing so (been seeing/portraying the 'abstract') early on in my paint or pen or canvas or paper days or now in this photography phase, whether that appear 'realistic' or otherwise. Did some in-camera multiple exposure work when my main rig would've been large format, and more recently (these past months) I've returned to that via what some call the 'Pep Ventosa' effect, which I've adopted and adapted and tried to 'make my own' without it appearing derivitive or merely an 'effect that was done but lacks an ostensible purpose'.

That, briefly, is my experience. I'd very much like to comment on the images you posted, but I'd rather hear (read) what YOU might have say about them. Not your processes, per se; those I can see. Instead, I'd rather hear (read) what your (aesthetic?) intent might be.

Can't say if any movies had been filmed in this particular place, but portions of a number of other films (Indiana Jones, Thelma & Louise, This Boy's Life, Riders On The Purple Sage and various others) were filmed five or ten minutes away.

What you wrote is better than what you shot, Reuss. Which is NOT to say that what you shot was in the least bit shabby, 'cuz it's anything but.

Seen some eclipses and some comets and some assorted celestial events over time, and whoppie-do. The anticipation, the witnessing thereof, and the ptfoggerifticantizations about --i.e., the actualization-- of each (as you well described) is what 99.9% of it is really about.

Much else is more a matter of geekitude-ism. Or maybe less than that.

Kudos.

Late afternoon.

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Had this family gone all the way to Determination Towers? Not very likely....

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A tortoise? I wouldn't know. Mostly because I've learned not to interpret rock art elements quite as 'literally' as many others do. What I do know, though, is that the 'pointer' in the 12 o'clock position (as seen in the pic) within the circle points toward the rising cliff's edge, and that is due north. What any of the other 'pointer' lines might point toward is stuff I could only speculate.

There's the usual amount of graffiti --mostly names scratched (most of them so lightly that they can barely be seen) in here or there-- but that all appears to be from the late 1800's or early 1900's rather than anything more ostensibly 'recent'. The site itself is relatively easy to access, and cottonwoods and lush vegetation in the canyon below belies the fact of plentiful water (Courthouse Spring) that people have relied upon for centuries. 'John Smith / Apr? Aug? 1882' was probably a cattleman/cowboy. Most of the rock art is stylistically/thematically that of Ute production, which would make it less than 500 years old, but at the very end of the ledge are several Archaic Era 'Barrier Canyon Style' petroglyphs (one of which is shown here in #4) that could easily be 2000 or more years old.

Sadly, there used to be more. But rather than having been simply defaced with graffiti, in 2002 someone 'removed' --scrubbed off somehow-- one of the more striking images that had been there, and had been known as 'The Blue Buffalo panel'. It, along with several other elements had originally been 'painted' using a light blue pigment made from glauconite. (I have shots on film from before that desecration, but nothing scanned). As well, there's another panel --what once had been a fairly striking Fremont (c. 850 ~ 1300 A.D.) pictograph site-- that's maybe a 10-minute boulder-hop away, and it had been (obscenely) vandalized rather more recently. I'd used an image of that Fremont site in the rock art section I wrote for the "2004-2006 [Canyonlands N.P.] River Corridor Architecture and Rock Art Survey" publication, but I'd used that before the panel had been defaced. Ten, twelve, twenty years ago virtually nobody'd go there; now, people camp in the space immediately below.

Other people's art.

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