Mmm, yes, you’d rather expect a path for the eye to start at the edge and move to the focus.

Yes, that again works, but needed that log.

Out of interest, did you also take a shot while in front of that patch of herbs? It could be taken as obscuring things, rather than deliberately breaking up the man-made parts (which is what I guess you intended).

Mmm, lens hoods are vital lens protectors - I’m not sure mine have ever usefully stopped glare, but protecting from knocks - invaluable!

For all depth of focus is more with a telephoto lens, I’d guess that’s still the cause of the issue. I’m just delighted the bulk worked so crisply, I’ll forgive the camera/physics a few hairs :)

Yes, depth of focus is greater, removing one issue of macro photography (at least, unless you’ve the hang of focus stacking and the post-processing required).

Well, yes, I suppose there’s that…

Cat making itself comfortable in an entirely inappropriate place (loft?) checks out.

As far as I’m concerned, post away, daily, or even (a little!) more frequently.

As to the photo - it obviously meets your stated goal, but the sun coming through the trees and providing some shadow boundaries, to me, is an important lift to the picture. It suggests to me that, while sticking to your goal, always look for an additional lift, without it needing to be consistent across the set.

Sun, sea and sand … and cloud !?!

A potent combination - I’ve had unexpectedly pleasing photos along the same lines

Canon’s DPP4 starts displaying RAW files from Canon Camera’s processed as if by the Canon camera, as a feature, for precisely that reason: a good starting point.

Even if it didn’t, the “ideal” recipe for displaying a RAW file as a JPG is probably relatively straightforward (how to form the luminance histograms, level of noise reduction & sharpening, etc.) and likely to give what appears to be the same results. I’d expect you’d only usually spot this with extreme pixel peeping. If the process was not straightforward, it would slow displaying the JPG in camera, and thus slow down the whole photography experience, so that’s not going to happen!

As an alternative to buying your own printer, if you can cope with the delay, there’s many firms out there that will do really nice prints from digital photos at surprisingly low costs, delivered pretty fast.

Give how much I’ve wasted on unused colours of ink and printers just breaking entirely, that is how I now do the few photos I want hard copies of.

In passing, if taking shots to record precise colours (you mention glazes), I hope you’ve worked out you want some known colour reference cards or the like in every shot - nothing, whether digital or film, is going to give you accurate colours or luminance without post-processing.

Fun photo and to me a really satisfying composition of elements!

Human sacrifice, shabti traditions mutating, making sure the most likely tomb thieves were dead…

All seem more likely to me than letting peasants mooch off of your eternal life machine.

“For example, she said Egyptian mummified persons were excavated and brought back to Britain, for racist pseudoscientific research.”

As opposed to the utterly respectful local descendants of those times, who, if they got there first, unwrapped the mummies, took any precious metals for resale (often melting it down first), and discarded the rest on the ground - playthings for dogs and children. Oh, or used as fertilizer, of course.

Traveller’s journals of the Nineteenth century seem to all have at least one account of the traveller’s horror of unearthed, looted and broken mummies left scattered on the ground.

As for European and Local looters, in Pharonic times up to 2011, can I recommend “A Short History of Tomb-Raiding” by Maria Golia?

So, perhaps “We should do better” today, but don’t pretend back in the “Golden Age” of Egyptology that the locals in Egypt were not as bad as the Europeans in their disrespect.