And we're back for July 3x2 photo cast episode 15. This time, I'm gonna kick things off with my first photo here. Go for it from Sean.

Hi, Sean.

And this is. This is a hell of a photo to start with, I have to say. This is. It says another for the month category. And this is a silhouette. So we have a tight shot. What is it? It's 1200 millimeter equivalent. So I know Martin's already excited, loving it. Oh, yeah, he loves the 1200 millimeter this. So it's an 800-1200 millimeter equivalent. And it is a square format. So one to one. And we've got two birds and it is a silhouette on the moon in the background. Or is it the sun setting in the background? It's the moon.

It's the moon, but beautifully colored. Like. Like it is the sun. Basically.

The most incredible oranges and yellows ever. So soft, so smooth. Has this lovely ring around it. And this bird is perfectly centered on it as a silhouette. There's a second bird down in the bottom right that is. Is not covering it. So it's that it's just perfect that there's one inside, one outside. And the colors are just gorgeous. The fact that they are fully. You know, we've got legs coming down, we've got the birds looking to the right. They're both going in the same direction. Wings fully spread out. It's just an incredible capture. That feels like one of those. Either you had to ton of photos and pick the one that felt right, or you just got the perfect one. Either way, fantastic job. Absolutely lovely. And I cannot get over the oranges and the yellows and the smoothness of the whole. And even the pink starts to come out towards the bottom. Just really, really lovely.

Yeah. Sean killed it with this. And after seeing this, and I mean this in the best possible way. Should I just give up taking photos after seeing this? I don't know. I don't know if I've ever got anything as good as this, particularly with birds. It's just so. But yeah, even just the. This is really particular. But even just the little claws, the little talons or whatever on the birds, just the detail of that little raptor curve on those little claws. Ah, it's just. Just how sharp this is for something that is not at the easiest time of day in terms of light, probably to capture, because they. They do have some significant shadow on them, which is what lends to that beautiful silhouette. I just. Yeah, I can't really say much more than what you did, because it's just great. And that's it.

Yep. Beautiful.

All right, so my first one, I know you said that we don't have a theme for this episode, but I feel like we should maybe be renaming this podcast ATP or the Accidental Theme Podcast because we accidentally chose a few animal ones. So this is a semi animal theme episode, although there is no theme. So there will be an animal theme in the future. Is that right, Jason?

I think so, yeah. I think that's how it works.

Okay, so this first one is by Ethan and I saw this and I thought, that is so cute. I just want to give them a hug. Although they're probably very filthy living in the wild. But it is from a series called Colorado trip from 2024. And it's an adult mountain goat in focus in the foreground looking out to the right hand side of the frame surrounded by these rocks that appear to be on. On top of some sort of hill or mountain with some pieces of timber in the background. And between the adult mountain goat and those pieces of blurred are two little kids, two little baby mountain goats. One of them looking directly at the camera. And you've got this beautiful blue sky with puffy clouds in the nice blurred background. I just thought this was another beautiful wildlife shot, not with the same motion or drama necessarily as the one that you just shared, but a lovely animal portrait. And I just think what a lovely moment. This little goat family in the mountains in Colorado.

You show me a picture of a baby mountain goat. 10 out of 10, no problem. Like so, so good. The sky is absolutely incredible. The posture of them all is just too perfect. This feels almost like a scene you set up. Obviously they didn't. I don't think they went and staged the, the baby mountain coat and the, the, the adult mountain goat there. But the, the looking to the right from the, from the larger one is so cool. There kind of, there's this little bit of side eye of like, I know you, you know, don't, don't try anything crazy, but I'm aware of you. And then the baby one just completely the opposite of. I don't know anything yet because I'm a baby mountain goat and all I want to do is know what's going on over where you're at. So super cute. Love the texture on the rocks and the fur, how there's that, you know, the texture of the, the one that's in focus and then the super softness of the, the baby ones that are not in focus, the two big horns on the larger One kind of mimicking the fact that the smaller ones don't have the horns, but they have the two ears that are kind of similar. So they're kind of the baby version of the. Of the horns, in a way. Just very fun and playful and absolutely adorable. There's no info on here about, you know, the focal length or anything like that, so we don't know how close you got to take this shot, but I can't imagine it was super close, given probably pretty territorial about the babies. But really, really nice. Lovely colors. Lovely fram. Just super cute.

Yeah. And I've learned a new term or concept from you, Jason, in listening to your assessment of this photo, and that is mountain goat side eye, which, as we know, goats have pretty crazy eyes. They're kind of somewhere between cute and psycho. So to have side eye from a wild mountain goat, it's a really touching experience and potentially dangerous one. So step back.

It's serious. Yeah. All right, My second one here comes to us from. Hmm. Pronunciation. Tolar. Tolar. How would you say that?

Tolar? I'm not sure. It depends if we put an accent on it. So, yeah, I'll say tolar.

Okay. It's titled Rome. The street feels like a movie set, and it absolutely does. It feels. It sounds bad to say, but it feels artificial when I first look at it. And to their point of it being a movie set, it does feel like it was created for the sake of filming or taking photos of it. It's the corner of a building, and we've got an alleyway presumably to the left. Alleyway to the right. On the building, there is some various very vividly bright graffiti, although everything feels kind of. I don't know if it's just the way it was edited maybe, but the. It feels kind of pastel almost for the colors that are. That are on the building with the purples and the blues and the pinks. And there are these two handmade kind of. You know, I don't know if it's do not enter or just don't do something here where it's a red circle with a red slash through it, and then there's a door going in on the left, and then some bright green shutters up on the top left there as well. And it just. And then there's brick exposed. There's just texture upon texture upon texture here and color upon color, and it's. It's everywhere you look. There's something kind of cool to. To investigate as you're looking at this corner, but it struck Me, when I read that it felt like a movie set, that it does, even though I assume it is not. But it's just a very cool kind of experiment in. In color and texture that I. I felt was. Was really cool to look at.

Yeah, the combination of signs, graffiti, things of different colors and ages, like the much older stone sign that's embedded or, you know, in part of the wall versus the newer signs or that sprayed graffiti, it. It makes me think, you know, in the last episode, we were talking about the oddities, human spaces. You can see here how different people or sets of people have tried to claim the space. Because when people do tags or graffiti, they're trying to put their name on something. They're trying to say, I live here or I own this space, or they're protesting or they're vandalizing, whatever it might be. And so this image, I think, really clearly captures that. You've got some historical naming or identity here. You've got things from the state or where you're trying to direct people or tell them what they should or shouldn't be doing. You've got people doing their own thing and tagging it. It's this kind of, you know, when you look at tree rings in dendrochronology, or you look at topography or layers of fossilized remains or ruins of cities, it has that feeling to me, but stuck on the side of this building, that you can see the history of the people who have been here, who are trying to stake a claim or say something about this space. Because humans want to be remembered. They want to say, I was here. And I think Tola has really captured that well on the street corner that most people probably disregard or think looked ugly or just walk straight past. It's an interesting story in this photo with no people in it.

Yeah, it's kind of a chess game of chaos versus structure, in a way.

Yeah. You see the people who were here in all of the chaos, but they're not there. You see what they left behind. But cool choice. Alrighty, back to animals. And to be honest, I kind of chose this one for you. Yeah, I chose this one for you, Jason. I do genuinely like it, but it's got another moon in it. But this one, I thought, you know, when you look at cats, and I know you know what it's like to look at cats, because you have cats or you have always. You've long had cats. I imagine that cats think that they are big cats. They think that they're a lion or a tiger or some proud leopard in a tree or that they could chase you as fast as a cheetah can run. And this cat is on what appears to be some sort of garage or shed roof or. I don't know, it's a roof, and it's in the bottom right corner jutting into the frame. And this proud domestic cat with its flowing fur in the breeze is looking out yaw to the left of the frame while the moon is waxing above it. I'm pretty sure it's waxing, not waning, but to me, it was just this proud. Like, it's this Pride Rock moment from the Lion King with this domestic cat on a roof. And I thought, I love the drama of this photo. And I'm sure Jason would like it at the very least because there's a cat in it.

100% drama here. It reminds me, actually, of one of our cats, Cookie. It looks very similar with the big, like, swooping chest fur, but I think bat. I think Batman. When I see this. Like this Batman kind of, you know, doing his solemn stance on the corner of some building in Gotham with the moon in the background. Very dramatic. It feels like that. And this gives off that exactly like you said of the small cat, kind of when they look in the mirror, they see the big cat version of themselves. And this feels exactly like that of I'm looking over my lands that I control and keeping a watchful eye to make sure that everything is in line with how I want it to be. And then you look at it, and it's. It's just. It's a cute house cat.

Yeah. This cat has seen some things. It's a vigilante, but, you know, it puts aside its. Its dark past, its trauma for the good of the city, you know?

The good of the city, Absolutely. Yep. If there were a bat signal in this photo, up into the sky would not be out of place.

Anyway, well done, Lisa, because. What a cat.

Thank you for the fun, fun capture, Lisa. All right. My third. Third photo for July is from Adrian. And this might be a location that you know about, potentially, Martin. Okay, here we go.

Icm I have been here. Yes. A few times, and I have that lens, and I love it.

Oh, wait, is this your photo? Okay. No, it's not. It's Adrian. Good, good.

No, no. It's taken with a cult favorite camera, the Pen F. That's not made anymore. OM fans want it to come back, but it's the 17mm, which is a fun little metal lens with its little manual focus clutch. Anyway, I'm getting Too far into the gear. We don't even know what the photo is yet. Off you go.

We don't, no. So this is icm, Flinders street in Melbourne. And this is black and white. So I like it, obviously. And it is, I would call it. Well, I guess it's in the experimental category. I was gonna say it feels experimental. It is what I can only assume is they were in a scene and then they did the like take a photo and then, you know, move the camera up or down depending on where they were, to get this ghostly blur across the whole thing from top to bottom. And all of the people, it's one of those things where you know they're people but nothing about the photo tells you that they're people because they are not particularly people shaped. They're kind of triangular with sort of heads maybe, but you instinctively know they're people, but they're this weird, ghostly other kind of people. And then the building in the background has kind of the perfect shape for this blur because it all flows up into a single point that goes from light center up to a dark point, which feels really cool. And I don't know what this place looks like, not in this blurred method, but I imagine it's a stunning place. You know, not blurred, but this blurry black and white, super contrasty, harsh photo feels otherworldly to me, as if you had some kind of power to see the real world, almost like an upside down version of it to, you know, the. The ghost world within. And I just think that's super cool and I could look at this kind of thing forever.

Yeah, it's a great photo. And Flinders street in Melbourne, it's. Yeah, it's part of Melbourne Central business, just central business district. It's a. It's a very busy place. You've got people all over the place for trains and trams and there's Federation Square nearby. I think what I like about this photo as well is that if you didn't have Flinders Street, Melbourne written there, you would probably assume that it was taken somewhere in continental Europe from the architecture or the blur. And people have said that, although, okay, this sounds a bit silly, Australia is very European because it was colonised by Europeans. But if you go to Melbourne, people say that Melbourne feels the most European in the non English way. Right. You've got, you know, a big Greek community, people from moving from the post war period, lots of people coming from Southeast Asia. And that's the case in a lot of different Australian cities. But you've also got a lot of Interesting architecture and these narrow laneways filled with beautiful cafes and different restaurants. So I think, yeah, the otherworldly, ghostly nature of this and the way that the architecture has been stretched and the use of black and white, it does feel like it could just be somewhere else in Europe. It throws you off. No one would think this was Australia generally. If they weren't from Australia, I think I wouldn't have.

I initially thought Europe until I obviously read the thing. I was like, oh, okay, cool. Well, Martin probably knows about this.

Oh, Melbourne's a great place. Yeah. I mean, I choose to live in Wollongong. It's a bit warmer and less busy. But Melbourne is a place to visit, go if you haven't been.

Well, if you need to see ghosts, this is the place to go.

Oh, yeah. Very haunted. Yeah. It's terrifying. Nice choice.

All right, what do you got for your third pick for this month?

I love this photo by Les, and I hope I haven't actually shared it before. I feel like I've spoken about Les's photos before, but I follow him on glass. He runs a farm. He actually lives on a farm. Does his own produce and everything north of where I live, past Sydney, kind of like Newcastle Way. I'm actually not exactly sure where he lives. I'm not gonna. I won't tell everyone where he lives. That'd be a bit weird. He's his address, but I know the kind of area at least. And it's a photo called In Between Showers. It's taken on farm. And you can see this beautiful tree, eucalyptus tree, from the look of it. This silhouette in a paddock with cows at the bottom, right in the foreground. And it's got this beautiful general haze, this humidity, kind of like a fog between rain showers. And I love Les's photos of his farm because from what I gather of his story on glass, things that he's shared, he hasn't always lived on and operated a farm. He had a totally different career beforehand. And he made the. The tree change or the kind of rural change. And you get this into these beautiful places in the country where he lives and works, and you just think, wow, what a kind of sheltered suburban or urban existence do I live. And I don't think about these things that he must have to do every day in running a farm and producing things like where does our food come from? So this photo is beautiful. I love the haze of it, the natural kind of country vibe. And it makes me think about the things that I don't have to think about because I live in the comfort of suburbia.

Yeah. I feel like I remember a scarecrow photo potentially.

Yes. Yes. Maybe.

Is that the. Yeah, that was. Couldn't tell you what episode number that was, but we did talk about one and this. The mist. I love the mist. It is so.

Mist. That's the word I'm saying. Fog and haze and. Yeah, mist.

It's so beautiful how it just spreads things so nice and softly. You have this orange kind of brown light coming through the whole thing. If you look at the top, coming from the top to the bottom, it almost looks like a. Like a cyan kind of image at the top, or black and white. And then towards the bottom where the mist kind of. You get closer to you, where there's less of that mist, then you're kind of back into color with the cows and the grass. Really cool. Just kind of three parts here of the bottom with the cows in the grass. The middle with the tree and the mist, and the top with that, you know, kind of stormy cloudiness above. And then way in the back, very, very faint, just a ton more trees. And I like how there's this single one and then seemingly, you know, forest for. For quite a while behind it. Just a beautiful kind of. Not flat. I think flat is maybe not the right word, but even. Yeah, because of that. Because of that mist kind of spreading the light out really nice, which just makes it a very pleasant and. And calming. I think it's a. It says it's in between showers and you think of kind of storms as being. You think of a storm not being calm necessarily, but this just brings you that nice lull in between the storm, maybe. And it's just a beautiful photo to look at.

I can smell the petrichor while I look at this.

Absolutely. And it's got two little cute cows in there. So, I mean, you can't go wrong with that.

I hadn't thought of this actually. But it's funny how when we have a photo and then my photo, you know, we have two of ours next to each other, that you think about it the same way that maybe, correct me if I'm wrong, I don't know if you get this vibe, but the same way with the Melbourne shot that you might have thought it was in Europe. I look at this photo and I recognize that it's Australian because I recognize those trees. Those kinds of trees are all around me. I'm looking up at the. At the escarpment outside my window and I see things like that. But if you weren't from Australia and you looked at this, you'd probably go, okay, so there's cows there, and there's nothing like kangaroos and koalas that makes you think that this is Australian. You might think that this was somewhere, I don't know, in France or something, or some sort of dairy farm. But again, that's that European thought, that colonization. That's changed Australia. That you wouldn't think is here if you're from outside.

No, I would not have guessed Australia if I had to say where this was.

Yeah. And it throws people off because to me, it's a uniquely Australian scene because of that tree and the foliage. But the cow is not. That's an import.

Yeah, not quite so.

Australia is a weird and complicated place, but beautiful.

There you go. And I think that's it. 3x2 for July. Thank you, Martin. Thank you, everyone for the love, for taking great photos that we get to look at every single month. Much appreciated. And until August. Thanks, everybody for listening and we'll see you next month.

Tata.

Sam.