Photo contest: post processing #6 - My résumé

Photo contest: post processing #6 - My résumé

Thanks to all participants! This time I see only one first place, only one undivided trophy. It goes to --- but slowly, I want to give my comments in order ;-)

First of all, I let your pictures have an effect on me in peace and quiet, letting them form their spontaneous or first associations in my mind. My favourite contribution soon crystallised or pixelated itself. Then I skimmed Bambuka's summary, and before I studied your posts, I wrote down what I thought I had photographed.

A bench in the snow? Nah! I was mainly concerned with the wall behind the bench. A wall of sandstone, grouted without mortar, on which the snow has half stuck and half shifted to reveal what appears to be a silhouette. The crack in the snow cover is a crack in space-time, the sandstone wall becomes a projection surface or 'palantír' with a view of a distant city, the city in the snow desert. The bench has its back to it, and the person sitting on it perceives nothing of all this; he or she would have to twist and contort and yet be too close to see the crack in space-time, the silhouette of the unknown city.

In Weisser-Rabe's poem, this city in the snowy desert speaks as the self. Its own inner cold becomes its protection against the outer cold: where Lord Kelvin rules with absolute zero, not even the deepest winter gets there.

The bench is my psychic railing, it prevents me from being sucked up by the rift in space-time. It maintains my awareness of the here and now, albeit empty. The abstract wall with the snow, the pure image gets a concrete anchor through the bench, a contrast that calms the perception. A kind of solid reality.

But this bench also seems to embody an idyll, or at least to promote the longing for an idyll. In any case, two participants detached the bench from the original image in this idyllic association and integrated it into an independent image (Barski, EvaGavilan). Two other participants left the overall context of bench and wall intact and worked minimally invasively, so to speak (ManuelGil64, lllll1ll). And finally, two other participants expanded the original overall picture with additional layers and elements (Weisser-Rabe, EstherSanchez).

In contrast to the analysis of my last reflection, this time I offer a synthesis ("fantasy and fugue") of my impressions and thoughts on the contributions. Many thanks to all!

Out of competition, Bambuka also participated, bringing the city skyline to the forefront of consideration instead of the bench. My appreciation of his contribution is still pending; I hope to be able to submit it shortly.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

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out of competition:
Bambuka: 7 Thermometers for Melting Glaciers and White Raven Fortress.

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#1 Barski: 7 snowflakes for Idyll 1:
Baba's snow globe

You shake the scene in the glass once more
You let the flakes swirl artificially with pleasure
Observing their play in the tiny world
You put the idyll back on the board
You look out through the window into the swamps
There you hear a longing murmur
My cot is still missing
Then you hear Baba's voice whispering
Come with me and we'll steal the bench
At the bend of the river
And off we go on our magical mortar ride

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#2 White Raven: 7 star thalers for the new currency in the Snow Queen's city-state:
Kelvin's Cold Daughter

Sit on the bench but be careful
The city in the Arctic grabs you by the neck
It breathes cold on you from every crack between the stones
For the local snow queen has issued a new currency
The exchange rate is far below the world market zero and brings negative interest rates
Whoever pays with it becomes her personal debtor
And those who don't will be split to pieces.
Exchange of goods remains strictly forbidden because everything must be paid for
You get a generously delegated sum when you enter the city
They call it there completely frozen capital
The more you spend, the more the regent pays you in addition
These are their sales taxes and as long as you cooperate
Your reputation and cold index grows
Of course downwards always downwards
To the absolute red zero

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#3 EvaGavilan: 7 "Hugs" for Idyll 2:
Fairytale World

One evening I open the lid
And look inside for the first time in a lifetime
Into my ancient book of fairy tales
As if I could revive my own childhood
For a limited period of time
And there they are looking happily at me
Brother Hansel and sister Gretel
From their cosy bench in front of the cottage
There they have sat for so many years
Without my usual visits
And had grown old
Just like me

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#4 ManuelGil64: 7 ounces of copper for minimally invasive goldsmithing:
Golden Age

The summer sun shone and shone
The heat dripped through the bank
But the sandstone charged
With the copper-red glow
Now it shimmers through the winter snow
A breath of a bygone age
But the bench seems empty and cold
As if summer never came again

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#5 lllll1ll: 7 axes for the minimally invasive giant crab from the 7th dimension:
Memory Membrane

While I am still walking towards the bench
To sit down for a moment
I see not only the loose snow
Which it would be a trifle to wipe aside
But the huge crab from the distant dimension
Crawling out of the pores of the stone as if it were the soft sand of the coast.
And I realise how thin the membrane is
That protects my imagination from facts

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#6 EstherSanchez: 8.5 (!) pixels for the disturbance in the reality matrix:
Gravitational Lens

A white dwarf burns through the wall
That separates my here from its hereafter
It glows through and melts the bits
And bytes of pixels and spatial structure
It melts time with its light
Into a ring of permanent presence
In which gravity must quiver
Already its hard waves reflect
The reality of reality
The construction turns to head
So that it makes my retinas ripple
For my eyelids do not close
Against such droning vibrations tearing
That makes colour drip from my ears

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And with that, my winning entry is named - it's 'Cosmic Game' (as I'd like to call the image) by Esther Sanchez! Congratulations!

[The above text, translated into Spanish by @Doro2021, is your winning prize in form of a JPG united with your image!]

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)