Pub Lovers

Any good?

YES!

 

Though I might be inclined to lose the out of focus object in the foreground. If you were to crop just to the right of this, there would still be enough of the doorway to establish the location.

i agree,it's a pity that blurred foreground thing, but i wouldn't really cut it out, too much would be lost from the environment if only the edge of the door stays. Cool shot.

Nice picture, tough I would heve cropped out the left part with the disturbing lower left corner. Apart from this, nice couple

The object in lower left is a bit distracting but nice moment captured.

is the important thing here and all the rest of it is extraneous. I'd crop it just above (what appears to be) that menue box and just to the right of the door.

I know I'm gonna sound like a weirdo, but I think you cropped too much and I'd like to see the full frame. Its an exceptional street capture and I'd like to see how they look with the maximum amount of space around them. Give them the life they live, not the life as we would crop it. The lower left corner? Not an issue at all to me. That's one of those necessary elements to seeing the scene and I have no problem with it. You have an exceptional eye for the images of the street, Phil. Just give 'em some room, don't crowd them in. We are all intelligent viewers and can discern the weight of the image with or without the crop. Don't misinterpret my comments, though, I like this immensely. Excellent work.

 

P.S: Got your email and will respond shortly.

Thanks peeps. There's a lot of disapproval of the object lower left. Ideally it wouldn't be there. But it is and I have to live with the truth. Just like there might be a bit more room beneath the feet ... and so on. It's difficult to be spot on with everything on demand.

There's also a majority in favour of cropping still further; to exclude the door and concentrate on the lovers. From what I can tell, such a crop is dictated by the blurry lower left object again. This object is repeated in sharp focus in the picture. It's the street post's nearest neighbour. As you will see from the full frame Andy asked for, I cropped entirely from the right and I can hear people therefore thinking I cropped the sharp stuff out in favour of the blurry; from the wrong side. May be I did? Well I cropped to include the people indoors. Indoors we have a woman on a stool, a bloke blasting on a fag and the news on the tele. I liked all this activity, the more so because it was unknown to the lovers and the lovers were unknown to the boozers inside. A kind of parallel world where never the twain shall meet. I like capturing the two. It occurred on Andy's "Down and Up".

"Give them the life they live, not the life as we would crop it" is a suggestion that has plagued me for some time. I'm happy to crop in the way I was imagining at the time or in a way dictated by the result. But in these "haphazard" productions there is a part of me which yearns for complete sincerity, however well or poorly I contained the moment on film. Take the full frame here. It's not "that" wrong is it?More discussion privately or on this page on this topic would be truly interesting.

I sent an initial response via the email without seeing the full frame. But suffice it to say, I like this a lot more with the whole thing there for us to see (I know, I'm pissing all over every compositional rule in the book). Mentioning "Down and Up", if I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have touched it and left it uncropped.

 

For those of you who believe that I'm leading Phil astray, go find an image by HCB called "Gare du Nord, 1955" (I tried but can't find it on the web). If you can explain what makes that work as full-frame versus this image, I will humbly shut up.

 

Oh, and I just went to an exhibition in Chicago called "Winogrand, 1964". Confirms everything I felt about the cropping issue.

 

One more item, a quote:

 

"If you're not capturing the moment for yourself, you're not getting the picture." --Tom Harney

I'm adding another vote for the uncropped version. Sometimes you need to crop, other times you need to include the milieu. This one fits in the latter catagory, IMO. Nice shot.

Excelent candid. I definitely prefer the cropped version!

Oh great! This discussion is switching from side to side and with it an opportunity for a debate for and against the act of cropping frames of this genre and perhaps some theory and a development of ideas. Goodie! Its interesting Leanne, to read that you were interested in my comments on this pic of mine. I like to offer my own thoughts to those who have kindly critiqued my pictures. I do it entirely for selfish reasons in that its a way to analyse the critiques I receive and to enable the critics to get a better handle on what was going through my head. May be I impart some food for thought too. Writing it down is like using a tripod. It slows up the process and makes you think with greater precision.

 

I suppose my interest with cropping goes way back to pre-PN pre-PS days when I just took landscape slides for me to look at through a projector. I regret it now, but if the slide incorporated something that I thought ruined the subject, like a quarter of a tree poking in where it wasnt wanted, then Id bin the slide. In those days there was no opportunity for me to crop (or clone for that matter) because I didnt print and the picture stood or fell on everything within the slide mount. Then along came PN and six months later (for me) PS, and an opportunity to crop and remove unwanted aspects. But Ive never forgotten the way I worked and how if 90% of the content looked good but there was this 10% I wished would clear off, I didnt press the shutter. Im still like that now and often hear myself saying, hey dont worry, you can crop that out in PS, remember? The other thing Ive noticed since using square MF, is that I can see pictures in squares and although I might be using 35mm gear at the time, will shoot with the crop pre-visualised as square. Ive also got hung up on aspect ratios. So when cropping I will insist that my crop follows conventional aspect ratios; this one being 6x7.

 

So with that bit of background out the way Im gonna move on to the pic itself. I note Andy, Leanne and Simon all say that with the extra on the right now visible in the full frame, that the picture is preferred. Perhaps Paul and the others who saw the picture before I offered the uncropped version might share that view. That raises an interesting topic for me in that if the picture had been staged, I presently cannot imagine any artist conceiving of an improvement by introducing the people at the very edge of this pic of mine, arranged as they are. May be there would be a case for their inclusion if they were looking into the picture, perhaps at me or across to the left and not blocking one another out. But theyre not. Whats more, if the picture had been staged and I had the power to compel these people to freeze or clear off out the picture, and I could move about, elevate myself and spend as much time as might be needed to satisfy myself I had the absolute perfect point of view, then the picture wouldnt have been taken from this half kneeling position on the pavement as I pretended to tie up my shoelace. The blur lower left wouldnt be there. So from my thinking of a conventional aesthetic, my view is that the crop I uploaded, notwithstanding the blurry lower left was the best that could be achieved out of this frame. Ideally the lovers would be moved a pace nearer the center, more room below their feet and there would be better illumination of the pub interior. But thats all back to staging again.

 

Yet with all that, when I looked at the full frame again yesterday with the benefit of Andys comment (who at that time hadnt seen the full frame) I thought, well the full frame isnt that bad. And I got to thinking again about the old ways I used to take pictures with no thought of cropping. Thing is, this old way didnt include photojournalism style picture taking and Id spend an age moving in or getting around that tree; even getting absolutely soaked wading into rivers to remove a branch that had got stuck on some rock and in turn had caught a plastic bag. Or de-cluttering a forest floor that had too many branches on the ground for my liking. And this was when the only person who would look at the picture would be me! So what am I to make of the fact that I can be so meticulous about what was in a landscape yet find some attraction in the destabilized composition of a full frame street shot? That I was cropping with landscape notions in mind? Perhaps I wasnt paying close enough attention. Or was paying attention in an inappropriate way. Thats something Ive learned.

 

So lets say for arguments sake, that the better way is to show full frame. Plainly if the full frame happily coincides with the stage-managed approach no problem. But every time? Regardless? This is what Im getting to thinking. Im thinking that where I take a picture strictly on the hoof without any prior thought of composition the picture is what comes out the other end; wonky horizontals, blurry stuff, the lot. Because what I was recording was never intended as a composition. What I was recording was a still with a such and such lens on a 35mm camera pointed in the direction of what I thought was 1/500 sec of a piece of activity worthy of a frame or two. And then when I see the negs what decides if a frame is a keeper or not is whether the activity proved to be worth recording, not whether the composition meets a particular standard.

 

I remember only yesterday going home in the car listening to the news and the broadcaster comically mispronounced a word. And immediately I got to thinking that if that comical split second had been an activity on the street and Id got a camera around my neck Id have missed it though it was right in front of me at the time. Getting an ideal composition for that split second would have been a no hoper. But lets say if Id been slick enough to predict that a mispronunciation was a-coming and captured it on film as it happened, would the picture be a loser because there was a blurry thing in the lower left and a couple of bystanders had been cropped half in/half out on the edge? Should I be afraid to release it because it contained these attributes? Should I only do so after some heavy weight cropping? May be after all that cropping the tiny piece of film that remained couldnt be printed up to any decent size?

 

Its interesting to spend some time on this topic getting my thoughts down on paper (right thoughts or plain illogical garbage) because it seems easy to get misled on PN. Take this pic. Before I uploaded it I was thinking of my perception of the expectations of other PN users. And thinking how best to present it lead to the crop. Visions of what constituted an appropriate composition for this genre had controlled my approach. And then having presented it, there were calls for more cropping! There was kind applause for capturing the moment but the moment was overshadowed by the blur. I say misled with a good deal of hesitation because I fully appreciate their time and that all those comments prior to Andys were made with the very best of intentions and all for my benefit. I dont want anyone to feel hurt because I use the word misled. Remember, I said (and still believe) that ideally the blur wouldnt be there nor the folks on the right edge. In the same way, Im writing this and perhaps giving food for thought. As I said earlier, right thoughts or plain illogical garbage. Im just chucking this out for debate.

 

Composed shots are a different story. Originating in landscape Ive seen a picture if only the light was right. So Ive stood there waiting for the light to change. Same with street stuff. Ive seen the picture possibility because there are a couple of components which, if coincided with some other would give effect to the image I pre-visualised. So there I am. But it needs an old lady with a white wooly hat to come into view to complete it. There Im waiting and all I have to think about is the composition and make damn sure I click the shutter when the wooly hat comes by. In that situation Im not so sure that the full frame is the only picture I can legitimately present. My picture is the composition I pre-visualised and if I pre-visualised and arranged my camera for a square crop thats the picture. Because the composition dictated the four corners of the picture and the bits I excluded from my pre-visualisation, although included on the film, were never intended to be seen.

 

 

 

I hear what you say Andy on the matter of Winogrands exhibition. I haven't got around to studying him yet. But you mention Robert Doisneau in your e-mail to me concerning cropping and clutter. In a book I have of Doisneau photographs all are single shots without information about camera format. But there is one picture where we see 6 "out takes" and the definitive version. I'm attaching the six and the one to this comment because it seems to me most likely that Doisneau was using a 6x6 and that he had the essence of his picture; he just needed the third element (the glance) to complete it. Like I was talking about earlier. The picture could pass my "composition" test therefore. It wasn't entirely impromtu but pre-visualised; staged with the exception of the glancer. Notice however that the "out takes" (and I use inverted commas because I am not so sure that they were utterly rejected and any one of them here on PN would be a winner) are cropped to something approaching a 2:3 aspect ratio. When I first looked at them I wrongly figured the pictures had been taken with 35mm equipment and the agreeable version had been cropped square. It's not as if the "out takes" are simple contact prints, but rather are a series of pictures that Doisneau was prepared to crop. I may be wrong here and that the cropping has been done by the editor of my book simply to fit them on the page, but with the admiration of Doisneau that come

Thanks Leanne for all your interest lately. Im enjoying this opportunity to chat and the value of your contributions.

 

So lets see if Ive got this straight (some of which Im pretty sure I havent).

 

Heres the bit I think Im straight on:

 

Street photography is not mere snapshooting of things you see. Agreed. Instead its to do with anticipating the moment and instinct. Agreed too. The eye and the brain and all that stuff.

 

Now the bits Im not so straight on:

 

I think you imply I fall short with the point of view. The point of view wasnt that good period, or not that good for the crop? Ill attempt to answer that question by saying I think it wasnt bad but it would have been better had I been stood in front of the blurry thing and that I made the blurry thing worse with the crop I made. You advise that I should consider the point of view rather than aesthetic perfection. Which I take to mean that by cropping as I did, the point of view was made to look poorly chosen by my opting for (what I recognise was doubtful) aesthetic perfection. The crop allowed the blurry thing to dominate more so than it did in the full frame and it was silly of me to have done this to eliminate (for improved aesthetics) the people in the extreme right. Thus I cropped badly. In my view I cropped badly because to eliminate one imperfection I raised the value of another where at the full frame stage, neither were blatantly imperfect.

 

Have I got that piece of advice right?

 

Next you say Your final result needs to be compositionally perfect, with or without minor adjustments afterwards. OK, but you never crop you say. Thats your approach, but youre saying cropping is not a no-no if others feel a need to, though I detect in here a belief of yours that the inclusion of a crop will be unlikely to improve a picture. Ideally there wouldnt be cropping is what youre saying, right? Because if it was wrong or not as right as it should be when shot on the fly, its too late to impose order and discipline afterwards. Meaning, I think, that order and discipline cannot be introduced successfully afterwards.

 

Have I got that right too?

 

Whether so or not, it takes us back to the importance of [1] instinct (right place right time) [2] point of view (right place) and [3] anticipation (right time). And if the picture doesnt have right place right time then its not as successful as it might have been, so go out and do it better next time.

 

Finally, re-reading what I wrote yesterday where I sought to justify a place for cropping, not all the time, but for pre-visualised shots, and today where you say Im going about things the wrong way, was that to do with my cropping theory, the way Im trying to get pictures from the street or something else?

 

A big thanks again.

 

 

Hey what's all this I just walked into? Seems like something over qualifying rights to present critiques on PN. Is it really such a big deal? Whatever it is, just remember, today is 11 September. Let's not have any animosity today of all days eh? You are both my friends and I want us all to get along fine. You've both got plenty of interesting things to say about pickies and I like listening to it. I want as much of it as you can muster and then some. And funnily enough you're both free to slag me off on my pages as much as you want to, but I'd rather you didn't do it to each other seeing how it leads to upset.

 

So cool it eh? Let's have no more of it.

 

Right, who fancies a beer? You comin' Erin? You commin' Leanne? Let's get our coats on, go out have a laugh and get hammered. I'm buyin' coz I owe you guys :)

The more I think about photography (my photography), the more I reach the conclusion that the intent should come before the image. That previsualizing a scene or anything is worthless if there is no clear intent behind it. "Why am I taking the picture?", and especially, "What am I trying to mean through the picture?".

 

This is my current thinking. I want to try to stop making snapshot pictures, however well composed. I'd rather have some pictures with meaning, even if they are not perfect, that perfect meaningless shots.

 

Coming back to Phil's shot, I think it's hard to discuss crops without knowing the intent. Were Phil studying body positions during a kiss (and there could certainly be very interesting photographic work to be done in that area), a very tight crop might be appropariate. If the intent is "alone in the middle of a crowd", then another crop would be better suited.

 

Phil expressed his view of the isolation between the kissers and the boozers. Personally, I get a stronger feeling of the same kind by including people on the right, but more than there are in the original frame. Because the inside of the pub is dark (at least on my screen) and I don't see an interaction between the inside and outside, it doesn't really work for me. Including a group that seems to be completely ignored by the kissers would work better for me.

 

So I think I would not only include the group here, but I would have framed more to the right (and also pointed the camera slightly down for the feet, but that's been said already).

 

I wrote the comment above as if I had made the picture and was trying to analyze what I should try to do better bext time.

 

Of course, all this might not apply here, and vice versa...

Come on kids, get back in. The break is over.

Hi Ilan. I won't talk about cropping becuase Ive ranted on endlessly about that above. Suffice to say I think I adopt all you say in terms of how the picture might be improved. So I'll respond with some thoughts on intent instead.

 

It seems to me that invariably a photographer had some purpose / intent in taking a picture. The act of clicking the shutter is not usually involuntary unless it was tripped inside the pocket. And film and development costs money. But I know what you are getting at. The snap shot of the kids stood next to Mickey Mouse had purpose and intent on one level. In terms of "meaning" it's meaning is superficial and transient; unlikely to have any significant meaning other than as a pictorial reminder to the photographer. And then there are other photographs. Packed full of "meaning". But this might be mean-spirited to the family snapper. I should like to think I would hesitate in adopting an overtly high and mighty standpoint.

 

Your wish to stop making snapshots and rather have meaningful pictures is why you're on photo.net. I suppose I'm the same. In the end only you can decide what constitutes a "meaningful" picture. And I'm the same. I can only speak for myself. And what constitutes a meaningful picture in my mind is where the picture meets the criteria I set for myself. Does the photograph reveal the extent of the awe, the solitude or some other emotion I experienced of the place where I took the photograph? Or the element(s) of way of living, kindness, suffering or whatever I detected? Is the assembly of components as amusing to me viewing the picture as I thought when I stumbled into them? Does the picture work well alongside others as a project?

 

If the picture fails to portray the intended characteristics then it is a disappointment. And like most disappointments they are best used as a means of learning and for improvement so that a dissapointment can be avoided next time. If the picture succeeds then it is the recognition of the success that achieves the status of being "meaningful". Meaning it's meaningful to me. And it's worth mentioning that I hate discovering that a picture is a disappointment. I say worth mentioning because if I didn't care I wouldn't be able to recognise a meaningful one from a dud. Nor get any better.

 

The great thing about producing a shot which meets your critiera is that it becomes something of personal property. You feel an inner wealth and pride for owning it. It's why Leanne's outburst that I felt nothing for this or any other of my photographs was particularly hurtful. It's almost like being told you don't love your children. Who was it that called his photographs his "little darlings"?

 

Whether or not something of the experience is communicated to an anonymous viewer is something beyond my control. It depends on how receptive the viewer is. You just keep your fingers crossed.

You say: Does the photograph reveal the extent of the awe, the solitude or some other emotion I experienced of the place where I took the photograph? Or the element(s) of way of living, kindness, suffering or whatever I detected?

I agree, but I think there's a difference between experiencing something while being somewhere (I could just be happy or sad for other reasons and get to a new place) and trying to convey something through a picture. Just shooting pictures while being happy does not necessarily make happy pictures, etc.

That's what I mean by 'intent'. I need to be conscious of what I want to mean with the picture, then (at least during the learning process) I need to try (before pressing the release) to compose the picture in a way that will express my intent... Not easy. In a way, I'm feeling something, then I want to try and say something through the picture. I'm more likely to try to say something that comes close to how I feel (I guess it makes things easier and I feel more like trying to say that thing anyway), but I also think that these are two different things.

Communicating the experience to an anonymous viewer is of course dependent on many factors we can't control, I try to focus on communicating the experience to chosen viewers (and never mind the photo.net ratings ;-)...

Thats what I meant by intent too. It was of the place I was referring to rather than say because Id just had a salary promotion. In that situation my happiness is unconnected with the spot Im standing on. Indeed, if Id just had a salary promotion and then set out to photograph suffering I doubt I would be all that receptive and would probably fail because the way I felt at the time was out of tune with my surroundings. Again, Im addressing how I feel.

 

Youre dead right its not easy to convey pictorial intent. I couldnt even convey what I was on about when I was writing about it!

Ladies and Gentlemen: Just got called away from my refereeing job at the WWF, hearing that broken furniture and domestic violence was in sway at www.photo.net.

Having looked at this picture before and seeing the storm that it has generated, I take my hat off to the Photog, whose picture quality BTW, puts him in the "Artist" category.

I rate this picture a "7" in both categories, now off all of you go and no pudding tonite..

John, i've tried the pudding trick, it doesn't work and infact nothing wouldn't.

 

Phil, i didn't bother to read every word of the entire page, with some commets seeming out of context and deleted. i did pick up a few points here and there.

 

as for the picture, it's a very fine street shot. not a question about that. and Andy was bang on in saying that full frame is better. only a very few (a couple) had the right spirit of viewing this shot, let alone critiquing it. without the people on the right and other elements surrounding the kissing couple, the photo just becomes sterile. they're better off kissing by their bedroom window. not only does this environment show the scene in its entirety, it also shows how oblivious the couple is to it. i truly like the shot personally. i'd have preferred to see a 400 speed feel with a bit more grain and moody midtones. i may also add a bit of burning on the right edge to slightly subdue the rendition of the people over there.

 

on the philosophy, i totally disagree with the claims that every (street) photo should have a convincing story. i'd rather see it in a way that every street photo WILL have its own story. just a face, a daily scene, an fleeting moment, a slice of life, a dimension of humanity, a face of a personality, etc.. -- as long as the photo manages to capture these events and moments in their fullest essence and spirit, throw in a bit of aesthetics, it deserves to be a fine photo.

I like both, the full frame and the crop. I might have liked the full frame even better if the people on the right would have been included more. It would have offset the lovers from the crowd... as they have their backs turned towards them. As if the crowd has no interest in love. The cropped version obviously would have a different theme than the one I expressed regarding the full frame version. Both IMO could work very well... I think they do actually. Really nice... really nice...