#Top 5 Photo Extravaganza

[uwhe-arts]

Here are my personal Top 5 photographs 2023 in memorial of the Gray-Card’s Year End Top 5 Photo Extravaganza | uwhe-arts Many thanks to —> luxlit.tumblr.com for hosting the beautiful Year End Top 5 Extravaganza Tradition!

Thank you for all!!! I wish you all a happy new year! May each day of the New Year be filled with contentment, opportunities, peace, abundance and health!

Hugs and Chers!

Previous top five's: 2022 / 2021 / 2020 / 2019 / 2018 / 2017 / 2016

[klaasfoto]

Five personal favorites for the 2023 Year End Top 5 Photo Extravaganza.

Peekamoo

Untitled

Mudhead

Untitled

Dawn

Previous top five's:

2022 / 2021 / 2020 / 2019 / 2018 / 2017 / 2016 / 2015

IG / 500px / YouTube

[boschintegral-photo]

My top 5 for the ‘2023 Year End Top 5 Photo Extravaganza’ @luxlit. Thank you for keeping this lovely tradition alive!

1. Japanese Anemone 2. Black Eyed Susan 3. Azalea 'Golden Eagle' 4. Grape Hyacinth 5. Japanese Anemone 

All photos © 2023 by @boschintegral-photo Archive @ boschintegral-photo.tumblr.com/archive Nature and travel photography blog - Thank you for visiting!

Reblogs (photographers on tumblr) @boschintegral

[nh-art]

My 2023 "Year End Top 5 Photo Extravaganza"! (Find the images here: Blue I, Tulips twentythree 15, One-eared hare, Shamanism, Ode to joy). I am extremely grateful for everyone who keeps the #photographers on tumblr - community alive. Each and every single comment, flying heart and reblog is a spark of joy. 🫰🫰🫰

And a big fat heartfelt thank you for hosting this event again @luxlit and @allthingsfern!!!

I wish everyone a happy new year and all the best for 2024.

[2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022]

[appelkueken]

2023 Year End Top 5 Photo Extravaganza!

The only year-in-review thing I actually look forward to every time. Happy new year everyone!

[anditrumblr]

Ahh yes Covid 19 seating I recognized that straight away. Very poignant and historical.

My 2023 Top 5

Since early May, 2022, when I fractured my right arm (the humerus, right under the shoulder joint), my health, my physical well being, has deteriorated at a fast pace because I stopped being active. Part of that was my not taking pictures because, especially for the first 2 months after the break, I could not lift my camera. Then, this year, my cataracts got worst and I had my right eye surgery in early November, with my left eye surgery rescheduled for next April. (My cataracts in my left eye are not as severe as they were on my right eye and before my surgery scheduled for this month, December, I got a bad case of bronchitis.) It has been a year of deterioration and adjustment and retrospection (in 10 years I will be 80 years old) and of doing photography. Not so much of making pictures, but certainly of continuing my learning my beloved art form and going back and reworking some of my old photos.

So, with all that said, here are my Top 5 for 2023 and why I chose them and what, in some way, they have to do with my explanation above. The first 3 were captured this year and the last 2 are finds from past photos that I overlooked and that the newer, more powerful masking tools in Camera Raw helped me shape into what I think are stunning images. I am getting good at doing the Ansel Adams style manipulations and am also enjoying the process.

Oy vey.

Circles and triangles and shadows, oh my II. Oakland, 01-28-23.

I went to Oakland, which is a city I love and think is sadly overlooked because of San Francisco's grandeur. Had a great time walking around for a couple of hours and got a few solid photos. What more can I ask for.

Portrait II. Davis, 03-20-23.

Had dinner with this young man and got a couple of photos. zTHis was my favorite; captured him at his most comfortable because he was reacting to a comment by his roommate. Not the sharpest image, but I love the sense of motion and his expression.

Roses IX; Municipal Rose Garden. San Jose, 05-14-23.

For my birthday I went down to San Jose and stayed a couple of days. On my birthday, I visited the San Jose Municipal Rose Garden and had a wonderful time capturing gorgeous roses and enjoying the park's festive Mother's Day atmosphere.

The beauty of decay Vintage trailer: Crockett, 10-01-17.

Kinda creepy/post-Apocalyptic/SteamPunk, this photo came to life once I started editing it in Camera Raw recently. The masking, dodge & burn tools are excellent and its tools for manipulating color also helped immensely even though this is a B&W photo.

COVID wanderings Outdoor seating? Pier 1. San Francisco, 09-07-20.

While walking around a deserted San Francisco Bay promenade on the Embarcadero, I was struck by the hard, graphic lines and sharp B&W light/shadows of this, which showed that even in the midst of a terrifying pandemic, there was beauty to be found every so often, in the most unexpected, mundane places.

[alithographica]

As promised, welcome to

Fun biology in TOTK’s designs

I'll keep this post updated as I go through the game. I'm going to skip the more general identifiable things like apples (they're based on apples!) because there are tons of more unusual species to talk about.

Overall, the really interesting thing I've noticed is that many of the more unique Earth-based lifeforms in TOTK are super ancient, like predating dinosaurs ancient, which is a really cool tie-in to the overall time-hopping plotline of TOTK. Specifically, they're found in the new areas (caves, depths) while the surface remains a bit more normal.

(There will be no plot spoilers in this post, and also I've barely gotten into the plot because I'm spending all my time wandering, so shhh no spoilers in the tags for like a month please.)

Most recent additions: More lilies, irises, wild ginger, spiny bones, pigeon extravaganza, plus added some more real photo comparisons to old stuff.

PLANTS

Bryophytes my beloved. Bryophytes are among the earliest land plants, waaaay predating flowers and even seeds. In our world, they’re small by necessity—they lack vascular systems to help move water around like other plants, so they have to stay small and moist (hence their frequency in caves in TOTK—though they do need some light in real life.)

In TOTK they’re quite large and I think that’s very sexy and art directors should give us big bryophytes more often

Anyway, there are three types of bryophytes: mosses, liverworts, and hornworts. First image pair is a moss, second is a liverwort. Those red-brown and palm-tree-like structures, respectively, are their reproductive structures.

Real liverwort photo © Graham Calow, NatureSpotUK

Not yet spotted: Hornworts! Did they forget the third bryophyte sister :(

I think these next guys are probably lycopods (specifically club moss, which is not a true bryophyte moss, thanks science.) Very old, but vascular, so they're a bit more evolutionarily recent than bryophytes.

Real photo © Gloria Hanley Schoenholtz, virginiawildflowers

All the enormous curly-topped trees in the depths: Ferns! They curl like that until they unfurl. Another very old plant, though younger than bryophytes and lycopods.

Real photo via The Cosmonaut, Wikipedia

Brightblooms and some of the other giant plants in the depths: Possibly based on a cycad? Again, a very ancient plant lineage. At this point, evolutionarily, they've developed seeds—that giant cone in the center is called a strobilus, and that's the seed structure.

These next few plants are angiosperms, meaning they produce flowers. Angiosperms are a more recent evolutionary lineage—still many millions of years old, but it took a while to develop flowers as a reproductive tactic.

Sundelions (left) are a fun recolor of a lily. There are also some scenery lilies (right) in various places—there are yellow ones that spring up when you turn on a lightroot (which gives them literal and thematic connection to the surface) and several other varieties, including tiger lilies, throughout Hyrule. Fun note, the sundelions appear to only have 5 stamen, while other lilies in the game (correctly) have 6. Seems to be an intentional decision to make it a more distinct fantasy species.

These next ones are Peruvian lilies/Alstroemeria, just used as a scenery plant but a very fun inclusion. Fun fact, not true lilies, so they're not deadly to cats like true lilies are.

Real photo © Dick Culbert, Wikipedia

Plum trees: These are also called out as plum trees in game! There's a journal in Kakariko that refers to the plum orchards.

Okay I'm a little proud of figuring this one out. Bomb flowers blend a few botanical references. Superficially, the fruit resembles a type of seed pod called a capsule—specifically it's very similar to a poppy capsule. The little red thing in the center is a nice addition to resemble both a flower stigma (reproductive part that leads to the ovary) and a bomb fuse. Now, poppy capsules disperse their seeds via wind, but there are other plants who do explode their seeds outwards as a dispersal tactic! This is called explosive dehiscence.

There is one tree in particular called the sandbox tree, AKA monkey-no-climb or dynamite tree (yes, really.) Their capsules look more like little pumpkins, but are known for violently exploding when ripe—they can launch seeds at 150 miles per hour (250 km/h) and spread them roughly 200 feet (60 m) away. The photo comparison is a poppy capsule but you should def go look up dynamite tree videos.

Real photo © PommeGrenade, pixabay

Fire fruits (and the other elemental fruits) grow on the same generic plant that looks kind of like it has grape leaves. Fire fruits resemble a specific botanical thing too though—the black netting is a papery calyx (part of the flower) seen in a nightshade genus, Physalis (golden berries, tomatillos, etc.)

Real photo © Helene Rogers, Alamy

I think this stuff is an Asarum, AKA wild ginger. I was actually puzzling over it until I walked past some today and went HEY

Not sure of the exact species but they're very green and heart-shaped and love being dense and low to the ground.

Real photo via David Stang, Wikipedia

Irises: Love irises, one of my favorite flowers and words, very happy to see them in game.

MISCELLANEA

Cup lichen! Lichen is not a plant, but a symbiotic structure of an algae + a fungi. Cup lichen is just a type of lichen formation that has a kind of vertical cup-like structure.

Real photo via Bernard Spragg

Geology crossover! Go look carefully at some of the whiter walls in the depths—they look like they have fossils of coral and other undersea hard-structured animals in them.

ANIMALS

Sticky lizards: Based on Diplocaulus, a very early (now extinct) amphibian! Their skulls are wacky. We're not sure whether the long sides stood out separately or were smoothly connected to the body by skin flaps, but the separate arrow-like shape is the most popular rendition.

Deep firefly: Might be a stretch because it could just be a multi-winged fantasy critter, but I think the "wings" and antennae are very reminiscent of Anomalocaris, an ancient aquatic arthropod.

Update: Other folks in the notes/tags have pointed out that they're probably based on a cryptid that's especially popular in Japan: skyfish AKA rods! They show up in photos and people think they're an alien lifeform. In reality, they're an optical blur created when a lower quality video captures intermittent flaps of an insect's wings, leaving sort of a many-winged smear in the photo. Thanks to all who left info!

Little frox: Another stretch because it totally could just be a Hinox-like frog, but every time I see the little ones I can't help but think of like...Ichthyostega, Mastodonsaurus, Eryops, and other early amphibians. They were pretty hefty—little frox size or bigger—and had with little waddling legs. This is less "I think it's definitely this" and more "it makes me happy when I picture frox as primitive amphibians."

I haven't detailed many of the scenery animals around Hyrule because most are identifiable with the camera function—it'll tell you that a certain animal is a heron or porgy, for example, and those groups are real, even though the exact species is made up. But I think the pigeons are fun because they're all crested pigeons. Pink-necked green pigeons may have also been the inspiration for the color palettes on the wood and rainbow pigeons.

Both pigeon photos via JJ Harrison, Wikipedia

Spiny bones: Not a specific critter, but those spiny bones that you can find lying around Eldin Canyon are vertebrae—possibly from the same thing that left those big rib cages around? The top spike is the spinous process where muscles attach, the littler spikes on the side are the transverse and articular processes. The dark O in the center is the spinal cord.

Also I made a friend who finally recognizes my purpose in Hyrule.

That's all I've got for now! Will add more as I keep playing.

[meolog]

In memory of Gray-Card’s Year End Top 5 Photo Extravaganza.

Many thanks @luxlit for hosting!

1 2 3 4 5

instagram

[thethingsiveseen-photography]

My top 5 photos of 2023 for this year’s extravaganza!  I've not been posting much this year due to general life commitments, but am hoping to get out much more with my camera in 2024.

From Pinks of Spring.

A new friend.

From Raindrops on Tulips.

& 5. From The Orangery, Castle Ashby gardens. 

[occasionallybirds]

My favorite 5 2023 bird pics for the Gray Card Memorial Top 5 Photo Extravaganza, a showcase of tumblr photography talent that runs for 24 hours on New Year’s Day on @luxlit. Well worth checking out.

You can also follow me @celestialphotography (scenics and travel pics) and @celestialmacros (bugs and other small animals.)

Common Yellowthroat with plume moth

Mourning Dove

Palm Warbler

Golden-crowned Kinglet

Gray Catbird

[celestialphotography]

Five of my 2023 photos for @luxlit‘s Year-end Top 5 Photo Extravaganza, a showcase of the photography talent here on tumblr that runs for 24 hours on New Year’s Day.  Worth checking out.

This is pretty much everything that I posted in 2023, which is an improvement over the past few years. Maybe I'll post more this year?

I am more active on my side blogs, @celestialmacros (bugs and small animals) and @occasionallybirds.

[uwhe-arts]

Here are my personal Top 5 photographs 2022 in memorial of the Gray-Card’s Year End Top 5 Photo Extravaganza | uwhe-arts

Many thanks to —> luxlit.tumblr.com for hosting the beautiful Year End Top 5 Extravaganza Tradition!

Thank you for all!!! I wish you all a happy new year! May each day of the New Year be filled with contentment, opportunities, peace, abundance and health! Hugs and Chers!

[jtmportland]

Gray-Card’s Year End Top 5 Photo Extravaganza 2023

Cheers Fern and @luxlit for continuing to host this annual tradition.

2023 ... my own personal annus horribilis. Another breakup, another loss, another goddamn year. Still, we still find light somehow.

My photography output was sporadic and chaotic this year. I find that I don't carry my camera as often as I used to. Not sure why this is. I'm also spending less time on social media ... and I know exactly why this is.

These 5 photos were not the most popular on my blog, and really, they aren't even my favourites, but they tell a story of a terrible year. Let's wallow in it.

Soooooo, enjoy(?)

the darkest soul illuminates | February 2023

picture yourself when you're getting old | January 2023

act 1, scene 2 | January 2023

"Jay, party of one?" | October 2023

candy apple red | February 2023

[celestialmacros]

My favorite photos of 2023, for @luxlit's Year End Top 5 Photo Extravaganza that will run for 24 hours on New Year's Day. It's a great place to check out the photography talent here on tumblr, and maybe find some new blogs to follow.

You can also find me at my main blog @celestialphotography (scenics and travel) and my bird blog @occasionallybirds

Tan Jumping Spider (Platycryptus undatus)

Longhorn Bee, Melissodes sp.

Euperilampus triangularis, a member of Chalcidoid Wasps

Possibly Alfalfa Leafcutter Bee (Megachile rotundata)

Some sort of Nut and Acorn Weevil (Curculio sp.)

[nh-art]

My 2022 Year End Top 5 Photo Extravaganza!

Even though 2022 was a very difficult year - both personally and globally - it was also a very beautiful year. many thanks to the #photographers on tumblr and especially to the great people behind @photosworthseeing and @luxlit for the support, the many flying hearts and reblogs! Happy end of the year to all and all the best for 2023!

2018 2019 2020 2021

[menorca-sir20]

Here is my personal top 5 for the 2023 Year End Top 5 Photo Extravaganza. Thanks a lot @luxlit for hosting it this year again and for continuing the awesome "Gray-Card Top 5" tradition.

I thank all the curators who showcase my work from sir20, feuilletourne-sir20 and menorca-sir20

Thanks also to the undisclosed rebloggers, and of course, thank you to all the Tumblr fellows for the likes and coments!