With No Direction Known

His "lost" look combined with the sign (which reminds the former Japanese flag) just above his head is stunning! Even without your title, it tells a lot about the direction of the Japanese youth (not that ours are much different). I especially like your photos like these which look like so meticulously planned even though they are not.

"Like a complete unknown."

 

I realize that Japan and China are two different places but you have rendered this guy in a way that reminds me of an old Mao propaganda poster with radiating lines of wisdom and harmony in the background. Of course he's not looking too wise but rather dumbstruck in this pose which makes it a rather tasty bit of imagery to chew on.

 

I'm slightly surprised that you choose to render this in color which is the more difficult option as far as making it work. I would explore B&W or duotone to emphasize my first idea of the poster but that's just me thinking out loud. I would at least think of desaturating that red jacket on the left to be more harmonious with the rest of the color. It's just a slight distraction to the overall flow of the image. I wouldn't mind seeing this in a washed out (bleached) color version.

 

Like all good images it grows on me the more time I spend exploring it. Great job.

I was always perplexed that tis picture got so little attention. The set-up is faux heroic but his expression is typical "rudderless youth, lost at sea" which is now common in Japan. The changes you mentioned are worth exploring. The problem is I always seem to have the latest 200-300 images waiting for processing and I'm forever playing catch up.

I hear that. For the last couple of months it seemed as though I lacked the energy to do much shooting because I dreaded all the cropping and resizing of photos afterwards in order to put them on the web. The weather was not very cooperative this winter either.

 

This does look slightly less (red) saturated on my laptop screen. I think the fact that the two shades of red are close but do not exactly match makes me notice it more.

 

Fortunately the youth here in America are as full of themselves as ever. Maybe that's what it takes to have the nerve to get out of bed in the morning these days.