'If They Were Wings . . . . '

He was not technically a dwarf - he was a 'normal' man in many ways who broke first one leg, then another, as he was maturing, and both failed to heal properly  so he did not grow to expected height - he grew only to 1.5 meters --4 feet 9 inches approx.

His trunk was normal for a man of much greater expected height, he just had short legs and no 'dwarfism' though he had been sickly as a youth.

He also was an aristocrat; it appears hanging around nightclubs came naturally to him -- he was the last of his line.

(I generally don't write things lightly or without doing my research either from my  personal knowledge or otherwise.)

I know nothing about my subject here, except he has a foot that points one direction and another that points the opposite, and both legs seem to be at his right.  I have never spoken to him about that, and probably never will because (in part) of language difficulties (and if I did, probably wouldn't print it here).

john

John (Crosley)

This photo was taken with a borrowed camera, as a recent camera purchased had some difficulties with it.

This was taken with a 10 megapixel, Nikon D3000, with a 24-120 f 3.5-5.6 lens.  Top ISO is marked 1600, but this was taken at ISO 100.

The camera was purchased reconditioned for less than $300 and given as a gift, and the proviso that if a camera of mine broke, I could borrow it back, briefly (it's been returned).  The lens I have two copies of, and it's important because (1) it's a cheap lens (2) it's full frame if one wants to use on a crop sensor or a fx (full frame) sensor, 3) it's been Nikon's cheapest fx zoom VR option and still is, as it's plentiful, and although not tops for sharpness, with a photo like this, who cares?

Such an outfit can be purchased, reconditioned (or used) for less than $600 easily.

Price is not the measure of whether one can make a good photograph.

When purchasing cameras, once, I visited a physician who had a D2Xs for sale, as he was going to buy something even more wonderful (I forget what, and the D2Xs he kept in a box in the closet except when he went to concerts, or lectures where he took photos of famous people which he took for his web site.

Trouble was he could not do anything more than a simple snapshot/head shot, devoid of meaning or expression, generally with flash, and all those famous people looked like deer in the headlamps.

He kept his cameras polished like his surgical instruments and put away, and I (on the other hand) ALWAYS have a camera around my neck and seldom clean my lenses, figuring I'll wear off the coating -and clean them just enough --with a little high proof vodka on a cleaning cloth -- cheap and abundant -- to get off crud every once in a while, or if the lens has been touched by rain or snow -- but not often as lens hoods keep most rain/snow off, as well as fingerprints, smudges from being jammed in between bodies, and other 'stuff' one encounters on the street, and often far better than filters, without adding extra reflective surfaces. 

A $100 filter, can increase by one-third the price of such a lens, bought refurbished, and have almost no resale value. 

Cheaper filters are available, but they've often got refractive/reflective issues  I've seen one broken front element from a blow in my lifetime of many decades, despite extraordinarily hard use, and that from a lens lent to a friend and returned broken, yet it didn't cost a fortune to have the front element replaced, surprisingly.

You make your own calculation.  This is my own experience.

If you photograph sandstorms, volcanoes with hot acid gases, or salt water/spray or are on the beach or boats in salt water, then I do recommend protective filters.

But like the surgeon with the like-new cameras in his closet, the filters won't make your photos one whit more creative or make you a better photographer, but they will rapidly drain your wallet.

john

John (Crosley)

John you have a winner with this photo.

It's exellent.

What makes this photo special is the unsharpness and the balance.

The colors are very good.

Perhaps the red on the right could be a bit more saturated.

But just a bit (Eizo calibrated with a Spider).

Thanks for the recognition.

I said either the viewers (some of them anyway) will LOVE this photo, or I'll get  a string of 2s and 3s. 

I really never know.

I just go with what I feel is right, for stuff like this. I have similar photos, nearly same scene but sharp, ISO 1600 and will never be so richly saturated, or so blurry and shaky.

As you read, I almost deleted this one, then thought better of it.

I've had three color calibration devices, but before I could use any of them or figure them out, they each were in luggage and each of them broke apart.

Alas.

This photo shows differntly on three different monitors though I do like it on my two Samsungs, even if it shows more saturated on one than the other.

Thanks for the advice, but where my monitors are, there simply are no computer guys who know how to calibrate or who have calibration devices -- they go by the Microsoft, you look at it and judge, software calibration guide.

I would LOVE to have all my screens calibrated, and believe me, I've tried.

Best to you, and thanks so much -- including the good advice.

john

John (Crosley)

I'm working on a private presentation for those in the exhibition business - 135 of my very best photos, and it's straining at the seams it's so packed. 

I've been busy.

This morning, this photo went into the group. Yesterday the selection was 134 best photos.

That's how I judged this today.

I'm glad you agree.

Frankly I've taken several photos of the shaky, pretty indistinct, almost impressionist genre, and although one before really was a hit, this new one I LOVE.

Pardon me if my pride is showing.  I took a chance showing this on Photo.net since it does not have one iota of sharpness in it/not one true 'edge' that isn't blurry on a service that is death usually on blurriness.

(I'm not Catholic: I believe pride will NOT send me to hell, just as long as it's not from hellish stupidity.)

;~)

john

John (Crosley)

I have a private presentation with this photo in it, and somehow a member found it and left a remark, which I am reproducing here, word for word.

Saad Saleem (trophy symbol and other symbols deleted because of anti-spam filtering only)

Hi

I will tell you my feelings about it, with very simple words.  you have not only captured him, but have shown us (the viewers) how he the human with crutches sees us.  I have imagined him as he captured here moving even faster than the other pedestrians, swinging with his head right and left, and up and down.  This is a work and a fine presentation.

********

John:  Saad Salem, thanks and sorry for having confused you with the public and the private post -- I'm not sure how you got to the other image, but I've reproduced your comment without editing, deleting symbols to conform to the anti-spam filter.

In fact, this man is almost stationary, and further, he's somewhat of an athlete, as he has enormous upper body strength, something that is particular to those who have lost most use of their lower bodies and must rely on aids such as crutches.

Your scenario is one possible one, but in this case it doesn't match this man's dignified reality.  He moves hastily and discreetly with his crutches (when he wants too - sometimes like a cat, and even can sneak up behind one noiselessly and surprisingly).

He's a different breed of person; he has my respect, as he's not an ordinary man or beggar, but an extraordinary man, with a bad circumstance.

God gave him lemons.

He makes lemonade every day.

Thanks for the nice compliments.

john

John (Crosley)

In a private folder, I've posted this photo, for workup with my best for galleries, museums, etc., and somehow another member has found his way there, Jack McRitchie, a Photo of the Week trophy holder.

I am reproducing his comment below, without the trophy, because it's blocked by anti-spam filters from being reproduced, or I would have copied it too.

********

Comment of Jack McRitchie

Jack McRitchie May 19, 2011; 09:47 A.M.

'I think your photography has improved recently.  You always had a wonderful documentary eye but your latest work seems more impressionistic and somehow deeper.  This one is excellent.'

(end of Jack McRitchie's comment, reproduced here)

I've always had this 'impressionistic' look to a few photos I've taken, and the last one that was featured prominently was taken about three or four years ago, but I didn't have the understanding to post it until one day I was looking over past captures for 'gems' when I looked at a photo with a drunk young man laying sprawled across the lap of his girlfriend, taken with extremely high ISO, with color shifts and the subject barely recognizable due to the distortion of high ISO with exceedingly strong color 'noise' from an older digital SLR (best of its time, but not good enough for middle of the night shooting).

Again, this was taken with a cheapo refurb D3000 with a max ISO of 1600 but at ISO 100, and I think it is the equivalent of the same sensor as the D200 or even the same sensor exactly, (the second best of its time, but far from good by today's standards, where the new cheapo cameras have 14.2 megapixels and a very high max ISO, before noise becomes a real issue.).

I think this 'trend' has been there all along, but unrevealed and undisciplined.

Did you see my photo of the 'Sandblaster' posted within my first six months here -- it's all blurs, and one of my best ever, and film yet, before I got a my first digital body.

What I think happened is I got my bearings, and started understanding what it was I was doing along these lines and ceased failing to recognize good stuff that was not main line PN or 'street/documentary'.

Three years I got a mentor, a famous critic, friend of the late Helmut Newton,  printer and friend of Sally Mann, friend (and godfather to the child of) of Nan Goldin and so forth -- he knew and still knows most everybody in photography.

He took me under his wing; gratis and for a while, I ended up living with him having seminars first on my photography for which he curated my entire work to that date, then on photography in general, then art, then on everything else.

I'm going to see him soon, we're still fast friends.  He's promised to help me - he says my work is brilliant, and that coming from a guy who worked with Herb Ritts, and others of that ilk.

He saw in my work things I just didn't see, and said 'see, this is 'BRILLIANT' and 'this one is FANTASTIC', and though I was a very heavy doubter, time has proved him right, and I am proud to call this genius and enfant terrible a friend as well as mentor.

He showed me the worth of photos mostly I didn't show to anyone, and in curating my files, found some he called 'stunning' I hadn't an idea were worth anything. I showed them here and on another site, and he was right!

I've put a lot of stock in his word, but I've tested it too, as we went along.  I went to famous gallery openings with him (he did the printing/curating) and of course, everybody knew him and cornered him - I felt sort of like a yokel or a fifth wheel (he's entirely heterosexual as am I, in case you had any thoughts along that line).

He wants to 'discover' and 'promote' me, all for the joy of doing so, I think, and I'd like him to, and know it would give him great pleasure, so I go nowhere else.

I think he gave me focus to 'see' what I was doing and to create or at least exhibit more freely what I was already creating along the 'impressionist' lines.

You just would never have seen work like this from me though it would be in my files unrecognized, I think, without a curator/mentor of world class like him.

Wish me luck on my journey.

Thanks for the comment, Jack. There was a story there and you hit on it.

john

John (Crosley)

John.

with all due respect to you and him,I am not describing him .

you said in your reply to me (in this case it doesn't match this man's dignified reality.)

The way the image was edited ,I mean the blur effect around him and around the pedestrian let me feel first and say second, describing my feeling upon viewing the image so very spontaneously and innocently.

The way I write it is just describing my feeling about your presentation of the image,Damn the language barrier.

Furthermore, silly me ,I am a title man,and have read the title for the first time right here,if I read it at the first round ,I would comment differently.you know that fine title of yours would provoke a different emotion I guess as it do right now.

John,it took me about 15 minutes writing , correcting and re correcting this paragraph ,and still think I have not put my true and real intention into the right words,.

As about my feeling toward this fine man as you described him,it is the same of my feeling about this man in the link.

http://1x.com/photo/41730/portfolio/35918

and the woman in this link

http://www.usefilm.com/image/1615495.html

stay well and fine.

S.S.AlSeihk.

If you, as Jack McRichie, considered that 'impressionistic' or an 'impressionistic look' was newer to my photography, consider the linked photograph posted around March 3, 2004, when I had joined this service by only a few months.  It is a scan of a film capture, taken at too slow a shutter speed for a fast-moving man at work.

The capture, 'Sandblaster' I consider one of my best ever. I put it on the last page of a private book I had printed, because I considered it so good and so important to that portion of my work which is 'impressionistic'.

Please click on this link:

http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=2180049&size=lg

Have a look, then let me know your feelings.

I acknowledge that there is a lot of difference between 'Sandblaster' and the image posted above, but do you see they were both taken by the same photographer just using one part of his various and more multidimensional styles?

I'm not just a 'street'/documentart' photographer, but do nudes, to news, to landscapes, fine art and anything else that seems interesting at the moment.

I like to to portraits for instance.  I hope I do all the above well, but with minimal photoshopping.  I hope I don't need to use the digital darkroom to take a good capture and can hire people who are artistic to transform any work into the best possible, as I'm too busy making new captures.

My motto: If it isn't good enough, take another!

john

John (Crosley)

I suppose from the linked photos you may be Iraqi, though you don't say.  Your name says 'Arab' and probably Iraqi and also from the subect(s), I'm led to believe Iraqi.

I have not been there, but a sister lived there mostly for 17 years and was librarian at Mosul University's library, before the war with Iran when Saddam Hussein wanted to confiscate her US passport, make her a virtual prisoner and maybe enlist her teenage son into his military. 

He was US born, but also an Iraqi citizen as his father was Iraqi and a wonderful guy, now deceased. I worked alongside his father at one of my very first jobs, and he was an outstanding man, also extremely strong, as well as having an outstanding personality.

My sister loved him enough to marry him, then go to Iraq, only to find she was banished to the kitchen with a head covering when the men discussed things after dinner, but that didn't last long - my sister was not brought up that way.

Ultimately she returned to the USA long after because of the Iran-Iraq war's outbreak and its threat, and as her son grew up, he became a US Air Force pilot, and maybe their only Muslim pilot and of course he spoke fluent Arabic!

He was stationed often in Saudi, and I'm now out of touch.

I also knew about Saddam Hussein long before the rest of the world heard of him, and his awful Baath party, as well as Iraq's oceans or at least lakes of oil -- some even paved over.

Life has moved on, my brother-in-law has passed away, but I have never lost my interest in Iraq, or settled in my mind the unspeakable things George Bush sold the American people about Iraq being part of Al-Quaeda, even though Saddam Hussein would have no truck with Al-Quaeda and bin Laden.

Bush just wanted Americans in Iraq, and he plainly lied.

Now I see you are a humanist, and in fact, I assumed anyone commenting on this photograph was, so you actually were in no danger in my eyes.

I am touched you bought the aged man a wheelchair . . . that is more than I ever have done . . . .especially that others were willing to pay once you published his photo.

The wrappings on the bridge of his eyeglasses tell quite a story, too.

A story of dignity under privation.

I am touched.

Do not fear my judgment.

I write what I see, then if there's more, I expect a reply, and yours was magnificent.

I am pleased.

john

John (Crosley)

No, it isn't.

If there was a Patricia in Iraq during the '70s and '80s,in a high teaching/university position, from the south through Mosul, though, she probably would have known her or at least 'of her'. 

I understand Western expatriate women knew each other or 'of' each other in a loose-knit sort of way -- a sort of grapevine exited with many friendships, and I understand there is some sort of alumnae friendships among those (or was last I heard).

She may have been the head of the Mosul University library (her husband was a horticulture professor or similar I think), or the assistant director; memory to me says 'director' though I may be wrong. 

I would think the Iraqis would not have wanted to give the top title to an American, though I expect, since she had a master's in library science, she ran the place while she was there.

When Saddam Hussein was shown on TV showering kids with dinar and gold coins from the back of his limousine as they followed with joyous expressions, all broadcast nationwide for the public, to show adulation of Saddam, she KNEW that restrictions were coming, war with Iran was soon to begin, since it was clear Saddam felt the need for unprecedented public support, and his propaganda machine was going full tilt.

That was her signal to get out.

Every two years she spent summers in the USA.

As her turn came, she just bundled up the Sterling silverware, then went to the USA with her kids and never returned.

Bye bye Iraq, the planned confiscation of her US passport, and halving also of her generous salary; Iraqis earned half paid to Americans and other foreigners, and they planned to give her an Iraqi passport and confiscate her American passport, I understood.

Bad move! 

She said nothing, I understand, but just went 'bye, bye' silently.

Her American born but Iraqi raised son went to high school in the US, excelled, and eventually became the only Iraqi-US citizen in the US Air Force a few years later, and an excellent pilot -- a superb guy -- one charismatic heck of a guy who drew heads from his charisma whenever he walked into a room, and was not overly impressed with himself (Islamic faith I think and good parenting - also his father had a similar bearing and way with people which I think he partly inherited and partly learned from watching his poppa as a youth. 

Poppa taught me a thing or two also with his wonderful personality when I was in my late teens, too, because as a doctoral student for a while he lived with my family, and I did work with him at one of my very first jobs - on a farm no less.

I am more multi-cultural than even Photo.netters would ever believe for a white bread American kid from a white bread town in Oregon.

Foreign born doctoral students of all colors were in and out of my house during my formative years with their dissertations, seeking my mom's typing, and also her excellent editing (which she provided at no extra cost and was priceless)  Some of these people are now world leaders in places from India to Africa to the Far East, and have her editing of their theses (dissertions) in common or they wouldn't have received their degrees.  (language issues would have prevented it, and maybe expression issues, too, as many cloudy ideas were straightened out by my mom's clear headed editing).

john

John (Crosley)

Thank you so much for telling me part of your family's fine memory,the world have becomes so small,and this image of yours is the proof,you shoot ,I comment,you reply ,I do another comment,to find that your sister is working in the university that I graduated from some thirty years ago,and I am sure in my heart that one day my road have crossed a road that your family have crossed too,

I am so pleased to hear from you a fine short stories about your memories,

stay well and fine ,and have a nice days.

You did not reveal that you went to that university . . . . how very interesting . . . . and about the same time my sister WAS a libarian (director or some sort, we can discuss in what capacity) there.  It also is possible she used a pseudonym for protection but never told me.

That was soooo different then for an American, especially                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      an American young woman, to be working for the government of Iraq, let alone the Baathist run government headed by Sadaam Hussein.

Yet I am certain, since my brother-in-law bridled when I asked him why he did not join the (unknown to me then and therefore only a name) Bathists, that each of those two abhorred the Baathist Party. 

He did not dare describe to me all the unspeakable things Baathists did to people, and perhaps they were still developing them much earlier.

Yes, perhaps our families had connections even 30 years ago we are discovering now as you and I have a newfound connection.

;~))

john

John (Crosley)