Relax

A critic on a blog featuring photos of mine that were stolen, showing a lot of 'street' life in Ukraine, felt the need to say something bad, so he wrote that 'anybody could have taken these photos with a camera phone'.

Well, that was two or thee years ago,and then it was surely impossible and probably will be far into the future and assumes anybody could even have 'seen' what I shot which is highly debatable,, but as you well illustrate here, it is less the camera, such as the Leica-made camera you were using when I met you, as the eye of the photographer, which makes a great photographer.

One time, one of the very best 'street' photos taken on Photo.net was taken with a 2 or 3 megapixel point and shoot. It looked great on the web with web resolution, but it could never be blown up, regrettably.

Best advice: keep that camera available at all times - I-Phone or no, until they get to be 10 megapixels or higher - and have good optics, so when you get something very good, as here, you can justifiably blow it up very large and display it.

My very best to you, Miles.

John (Crosley)

Hello John,

I hope you are keeping well.

You know I normally carry some sort of camera with me, sometimes the big full frame digital Nikon or more likely at the moment a small film rangefinder. In fact I had the latter in the car when I nipped into the fast food establishment where this scene presented itself to me. I mean you mustn't take the picture, the picture has got to take you, right? Well this grabbed me immediately but, alas, my phone was not at the ready; it froze up and had to be rebooted forcing me to endure an agonising two minute wait praying all the time that the lady seated here wouldn't move before I could shoot. Luckily she didn't.

Do you ever find that when taking a picture which you know will turn out well that time seems to slow down? This slo-mo thing seems to happen to me often when taking some of my better shots though not always. Sometimes they come out of mere reflex. A mix of fast and slow, technique wise, for me anyway.

I have to say as time and technology progress I am less and less concerned with resolution, sharpness and so forth and more interested in just the picture itself and achieving it with stealth at the right instant whilst ensuring optimum composition. I am amazed at how one can shoot away with with a little black camera these days, bobbing and weaving, and hardly get noticed. Street photography is analogous to boxing in some ways.

I think the compact digital camera has forced a paradigm shift in the public's perception as to how a photograph is actually taken, i.e. camera held out at arms length instead of viewfinder to the eye. This has really helped.

I am going to print this onto 10 x 8 paper and see how it stands up at viewing distance. Sure I won't try A3 as I do quite often.

Good to hear from you, John,

Best wishes,

Miles.

I have to say as time and technology progress I am less and less concerned with resolution...

I could not agree more.

And, this photo is a proof to your vision.

The irony & charm of your photo would remain the same even if you had it taken by a better gadget.

I was in Paris getting on and off the Metro late one Sunday night, taking shots of people and backgrounds which I love to do in Paris seasonally, as you have seen and know.

I came across one of the best photo opportunities of my entire career -- two bums or homeless men lying end to end, mirror images of each other on a bench in the St. German des Pres Metro station directly and centered below the station sign in tiles above them.

I looked at the 17-55 f 2.8 on my camera and through it, but it did not have enough 'reach' to shoot across the double Metro tracks to the far wall, even if I stood right up to the Metro platform edge and almost walked out over the tracks (Red Sea like?)

I reached into my picket and pulled out an 18-200 telephoto, but horrors! 

It not only was fogged from being warm against my body in the coat pocket, then exposed to very, very moist Parisian winter air (rain outside), but worse:  It had some chocolate on the lens and I had no lens cleaner.

I had inadvertently long ago stuck a chocolate bar in that coat pocket, and during my running around it had melted slightly and some of the oil/fat from the chocolate bar got onto the lens.  It was hopeless.

I did have a 70~100 f 2.8 Nikkor lens but when I put it on, it's reach was too 'long' for the distance; I couldn't get all I wanted into the frame.

I needed to be perpendicular to the far wall the frame as I wanted, and if either of the sleeping guys moved, I was a goner.  My photo would disappear.

I could not blow up an image taken with my 18-55 as my camera was a D2X and was grainy otherwise, and crop would amplify the grain and make the capture unusable.

I backed up and backed up and finally felt the rear wall of my platform against my back.

My hands were shaking from cold -- even my entire upper body, though vibration reduction was on.

I tried framing shots, but the frame kept moving as I shook, and the VR set in then out then in and then out, and I almost was not back far enough.

Finally in desperation, I literally shoved my body backward into the cold tile wall on my side of the platform with my body and head lowered (since the platform was arched and the lowest point was at the height just above my waist or so and therefore the longest distance to my subjects was from my camera held at that point just above waist height.  I must have looked a sight!

So there I was scrunched over, head and body pushed back into the wall, camera pressed into my face for every last millimeter of distance, so I could frame my subject at 70 mm (wishing it were a 60~200 mm not a 70~200 mm (or that I had eaten the whole chocolate bar and discarded the waste, so maybe I might have solved the fogging issue with the 18~200 VR lens).

I got one good shot.

It's one of my all time best.

I'll count it among the all time best till I die.

There's a great story, very much like your story above.

We all who have really tried and tried for great street photos, got more than one such story . . . . one which got away (which we often forget . . . and one or more where we actually did get the shot and of which we have a lifetime visual reminder that all is not easy in taking good 'street'.

Miles, your street skills are fabulous; and the poster below mine was quite on point (it's the image that counts, and less the quality).

Might you have returned and found a VERY ANXIOUS person to juxtapose with the sign.  I very well might have tried; maybe somebody biting their fingernails or some other outward sign of anxiety?

Food for thought if the sign's still there and you have your bigger camera or a 'fast' camera lens when you return and happen to nearby there again.

From an admirer of very long standing.

john

John (Crosley)

a harmony of tones, lines, light, shades.

BB