Battling Inflation Together

Touching.

Yes, I deal with this nearly every day as I take my short walk.

This harshness can be very hard to chronicle.

This time I think I made it.

Thanks for the encouraging words.

John (Crosley)

(P.S., there's very vibrant life just a few steps away, also.

JC)

A superb and telling capture. I appreciate your explanation of posting this in B&W vs. color. For the novice, it makes for a great study about the impact of colors and this is what PN is all about.

I think the empty glass next to them has almost the same significance as the gesture of their hands asking for contributions.

I almost could hardly believe it when I desaturated this color photo -- exactly how the 'subjects' jumped out and especially how the whiteness of their faces and their hands stood out -- emphasizing the point.

In color, those things were significant but were also somewhat confused. I felt it important to pass that on, as this was the prototypical photo for why one desaturates a photo when colors in a color capture compete. In short, grayscale (or B&W capture) reduces this photo to its essence, free of the distractions of color, as opposed to the color dependant photo, of which I am happy to take. And it's not just because the colors in the color version are bad -- they just compete with the message.

However, sometimes we get our signals crossed. I looked at the color capture. The 'empty' glass has a small amount of amber liquid in the bottom -- beer, and thus is only symbolic.

Addendum: On re-reading this, I misrepresented the process. I had made the original decision to desaturate, so I jumped right ahead to the tab in Adobe Camera Raw with the desaturate 'button' and checked it, without looking too much at the colors, but realizing they were VERY VIBRANT.

I then processed the photo as a black and white (grayscale).

Later, when I wanted to make the point and in part because I had seen this on my camera and for a short time in Adobe Camera Raw in color, I decided also to work it up in color to make the point. (This comment is for the record. I always had planned to work it up in B&W -- grayscale because such subjects almost never do well in color). jc

Thanks for the thoughtful critique.

John (Crosley)

What an image! It provides for world awareness of pain and suffering. The expressions are very poweful. SOBE IS full of homeless and I hasitate whether to shot them or not some times I do, as I did last xmas. Take good care. Warm regards.

I don't photograph every old person or bum I see.

Basically, I don't set out to 'shoot bums'. I shoot people and look for 'art' or to create street 'documentary' shots, hoping to create art in the process.

I often do photograph such people IF I can 'see' something in the capture that might make a point, and particularly, I have learned on reviewing my photos, I always have been trying to master the capture that features the 'ironic juxtaposition'.

See, for instance, my first post on Photo.net, which is the first post in this folder -- 'Balloon Man'.

It shows an old man with a severe frown and highly arched eyebrows, holding balloons filled with smiling rodents with similarly arched eyebrows (Mickey Mouses?).

It's probably my greatest photo ever, and if I had submitted that first photo for critique (I didn't know how), I might have gotten Photo of the Week.

Photo of the Week came later, for another 'ironic juxtaposition' shot (two smirking young women on billboard looking down on bearded, aging man passing by, looking directly at me.

This capture is less 'ironic' however, rather than being simply heart-tugging. There is less 'juxtaposition' here than in many of my photos It's more 'street documentary'..

See for example a slightly later and better received photo taken just down the street of a bent and short old woman with cane being passed by a vibrant, very well fed and somewhat attractive woman with large purse who obviously is well off and shopping -- the comparison is extremely well made in that photo - taken at night - even though it's somewhat technically deficient.

Also, see for example another well-received photo of a 'bum' -- a man passed out on entrance steps to the Kyiv Metro - all in beautiful tones of gray, and on the left of his shirtless, beautifully arched body (begging cup upright), is the lower frame and legs of an attractive young woman stepping down and out of the frame -- the ironic juxtaposition.

In almost all of those shots, the point is not to 'shoot bums' or 'unfortunate people' but to recognize art regardless of from where it arises.

Consider another:

Two homeless men, sleep at opposite ends of a bench in Paris's Metro at station St.-Germain-des-Pres -- one sleeping homeless man virtually is identical to the other but 'reversed' -- mirror-like. I titled it 'bookends'.

In a very strange way, I think I have found a way to recognize the beauty arising from some of the most unfortunate situations of life's conditions, and to capture that beauty - and it is made all the more poignant when one juxtaposes that beauty with the circumstances which give rise to that beauty (or art, if you please).

Of course, this 'ironic juxtaposition' series not only is somewhat happenstance it also is just a subset of my captures; I take a vast variety of captures from scenics/landscapes to portraits, to whatever . . . .

But 'street' and this minor but very successful category - the 'ironic juxtaposition' -- seems to be very well received and something that I do not see anyone else doing as well as I (maybe I'm just myopic.)

It helps, if one is going to make the decision to 'shoot bums' or 'unfortunates' to plan to 'make art' in doing so (otherwise it's just plain exploitation) or to make your photo be 'documentary', and then the decision of whether or not to release the shutter will be far less a study in indecision than it is for many - and it will not be 'sport', but an exercise in creating 'art'.

And as the victims of noted swindler Bernard Madoff have found, 'there but for the grace of God', go any of us.

Thanks for your very nice and flattering comment.

John (Crosley)