'The Crowded Metro Bench'

Family and friends nearly shove the young daughter off the end of this crowded metro

station bench in Kiev, Ukraine recently. Your ratings, critiques and observations are

invited and most welcome. If you rate or critique harshly, or wish to make a remark,

please submit a helpful and constructive comment; please share your photographic

knowledge to help improve my photography. Thanks! Enjoy! john

Poor girl, considering there is space for the young man's jacket on the bench, but not her! The scene has a very nice feel of staging, as if a great artist conceived the scene for a painting. The accessories on the people's hands add both diversity and interest. They also attest to their individual personalities. A mom with a rose, two young persons with gadgets. The closeness of their relationship is reflected in the symmetry of their leg positions. The mom seems somewhat aloof, with a sort of fake inattention often used by parents to discourage agitated youngsters. My only suggestion would be a bit more space under their feet. Great timing, and as always, great shot!

I would be falsely modest if I were to say I were not guided in part here by those great works of art you refer to when I got off a metro train and spied this.

I understood I might only have one chance at a photo entirely candid before someone spied me so I sat on the bench opposite, prpared my camera (90% preset anyway) but chose the camera with the tele 55-300 lens instead of the one with shorter tele, 55 mm at the long end, so at 55 mm this is the most I could get into the frame with my back pressed against the tunnel wall.

I would have liked to have slightly more of their shoes/feet in the photo, but, well, you can't always have it all.

Your analysis is superb, and I won't rehash it here, just merely endorse it.

I will say that this would have not been postworthy in my view except for the young girl being shoved off the end like that and the look on her face and the attitude of her legs trying to keep balance which i think are the focal point of the photo -- or at least the place where the eye will end up wandering.  

That's often the point of a better photo, not just to tell a story, but to engage the viewer, and have the viewer's eye trace a view around the photo settling at a point of interest (here, the girl's awkward seating).

Best to you for a worthy critique, and in all other ways.

Thank you so much for honoring my photo, taken in one shot (hit or miss), then I just got up and left without reviewing.

john

John (Crosley)

John,

each person is communicating in one way or another, verbally, physically, electronically. A lot crammed in on that bench- well seen!

You are entirely right.

The moment I spied this scene, I stopped in my tracks, and looked for a place to make or assess camera adjustments, made them promptly and just took the photo.

Moments later, they all got up and went their separate ways.

You just gotta be prepared.  If I had switched to the camera with the shorter tele to get the feet in after realizing the longer tele was just to long at its short end to capture the feet, I'd have no capture at all.

My rule:  Take the photo, then refine by taking more if possible and necessary, but at once, TAKE THE PHOTO and memorialize the situation if it is at all worth saving, then WORK THE SCENE if you possibly can make it better.

This is one of those scenes in which risk of discovery would have ruined the candid character of the scene, and i was quite satisfied that being seated with a long enough shutter speed (1/100th second) at ISO 6400 on a newer DX format Nikon would give me the results I wanted so I wasn't worried about a wavering stance and blurs from camera motion.

Often i'll take multiple shots of a scene when I'm standing, and hope that one is in focus and not ruined by focus/movement blur, and that repeatedly has saved my skin; not so here.  I was quite certain I had a good capture with one (review shows two) capture(s).

(identical).

Best to you, and thanks for your comment.  I'm always delighted to have you comment.

john

John (Crosley)

Such masterful advice for spontaneous street photography. Nothing in life saddens me more than having a scene like this dissolve into eternity before I press the shutter release. Then again, maybe the thing that saddens me more is that anyone could rate this below 5. 

I have a rule and it proved itself yesterday.

I emerged from the metro into full sunlight and had overlooked resetting my Nikon with 55-300 tele from ISO 6400 to ISO 200 to ISO 800 or so, for the proper conditions, and there she was, an animated young woman walking fast toward me with some face paint on and her hair streaming behind her caught by wisps of wind and her own motion-generated breeze.

I fired without regard for the preset ISO which I recalled afterward was NOT set for street ISO, but it was a fancy newer camera though not so expensive, and prayed.  After all, if you don't press the shutter release, if you don't get the photo, you might at least learn a lesson about how the equipment is going to behave under extreme conditions.  I was set for jpeg/nef(raw).

As it was, both the jpeg and the raw (nef) came out looking terrific, and I recalled another photo I took with a similar but better camera set at ISO 4000 with same lens at the very same spot after alighting from the same metro station.

It has won me acclaim -- photo of a revolutionary fighter -- a portrait -- one of my best and the only one in recent times of stingy ratings to get a flat 6.0 ratings and an acclaim by LensCulture magazine.

The first I took (the fighter portrait) was superb, the one I took yesterday was merely adequate, but the colors were saturated and 'right on' and best, the framing was perfect as the woman approached me fast.  I got three good frames from that, whereas if I had bent over or otherwise tried to adjust my ISO, I would have nothing to show for that.

Shoot first, at least once or twice, then (unless you're absolutely sure) shoot a few more.

I've been going over the frames from 12 years of shooting, frame by frame, and it's frustrating to find those circumstances I did not press the shutter more than once when I could have and to find blurry eyes (that's the most telling point of focus for me usually), and then having to resort to 'shake reduction' under Photoshop CC's new sharpening tool to see if I can 'rescue' the capture if it's good enough.

Often now I use that tool on photos that are not absolutely perfect, and if it only sharpens a little, the artifacts are very small and can be controlled, and photos are improved greatly -- often from good to very good or better in sharpness and overall attractiveness at least not viewed pixel by pixel since that tool screws up the pixels -- the more blur is fixed, the more artifacts and the farther back a viewer must be to 'take in' the photo in its sharpened glory.

Mainly, I've always with digital tried for multiple shots where I can, but sometimes circumstances interfere.  It helps I'm a steady holder, but I use a long zoom (300 mm extension on dx format = 450 mm fx and even with VR, that requires steady holding especially at maybe 1/20th of a second, and especially when tired and control is hard.

Thanks for endorsing my advice.

I work hard to bring you these photos and also the tips that come along with them, and it's great to see that some (maybe many) do read them and it helps some improve.

That's the point of 'sharing' on this photography sharing site.

When I came here, literrally no one shared; they just competed, and I vowed to change that unilaterally, and I think I have helped change the conversation and manners here somewhat by courtesy and openness about things like technique as well as the myriad other subjects that have come about in past comments, which now are approaching 19,000 -- maybe within the next month.

Watch for the 19,000th comment!

And thanks for being a good critic and photo friend for so many years with helpful advice and critiques.

john

John (Crosley)