Untitled

Thanks for viewing.

K

Russell ...

Wonderful capture and extemely moving. Thank you for sharing and reminding us of the sacrifice others make.

This is what a love about photos....an image like this tells more than a 100 videos.

Well Done!

Please note the following:

• This image has been selected for discussion. It is not necessarily the "best" picture the Elves have seen this week, nor is it a contest.
• Discussion of photo.net policy, including the choice of Photograph of the Week should not take place here, but in the Help & Questions Forum.
• The About Photograph of the Week page tells you more about this feature of photo.net.
• Before writing a contribution to this thread, please consider our reason for having this forum: to help people learn about photography. Visitors have browsed the gallery, found a few striking images and want to know things like why is it a good picture, why does it work? Or, indeed, why doesn't it work, or how could it be improved? Try to answer such questions with your contribution.

Whether seen as a stand alone photojournalism piece, or as part of a body of documentary work covering the experience of contemporary American servicemen and women (and their loved ones), this is very strong. What more needs to be said? This photograph requires no explanation. I see no weakness in the photograph itself.

For anyone unfamiliar with Mr. Klika's work, he is also adept at capturing more ambiguous and nuanced moments of the American military experience (as can be seen in the images he has captured over the years in Iraq and Afghanistan). Well worth a look.

Sad, they are taking the poor kid's dad to go guard some opium fields for the benefit of a criminal few, what the world has come to, or, more appropriately, what the world has always been.

I'll probably get hammered for this, but I can't get real excited about this one.

Great colour? Yes. Tack sharp focus on subjects? Yes. Perfect depth of field? Absolutely. All are points in the photograph's favor.

But frankly, this is about as formulaic as it gets. There have been millions of almost identical photographs made over the past ten years. We've all seen variations of it in our hometown newspapers. Soldier. Wife. Child. Hugs. Departure. Return? I suppose the soldier is leaving home, but the viewer doesn't know for sure, although I suppose the crying little boy might be a clue that he's leaving. There's simply nothing here to distinguish this photograph from the millions of others, nothing here to set it apart.

Am I disrespecting America's veterans and serving military with this critique? No, certainly not. I'm a veteran, myself. But I've seen this scene way too many times. This photograph doesn't really make me think. Other than triggering a momentary twinge of emotion, this photograph does absolutely nothing for me.

I like this picture. This is an off beat type of documentary shot that is technically well done but the crying child, during what appears to be a celebratory moment in a stadium, adds a quirky note. Like a good jazz riff, the discordant notes intensify and accentuate the melody. We don't know why the child is in such distress during an otherwise upbeat moment but the two contrast well with each other well in this scene.

It can be seen as a moving picture of a little boy, but it's contained within what is overall a rather formulaic picture, as I think Jim is right to point out. So, yes and no. Certainly, a good documentary photograph of this event, but a similar one might be made at many such an event.

That, right there, is one of the problems with this photograph. Is the moment really "upbeat"? The viewer has no way to tell if the soldier is returning home or if he is leaving on deployment.

Basically, I think this image is a pretty average shot for this kind of event (more on that later). I say average because I don't think the composition is all that great and the two hugging are not very well defined or identified nor any emotional sense-other than the hug-defined (which may be neither here nor there). So, I am left pretty much with a crying child.

Anyway, kids cry anywhere they are bored or not happy and the child's disconnect with the two others, other than the proximity, leaves me with just a crying child. It almost feels like a tantrum than a direct emotional connection with anything immediately going on in the shot.

Then, there is the apparent arena they are in--the blue seats--and the casual people in them. This looks more like some ceremony and maybe this guy just retired or something or got an award. The others are not reacting, so maybe he is walking back to his seat. I can't see enough to see him but I just get a sense that he is a bit older and certainly out of shape--long time reservist?

I guess my point is that I don't read any real sense of immediacy to what is happening. From the crowd or the little boy. It might be some really big deal but, except for the uniform, wouldn't probably garner a second look if it were in another setting.

I think Russell has many nice images in his portfolio and this one is fine, it just doesn't read with the meaning, to me, that others seem to be willing to attach to it. As a photo, it is just alright, not up to many of his others.

I think it matters a lot whether this photo is part of a grouping or series or not. As a stand alone, I agree with the comments that find it somewhat wanting. I had the same take as John A. about the undefined quality of the two people hugging, with no particular expressive take away, and an amorphous crowd about which I know nothing. So, on it's own it feels like a kind of a grab shot where maybe if you know the players you will get more out of it. However, as part of a documentary and perhaps with some narrative to go along with that documentary, it might be very illustrative and have a place. In a documentary, often the individuals support a greater whole and I wouldn't necessarily expect the same sort of completeness in each photo. It could simply be the capture of a passing moment that acts as a chapter or even a paragraph in a book . . . part of a tale. In a group, I wouldn't demand what I might demand of a stand-alone photo.

Interestingly, immediately upon seeing this photo, I wanted to go right to the photographer's portfolio to see the context. That doesn't always happen with the same kind of motivation behind it. Often, I look at the photographer's other work more out of interest and curiosity, and sometimes I will see the individual photo differently as part of a body of work. In this case, though, it really seemed to me initially as if it were part of something more complete and bigger than just what I was seeing, and in fact it is. Given that, I think it works quite well in its place in the overall portfolio.
I know some people see accompanying narrative as a crutch and some think each and every photo ought to stand the same on its own as in context or with or without knowledge about what it's portraying. I'm definitely not one of those people.

This is a why photograph. Why is the child crying? Why are the two people embracing? This is also a what photograph. What are the relationships between the three people? Importantly, what is the relationship between the boy and the two adults? Also, what is the general occasion that brought these people together?

This is street photography. As is frequently the case with street photography, there is a mystery regarding the subjects. A photograph can insinuate something but in the end it is our imaginations that tell the story. Such is the case here.

There are formalistic loose ends here. The composition would have been more balanced if the embracing figures were centered. They would have formed an almost perfect triangle. But this is street photography, where catching the decisive moment is most important than formalistic perfection.
I believe this is a well taken photograph. I accept the ambiguous juxtaposition of the crying boy and the embracing adult as clever and forgive the imperfections. I am also deeply moved the more I look at it.

At first I was little moved by this photograph.

Why?

I believe the reason is that this photograph seemed to lack a strong sense of a context that would explain why the adults are embracing and why the boy is crying about.

Were this a boy crying in Syria I might not know the specific reason why he was crying but I would know he would have many potential things to cry over.

By the same token, an embrace in Syria would have an immediate poignancy that does not seem to be present in this picture.

Any photograph taken in Syria would have in it an immediate and obligatory sense of tragedy. In this photograph there is something comic about the boy. Not simply because he is crying but because he looks so darn cute when he is crying. His face is cute. His pullover is cute. Even the way he holds his little American flag is cute.

And it is at this point that the juxtaposition slams you in the face and knocks to the floor.

Look at the couple closely. Look at how the man in uniform is holding his hat. (That he has his hat off suggests the other person is a woman.) His fingers are tense--I mean TENSE--as he grips that hat. Notice how the person in the orange sweater passionately clasps his neck. Notice how the uniformed man has his face in (yes in) the other person's shoulder.

Now notice where the two adults are standing. The orange sweatered person is in the row above the uniformed person, who we can surmise was sitting next to the boy. We can deduct that this is a sudden meeting. There is an amazing emotional power in the adults' body language. There is something tragic about it.

The boy appears funny and cute. The adults are not. Thus, the boy comes off like an inadvertent one-person chorus in a tragedy we do not understand.

My final word on this POW: Brilliant.

I thank and applaud the soldier for his service. The patch indicates that he is a member of the 76th Infantry Brigade Combat Team. Certainly can't be an easy job.

As for the photo of the week, I find it rather point-and-shoot. Maybe I'd like it better, would feel more like it were a documentary, if it were in B&W.

As others have mentioned, kids cry al the time. Who knows why this one is crying at this moment? I find it a distraction from the emotion displayed by the embrace of the two adults. He is wearing a Rey Mysterio WWE t-shirt (Rey is a Mexican American pro wrestler known for his high flying style.) And he's holding a small US flag. Maybe he wants to be home watching Wrestling. Maybe he wants a bigger flag.

The orange hugger is wearing a Harley Davidson sweatshirt.

The soldier has a handkerchief or tissue in his hand and we can read the label inside the hat.

Taken all together, I find these elements tell a rather sloppy, clichéd story.

Sorry Russell. This one's not my cup of tea. But I very much enjoyed and/or was educated by viewing the other fine photos in your "Defenders" gallery.

There are very fine photographs to be seen at http://russellklika.com/

I've been looking at photos in the "special warfare mountaineering, Pikes Peek" portfolio (it doesn't seem possible to link to these pictures). I'm especially taken at the moment by no. 5 in this series.

It seems to me that the picture selected as the POW isn't at the same level of mastery as these photos, and I wonder whether it might be more or less an outtake from one of the photographer's journalistic assignments (and whether another version of this photo might have been used in some fashion by his employer, whoever that might have been).

Would be interesting to hear how Mr. Klika feels about this photo.

Fred, I also looked at the other photos around this one--the whole group--and rather than finding that those supported this one or vice versa, I found this one to be that much more out of place in that group. Except in a pretty broad and forced way, I just didn't think this one illuminated anything about what was going on in the "Defenders" or they illuminating anything more about this image. I was left right where I was from the start before I looked. I guess if the series had a cadence to it, where there was some sort of rhythm to disparate types of images about our troops, I might have felt differently. But this one, in its singularity, just seems out of place and without the power of any of the others.

In any case, I am not going to ask you to share any personal insights about what you see here beyond what you have already done, but if you choose to, I would appreciate it as I am left pretty flat with this one.

John, I agree with you. What I meant was that it's the type of photo that, if used well in a group, could work nicely. Going to Russell's portfolio it seems as though he's developing a body of work centered around military service and considerations. I don't see his portfolio as a finished product but as raw materials that might someday become a themed grouping. Yes, as of now, this photo does stand out and isn't much supported by what's around it, but I still think it has the potential, especially if some other photos like it are included, to add dimension to the story being told. I was meaning to draw a distinction between photos that stand alone and photos that can effectively be part of a group. I think this one falls into the latter category, though it hasn't yet been realized as such.