Thursday, Aug 6, 2026

[Don]

These are probably the last of the photos from the river trip. Most of the remaining are basically travel snapshots and would be of little interest in a photography forum.

One of the towns that we visited on the river lit up their bridge with colored lights at night. This one qualifies as a travel snapshot. Then I reworked the building in B&W but not sure it works. The last one is a sunrise which basically looks like a million other sunrises, but it is hard to pass on an interesting sunrise.

[Dave]

Don:

1) The colorfully lit bridge photo is a winner.
2) The B&W conversion has a lot of good things going for it: excellent values, good composition, and a variety of interesting lines and shapes. But my eyes and brain feel overwhelmed by the profusion of small details everywhere in the image. (Somehow I don't sense this in the color version, perhaps because the color helps unify the image.)
3) The sunrise photo is spectacular: faultless composition, great values, and wonderful colors.

I've been enduring leg and back pain all day (on Thursday) and it's completely self-inflicted.

I have a minimum daily goal of 4600 steps and I passed that target by 10 A.M. (before it got too hot). Then I thought I'd take a longer walk in the late afternoon: my friend (and outstanding photographer) Sandy had shoulder replacement surgery Wednesday (so she's now had both knees and both shoulders replaced). I've mentioned Sandy before: she is 84 years old and does 200 crunches every day, leaving the much younger men and women at the gym in her dust, while earning their respect and admiration. Her husband is 90 and he works out regularly with a personal trainer. A very impressive couple, and both are nice folks. Anyway, I put together a small floral arrangement to bring to Sandy (a round trip walk of 4 miles).

It turns out that I smashed my daily best ever step count which is now 14,626 steps.

And on the way back home I got few decent photos. Here's one...

   

[Don]

Hi Dave - yeah, I kind of agree on the B&W, maybe a bit too busy for B&W. Makes the eye jump around too much.

I hear you on the back pain. We recently had an 11 hour flight from Venice, Italy to Atlanta, after having endured a 90 minute each way trip on a ferry with metal seats. The day after we got home my wife could barely get out of bed, and I ended up taking her to emergency. She was in bad shape for over a week before she finally started to get better. Her physical therapist was very helpful in getting her through that rough patch and she made it through the river cruise just fine. We all just have to be careful after a certain age.

[Rich]

Don, I agree with Dave's comments;

" 1) The colorfully lit bridge photo is a winner.
2) The B&W conversion has a lot of good things going for it: excellent values, good composition, and a variety of interesting lines and shapes. But my eyes and brain feel overwhelmed by the profusion of small details everywhere in the image. (Somehow I don't sense this in the color version, perhaps because the color helps unify the image.)
3) The sunrise photo is spectacular: faultless composition, great values, and wonderful colors."

I am wondering how a conversion to infrared on the second one would work?

The bridge is my favorite!