Photo Competition 2020-02-01: Imperfectly Beautiful

Question

Theme

This theme challenges you to find beauty in unexpected places. Appreciating it not only in spite of imperfections, but perhaps even because of them.

Voting Rules

Vote up as many images as you like
Please, up votes only! Do NOT vote down your competitors! If you don't like an image, don't vote
Voting closes on February 14, 2020 at 12:00 AM UTC. The winner will be chosen based on votes at that time

Submission Rules

One photo submission per answer. Multiple entries are encouraged, but please don't spam answers. The aim is quality over quantity.
Post only photos taken by yourself or the person with you.
All entries should include a line of text with the location, subject, and date.
The submitted image must conform to this site's content license, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA 4.0) with attribution required.
Do not use this as a forum for photo critique. Use chat instead, or ask a new question about your image.

Next Contest

Suggest a theme for the next contest. Leave a single comment below in the format,

Theme: <one sentence description>
Upvote the comment(s) with the theme you would like to see next time.

Good luck!

This theme was suggested by @LightBender. I think it fits well with the Valentine's Day end of contest. — scottbb, Jan 31 '20 at 22:18
Of course, after V-day and this one, the logical next theme would be complimentary/mutually completing/juxtaposed things :) — rackandboneman, Feb 05 '20 at 00:53
Great to see all the contributions. Should there be a size restriction or guidance beyond the 2MiB limit from uploading? In terms of pixels how big should an image be? I ask because I feel my portrait oriented picture takes up a lot of screen space. It uploaded at it's full 10MB due to all that white compressing heavily but I reduced it to 1080 pixels on the shortest side and it's still huge due to the orientation. — dmkonlinux, Feb 10 '20 at 18:49
Theme: Antici....pation
-- Dedicated to that quiet moment just before things happen. — LightBender, Feb 11 '20 at 04:08
Congratulations to @rackandboneman for winning this contest. And thank you to all submitters, this was a fun contest to vote on! — scottbb, Feb 14 '20 at 03:48

rackandboneman · Accepted Answer · 2020-02-04T22:57:14.207

15

Razor Wire, Wiesbaden, Feb 4, 2020

Note: Looks like selective color when viewed at a small size. None applied. Just odd, found lighting and camera settings happening to be a little on the weird side from previous night photography....

edited Feb 04 '20 at 22:57

answered Feb 04 '20 at 21:06

rackandboneman

7,212
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That is odd - but pretty darn cool too – OnBreak. Feb 05 '20 at 00:03
Wiesbaden? Christ, that's halfway around the corner... – Alexander von Wernherr Feb 06 '20 at 13:27

score 13 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 04 '20 at 18:35

13

Imperfect symmetry. Chinatown, NYC. Jan 26, 2020.

answered Feb 04 '20 at 18:35

sasha

303
1
2
6

ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere · Answer 3 · 2020-02-11T08:37:31.750

11

Metallophone (glockenspiel?) with missing key.

The Sensory Garden, Jephson Gardens, Leamington Spa, Warwickshire UK, May 2018.

edited Feb 11 '20 at 08:37

answered Feb 09 '20 at 13:39

ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere

1,415
1
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13

4

This post and your username fit well together – OnBreak. Feb 10 '20 at 06:49
2

This is not a xylophone. Xylophone has wooden bars by definition. This is rather a kind of glockenspiel. – Zeus Feb 11 '20 at 02:26
@Zeus you're right, xylo, - wood, phone - sound; but in colloquially, people seem to gravitate towards xylophone as a description for almost all keyboard-like percussion played with mallets. (Don't get me wrong, it drives me nuts when people call a marimba a xylophone, but they just don't know better) =) – scottbb Feb 11 '20 at 05:04
1

I really like the composition of this photo. I think it embodies the theme perfectly. (To be fair, as a former percussionist, this hit close to home for me. So I might have been biased towards it). – scottbb Feb 11 '20 at 05:08
@Zeus - Edited. Thanks - lazy terminology on my part. – ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere Feb 11 '20 at 08:39
@scottbb - Many thanks [but Shh! It's cropped]. Is hitting close to home the definition of a neighbourhood percussionist? – ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere Feb 11 '20 at 09:20
Cropping is part of making the perfect composition. To paraphrase Ansel Adams, the raw file is the score, the final image is the performance. – LightBender Feb 12 '20 at 15:06

Alaska Man · Answer 4 · 2020-02-07T19:40:30.933

9

Alice Chalmers Loader in snow. Feb 5 2011

Polaroid Type55 negative shot with Pinhole camera.

Contact printed, Lith Print.

Straight scan of the print, B&W 5x7 silver gelatin paper. ( no post production coloring.)

edited Feb 07 '20 at 19:40

answered Feb 06 '20 at 03:38

Alaska Man

3,608
10
17

1

Sweet detail with the perf sheet! – rackandboneman Feb 06 '20 at 19:09

Kinka-Byo · Answer 5 · 2020-02-03T02:09:01.597

7

Incomplete.

07/01/2020, Rome.

enter link description here

edited Feb 03 '20 at 02:09

answered Feb 01 '20 at 02:02

Kinka-Byo

514
4
15

2

what's the problem with this photo? it is not correct to put -1 without a justified reason. – Kinka-Byo Feb 01 '20 at 02:12
1

Yeap, and the rules say that no voting down on posts.
I edited the post to show the photo. There is a chance that was the reason for the downvote.
– Rafael Feb 01 '20 at 05:36
Thank you very much, the photo is not seen directly each time I use my stack app :( – Kinka-Byo Feb 01 '20 at 06:07
I upvoted to offset the downvote. Nice pic. – Eric S Feb 01 '20 at 15:00
Thank you very much! – Kinka-Byo Feb 01 '20 at 15:12
Nice photo! But I do not understand the date. That’s in 4 days. – shalop Feb 03 '20 at 02:01
1

Sorry, I wrote 02 instead of 01! – Kinka-Byo Feb 03 '20 at 02:08
1

Aww.... and I was so impressed that you'd managed to take a picture in the future... :) – LightBender Feb 03 '20 at 16:21

score 7 · Answer 6 · answered Feb 10 '20 at 18:37

7

Imperfect Cyclamen Flower

A dying flower captured with Olympus E-520, legacy OM 50mm f1.8 lens and 20mm extension tube, two flash one lighting a white background.

1/40sec f8 iso400

answered Feb 10 '20 at 18:37

dmkonlinux

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MiguelH · Answer 7 · 2020-02-09T14:34:02.603

6

A shopping trolly dumped in a pond Northampton, UK. 06/02/2020

edited Feb 09 '20 at 14:34

answered Feb 06 '20 at 17:10

MiguelH

936
8
23

score 4 · Answer 8 · answered Feb 10 '20 at 17:19

4

enter image description here

Industrial remnants. Arts District, LA. July 23rd 2019

answered Feb 10 '20 at 17:19

SP812

393
1
7

score 1 · Answer 9 · answered Jan 31 '20 at 23:36

1

A bar at Hotel Valcartier, in Quebec, Canada. 12/21/2019

answered Jan 31 '20 at 23:36

Tornado 77

195
1
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score 1 · Answer 10 · answered Feb 08 '20 at 22:21

Non-Starter, Mayence, 02/08/2020

Station clock that seems to have a broken flourescent starter - the illumination looks like it is from the start phase of the flourescent tube, giving much weaker and also very different lighting (allowing the architectural detail to not be blacked out completely).

A7s, ISO 20000, 1/160s, Leitz 180mm/f3.4 wide open, too little time to perfect it since there were rowdy persons around....

Photo Competition 2020-02-01: Imperfectly Beautiful

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Voting Rules

Submission Rules

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