Yep. I finally figured that out. I was looking on google for images of them and was starin' at their backsides. Glad nobody saw me doin' that.

Thank you Bonnie. Please, may I say what a sweet and adorable face you have in your profile pic.

About that one that's upside down, I like to find things in nature that fools the eye or mind or both, things that are not exactly what we think they are at first. Such scenes are not all that easy to spot but usually a lot of fun when they are. If I see something that later, upon closer inspection, turns out to not be what I first thought, I'll back up and get a shot of the first view of it. I've gotten a big kick out of that one on many occasions. I put in the middle of a slide show and watch the look on people's faces when it comes up. It's invariably one of, "I must not be paying attention here. I may have dozed off..." Sometimes they shake their head and rub their eyes. No kidding. Maybe that's not a valid photography pursuit but it's still fun.

:)

Thank you for relating your experience and the astute comments. Wonderful advice. The question then becomes, "is there another Monument Valley to where I can go and of which nobody else has ever taken a picture." That's the delima - most of the really worthwhile outdoor subject matter has long since been done by outstanding photographers. I love your image you enclosed. What an outstanding job you did with that! We have a well known nature photographer/environmentalist in my region who publishes his picture books somewhat frequently. He is so strapped for unique or new subject matter that he goes out and shoots a fairly ordinary snow covered mountain shot and then cooks up a story about how many days he had to snowshoe in and the rigors of camping in a snow cave, etc., to emphasize the importance of the picture. So far it's working for him but the people here also drink a lot of beer at night. If they ever sober up...

Part of it was to get away from my overly inquisitive wife for a while. :) Frankly, thinking back to the moment these were shot, I'm not at all convinced that I had a specific purpose. I had just gotten a new camera and was shooting my first roll of Velvia and I basically fired it off at whatever I saw in front of me that I found to be an appealing scene. I do agree that there is a lot to choose from in most of those and yet I didn't show you the ones where I focused in more in a limited micro or a macro mode. In retrospect, when I try to recall what I might have been thinking, I suspect I was a little overwhelmed and not thinking about what I was trying to hone in on but simply to get it all like I'd never be in a position to see that much natural beauty again. I may have been a little overwhelmed and thinking more about where I was doing it than what I was doing. I'm sure you've seen those fun-poking pictures of the American tourists walking around in Europe, bermuda shorts, socks, hats, Hawaiian shirts, cameras hanging off of 'em - that was probably me at that point. But you're right, often, some places seem more blessed than others. I would almost hate to have to try to eliminate the least attractive parts of some of those shots. I think it'd be pretty hard. It might be easier to criticize the shots if you bear in mind that I submitted them under the heading of "reflection shots." The next question then would be, "reflections of what." With that part, you're on your own.

Hey, I'm good. Odd, that 1984 reference. That was when I arrived in St. Pete. As for waving across the water, would you like to see some nice real duck shots? I've got merganzers, wood ducks, mallards, both flying and coasting on the water.

Don, dagnabit, I had a sizable and respectable reply to this and went back to look at something someone else had said and lost it. I'll do a quick summation of that previous reply and then chew a little more on what you originally said.

a. You're no verbal slouch yourself.

b. You definitely caught the essence of Colorado.

b. Disparage FL, never, never, not ever. For two years living just off of Coffee Pot Bayou in St. Pete, I broadened my acceptance of what was for me uncommon environments and absolutely dug, in the vernacular, things like Gasparilla, the beach, Ybor City, the beach, grouper sandwiches at the Hurricane on Pass-A-Grille, the beach, mackeral at Ted Peters on St. Pete Beach, shuttle shots in the night sky, fireworks over the bay, making my 16 year old youngest son drive across the Sunshine when in training, walks on Lido Beach in Sarasota, and on and on. Alas, I was beckoned back to Colorado but there are days, believe me, there are days...

d. I absolutely respect your assessment of my pictures and I'm still not through contemplating your original comments. I will address them in their entirety soon.

I've noticed over the years, in photo magazines, that when one pro finds a worthy piece of subject matter, in the ensuing months, years, all the rest of the "top" pros have beaten a path to those same spots and done their layout in a competing magazine. It's like a Wildebeest herd thing. Rick Sammons goes to Thailand and finds all the colorful clothes and buildings and the next thing, they're all over there on the back of an elephant riding through the jungle to the nearest multi-colored pagoda. These guys would be our leaders, or at least by held up to be our leaders. Is that leading? Lately, they've all been going into slot canyons in Utah and basically getting the same shots. Or it's the tigers in Bangladesh, or the Penguins in Antarctica, or wherever. Stuff that most of us will never see, let alone be able to compete with. What are your feelings about that? Should we aspire to emulate those guys and aim for the stars or what? Assume for a minute, each of you, if you could, would you do that?

Thank you kindly. The next evolutionary phase in cameras may give us that portal you mention if we can just figure out how to program "wormholes" onto a chip and quit worrying so much about whether it's aliens, the Masons, or the Vatican that's behind all of the mysteries of the universe.

:-)

Thanks Jim. I like the scene in your avatar. Takes me back to my youth and my '55 Bonneville. Sweet bike. When I was in England, courtesy of the USAF, I bought an old WWII one cylinder 500 cc ex-British army bike to restore. A trip to ride with the long stroke, single piston. Doing sixty it only hit about every 30 to 40 feet. Didn't have time to finish before rotation back home. Pity.

You see. I don't like the other shoreline, or the dirt bank being so prominant, and especially the washed out sky. I didn't, when I had that Velvia loaded and the CPL on there know what the reaction would be to the scene, being a greenhorn, so I moved my settings around a lot, aperture, focus, etc. No excuse and I see everything that's wrong but am still lovin' the contrast and the colors, and all just for their own sake. I sure do appreciate you guys confirming my own recognition of the things that are wrong. It helps a lot. You, dpullum, have been there and know the magnificence of the place. It's enchanting, eh? I was trying to make it look even more so. I had read about the place in an article in one of the photo mags by, don't quote me but I think it was, David Wuench (sp) wherein he gave a list of his top ten favorite places to shoot and I got on up there as soon as I could. My wife, who paints, and I spent two summers up there in our RV and I have so many different angles there covered that it's ridiculous. I've admitted to being badly organized to the point that were I selling I would go broke due to my stuff being scattered, and I grabbed these off a cd because they were most convenient. Somewhere, I probably have better shots of everything I've submitted to the forum but I'd rather spend my time doing this than hunting the other images.

Let me work backwards from here. Let's see, you're a guy who lives where you are surrounded by water that gets so still on occasion that you start looking around for "the" Albatross, right? How much time you spent in WY? The wind blows all the time in WY, ruffling the water so when you see water that still, it is cause to celebrate it as subject matter. It's almost like a miracle. I posted a subsequent horizontal shot of that same scene for Bob to see wherein it depicts the other shoreline and the road and the huge concrete culvert and, hence, IMHO, lost it's sense of wilderness virginity. Did you miss that image? I'll re-post it here. This'll take just a minute. I have four computers on a switching setup and find myself replying to posts on one computer and the images I want are in one of the others. I have to take a second to email the image to myself. I don't, as the Brits say, fancy this view over the one with the dark area that blots out the road and culvert. Part of what I try to convey in my "out in the country" shots is that I'm out in the country - way out, perhaps out where man has never gone before - that kind of out. Obviously that was not my total focus in this set of images because I have many shots of that scene, as I do with most and only choose to allow those to be seen that convey what I want at any given moment. For those of you in the gulf area who've never visited such an isolated place as the woods of the Rockies, I try to offer a myriad of views so as to offer a myriad of imaginative ideas of what it might be like. Can't fool you tho, dpullum, ya've been to the mountain, obviously, Medicine Bow Mountain. I've lightened this a little. I seem to have an issue of some stuff going dark on me in transit.

Hang on. I'm coming to this discussion in a minute. I've been trying to digest this thread while off chasing other rainbows. I'll be back as soon as I do a little more chewing.

[quote=wilsondl2]Hey gessman Badly composed pictures can be fixed. You can move people around open eyes etc. etc. When I take group shots I go clic clic clik then If someone eyes are closed, head truned etc etc Can do a couple of clicks and move heads from one phot to another. I just use elaments 8 and I'm not a great com[puter guy. Dave[/quote]

Yep, I've turned and moved heads around, shifted people from shot to shot and all that stuff but I'm not talking about those things because you CAN fix them. I'm talking about things that can't, absolutely CANNOT be fixed and there are plenty of them. You can't, for instance, and this is not my idea - you can blame Jeff Foxworthy or somebody but, YOU CAN'T FIX UGLY!

Mornin' DB. I've admired the various displays of your wisdom and even the intent of what you're saying in this post and agree totally with your intent but I just want to take a second and illustrate what I find wrong with what you're saying, not argumentatively, but complementary, and to expand the thought in your opening sentence in terms of "are there hard lines in the sand of photography that must be learned and somewhat strictly adhered to if we are to achieve a standard of excellence, or even acceptability, pro and amateur alike."

With some of us, our taste is all in our mouth. My example, and I'm not merely trying to be offensive, goes like this: I'm out in the woods and I come across a nice fresh pile of elk poop with what I think I see is a likeness of the image of Mother Theresa in it. I think I would like to make a nice photo of that. It's a pile of poop alright but I had a solace robbing encounter with my wife this morning and my mental gyro is a little off, so through the fog rising from the warm poop on a brisk morning I see that the poop has a not unpleasant shade of brown, and some very complimentary texture, something that overall, people might not find offensive. So I start taking pictures of it from every angle and through the boredom often connected with overexposure to a subject, I decided that it is too plain and needs a contrived setting. I gently scoop it up and gingerly walk it back to my car, holding my head to the side, put it in the trunk, securing it so it won't lose its shape and gingerly drive back home to set the stage.

I debated and finally decide that a nice very light shade of green plate would be a good backdrop to offer good contrast. I get my studio lights all set up and sprinkled a little parsley around the plate for accent and complimentary color contrast, sort of like a simulated "laurel wreath" so to speak, demonstrating my triumph over the odds, much like a chef would, get the setting all staged and then resume firing away.

Why, it almost looked good enough to eat and I come away with some absolutely technically perfect shots and I am so pleased with my work that I can't wait to show it to everyone I know, a very pleasing likeness of Mother Theresa. IT'S A PLATE FULL OF POOP! ...and no matter how much I work on it, that's all it'll ever be. We are not all equally gifted with the same level of the totality of what it takes to be excellent photographers and that has to be faced and if that weren't singularly true, our gyros DO get off. And no matter what, that isn't going to change and no amount of post processing is going to fix it. I honestly don't think it is necessarily a good idea to unleash every idiot into the woods with a camera and I say that with full realization and acceptance of the suggestion that I am probably one of those about whom I speak, indeed right at the top of the list.

Sure, I may be able to get some pleasing pictures but I don't, in reality, KNOW what I'm doing. I've stacked the deck. I got interested in photography and rather than studying what I needed in order to sharpen my knowledge of the craft, I started studying how I could stack the odds in my favor. I studied all kinds of equipment and made my choices in keeping with my urges and my abilities within budgetary constraints. The list goes on endlessly, the things I've done to stack the deck and still, I know I'm no pro level photographer and I make no pretense to that effect. I have nobody fooled about that who truly knows what she/he is doing no matter how much I love doing it.

Still, someone has to do it so we go forth with a misplaced overconfidence in a wild stampede, camera in hand, ruining life as much as improving it. "There should be a limit" or even a law, but we're free to be as big a fool as our imagination permits. That's all that counts? NOT!

Please excuse me now from this conversation. I've got to get ready to go out and appease and further placate myself with my camera. I'll bore you with the results later. As I was walking through the woods yesterday, right before I found the elk poop, I thought I saw a grouping of deer pellets that looked like some I'd seen in a hunters magazine depicting various kinds of "sign" directing hunters how to locate their prey. Maybe I could sell some images of it to another hunters magazine. No doubt, the world needs more. Still, I love it.

:-)

Hey Jon, I was "pullin' your leg, dude." Lighten up! I'd just stomped all over my tongue and was tryin' to bail out of my stew juice. Keep up the excellent work.