{SI] Shoot-In - Fractal Comments

One early October Tuesday evening in Newfoundland, Mardon put down
his paintbrush to check the r.p.e.35 newsgroup. (His wife kept
painting.) Lo and behold, the SI fractal submissions were on
display in their full glory, even before the submission deadline
arrived. Talk about efficiency. There's no flies on our Jim, as
the saying goes. I wonder if Al is impressed or just glad that the
job isn't his anymore.

"Natural Fractals" Hummm --- I own a text on Chaos Theory. I've
installed Quat and Fractint and have used them on my PC to generate
my own fractal images. I've even installed an image of Henrik
Engstrom's quaternion Mandelbrot set circa 1992 as my PC wallpaper.
All that said, I still have no idea which of the SI submissions is
really a natural fractal and which isn't. Unlike image plots of
fractal equations, I'm inclined to think that natural fractals
exist only in the mind of the beholder. So does beauty, and here's
my opinion of both:

James Mondor
http://www.pbase.com/shootin/image/68336427
I like the film 'feel' and the grain in the dark areas of the
background but I'd like to see the foreground leaves be sharper.
The white and dark spots on the leaves are also distracting to my
eye. What would this have been like without the orange filter I
wonder? Any special reason for using it? I remember using a dark
red filter a lot for that dramatic looks with B/W film.

Walter Banks
http://www.pbase.com/shootin/image/68336535
Nice colours! Common wisdom is that tree branches are natural
fractals but I don't think that applies to leaves, so a 5 point
deduction. As already mentioned, the leaf colours are nice; I wish
the sky were a slightly darker blue. I'm glad the image is not
over sharpened. This is the sort of content that looks bad when
over sharpened.

Quercus
http://www.pbase.com/shootin/image/68336553
Common wisdom also says ferns are natural fractals but I don't
think this is a fern. I can't conceive of those oblong leaves being
made up of smaller oblong patterns, etc; no fractal, so 5 points
off. I really like the colours. My mother always said that blue
and green don't go together but I never did believe that saying.
The shadows on the lower leaves and the lack of shadows on the
upper ones, combined with the clouds make for a very nice image.

Bowser
http://www.pbase.com/shootin/image/68336559
Nice image! Are the barnacles the natural fractals or the rust? I
suspect the rust is really more fractal in nature than the
barnacles but who cares. No deduction because one of them must be
fractal in nature. The orange and white complements each other
well and I like the composition, with mostly white to the upper
left and mostly rust to the lower right.

Al Denelsbeck
http://www.pbase.com/shootin/image/68336564
How'd you do that? The lily pad looks like it's under the surface
of the water but the droplets wouldn't float on water would they?
It seems logical that the droplets must be sitting on the leaf but
it doesn't look that way to my eye. Intriguing! The veins are no
doubt fractal in nature, so do deduction there. To paraphrase our
friend Bret, too bad "Elitechrome 100 Hates Lily Pads".
"Elitechrome 100 LOVES those bubbles though." Too much washed out
green for my taste.


Jim Kramer
http://www.pbase.com/shootin/image/68336571
It's wet. It's soft. It's somehow connected with the insect world
(I think). It may be alive. But is it a natural fractal? Don't
think so. Minus 5 points. My favorite part of this image is the one
rounded, brown tip of the dark leaf at the top edge of the image
and the strands of web that lead down from there. The white strand
at the lower left is also interesting but the glob in the middle
just confuses me. What is it?

Mardon
http://www.pbase.com/shootin/image/68338439
I thought about cooking a DVD in our microwave and repeating the
fractal image from Wikipedia
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Microwaved-DVD.jpg). In the
end, I'm not sure if it was my reluctance to 'steal' the idea from
Wiki or the fear of having my wife catch me putting a metal DVD in
the microwave that ultimately dissuaded me. I opted for this
lichen from a rock in our back yard. It took all of a 10 minute
break from my painting time to photograph and post it. 5 point
deduction because I'm still not sure myself if lichen grows in the
pattern of a natural fractal.

Duncan Chesley
http://www.pbase.com/shootin/image/68348233
The good news: My favorite image of the bunch. The bad news: One
of my least favorite bunches. 5 bonus points for shooting what
looks like a natural fractal to me. I like the colours and
composition. Was this posed or natural? If natural, you caught a
really good angle.


N Lindan
http://www.pbase.com/shootin/image/68354426
Very clever! I love the inclusion of the torn plastic. The
staging of the 3 elements is very neat. I'm not fond of the large
white patches in the blossom but I like the water drops. I think
I'd also prefer a totally black background instead of the white
specs all over it; especially in the upper right corner. I give
"N" 10 bonus points of actually looking at the plastic under a
microscope to very the fractal nature of the tear. Especially when
considering the mandate, this is probably the 2nd place ribbon IMO.