The Aging Rocker

This is 'The Aging Rocker' the timekeeper (drummer) for a famous band,

which is known to several generations of Americans, but name withheld

and name of band withheld, as his photo is taken without regard to

any 'celebrity'. Your ratings and comments are invited and most

welcome. If you wish to comment, please submit a helpful and

constructive comment, or your observation; also please share your

photographic knowledge to help improve my photography. Thanks!

Enjoy! John

Thanks.

I've got a few things to say about this, but I think I'll wait.

There's a story about this one (too, as usual, but I don't want to 'give away the store' too soon, and it's really interesting, to me at least, (not knock 'em dead interesting,but 'different').

Plus to me, he's NOT a celebrity, which is how I happened to photograph him. [i have a rule that I don't photograph celebrities except upon their express invitation, and when in the LA area especially, when I arrive at a restaurant or other place where celebrities are likely to congregate and speak with the wait staff (who always think I am paparazzi), I tell them (1) paparazzi in general are scum, (2) I am not a paparazzo, and (3) if a celebrity comes in in all likelihood I will not recognize him/her/it and (4) since I sometimes frame photos (even without taking pictures) please warn me if a celebrity is in the house so I can avoid even looking like I'll take their photo and point my camera in the other direction (or down) to avoid giving them the idea I'm stalking them . . .

I tell them my purpose is to make photos of people and to make the PHOTOS IMPORTANT because of the content and not the content (the celebrities) make my photos important . . . . if you understand.

I tell them (and it's absolute truth), that I don't want anybody looking at any photo of mine trying to figure out or just looking at the photo to 'see' a favorite star or anybody in this or that pose, but because it's a great or interesting photo, only.

And thanks very much for the very kind compliment, Ruud.

When you become more of a celebrity, I may ask your permission to photograph you if we meet (and I've lived in your neck of the woods -- in the more urban neck to be sure).

john

John (Crosley)

No smoking restaurants in all of California.

I shared a booth with him and his companion then photographed them (with bounce flash from my right from on camera), and looked at this for some time before finally working it up.

No smoking means no coffin nail in his fingers, but I bet a joint would fit better . . . . . based on recounted history. ;~)

John (Crosley)

Powerful working man portrait. In this case, it's a man whose work is with drum sticks rather than a wrench. The texture of this black and white image recalls the kind of 1930s photographs you might see of sharecroppers leaving Oklahoma during the Great Depression. Of course, the tattoo on his hand hints at a slightly different life biography, but if I hadn't learned from you his profession, I might think this was a photograph of a truck driver in a diner or any other variety of hard-living working man.

Great work in any event, I'm delighted you chose to post this image.

Believe it or not, this photo is 5-1/2 years old, taken with a D70 and because its range exceeded my abilities (then) to Photoshop it, I passed on it and posted another (also a very best one of mine).

Now, Photoshop CS4, if you right click on am image in Browser, will allow you to open a JPEG in Adobe Camera Raw and adjust it as you do a raw image though without the same latitude then move it over as a JPEG 16 bit (if you chose 16-bit, to Photoshop CS4 image editor, for final work with individual adjustments.

That's how I was able to process this image for which I had tried (and failed) several times before.

Let's say my skills (and available software) developed into the JPEG capture of this one. There then was little reason to capture as 'raw' as there was really

no good working software that would have handled a 'raw' file and a D70 would only shoot a jpeg 'basic' with raw, for a poor quality jpeg.

Thanks for the compliment.

John (Crosley)

Mark H.

It was not that I never intended to display this image. I have been intending to show it for 5-1/2 years or so, but it was nearly 'blown' and it outpaced my Photoshop skills and most Photoshop editions until edition CS4 could convert JPEGS through Adobe RAW converter as 16-bit .psd (Photoshop) files, that could handle the dynamic range (EVs) of this photo, and you can handle them in 'raw converter' rather than just being confined to Photoshop editor only, (and that for a .jpeg).

Otherwise it was interesting but not displayable;it also is as good (or better) in color, with an overall cast of brownish cast from the wooden benches, wall, and table, and light cast from reflections from those.

Nice color.

Another shot of him is in my Color, Single Photo folder,I think, from long, long ago but that one was exposed less brightly so it didn't have the same problems with being almost 'blown'.

Also,I worked this up for more contrast and 'darker' for some moodiness.

This guy is exactly what you say he reminds you of -- a 'working guy' -- except he has kind of hit 'the good life' - he doesn't have a 9 to 5 job anywhere and what i recall is he kind of drifts until his big name rock band gets together and goes to some place like Sturges, North Dakota for the biker gathering which overwhelms the town and they play and pay him what he thinks is a 'big salary', but otherwise he lives on what appears to be very little.

I don't think he has an equity position in the band (still unnamed, as I don't trade on celebrity) or if he was an 'original' member as while I greatly enjoy rock music, I am uncaring about its details.

I like what I like and very much but am no student of it.

Mostly I know most of the music of the times and have heard it to death, so pass it by until I find someone with new and different tastes whose tastes I like then love their playlist to expand my listening horizons.

Look at his hands; the hands of a working stiff.,

Stiff also, as in maybe somewhat arthritic, too, though he did not complain about arthritis or pain, but those joints are the joints of a guitarist (only other joints I saw like that were from a guitarist's hands -see my photo, this folder, of a man lighting up in Las Vegas, a 'Bruthuh'. - and his crooked 'guitar joints').

There's something about musical instruments and the hand joints, that causes this 'look' I think.

Yes, he could be out of Oklahoma from parents from Okie stock, easily, as he is in California, and the band I think from Southern California which is where the great migration took the Okies. (See Steinbeck's 'Grapes of Wrath').

In fact, he looks just like one would expect to see on an old Hudson, loaded with chairs, suitcases, a family, victuals and headed for a new life in Californie picking trees loaded with oranges for good wages just as promised (through the wages were never forthcoming and thousands or tens of thousands died of starvation, lured by unscrupulous labor contractors seeking to keep the labor pool full and depress wages - below subsistence level (for those who got work.)

Our subject here did not work much when I saw him, but he felt he got high pay and was happy to have it, not having other skills, so far as I could tell and not having a high education or other ways to earn remuneration.

Too much ( fill in the blank), (fill in the blank) and rock and roll, I think, or maybe just a one trick pony.

Nice guy. We have over time talked a number of times and I'd talk to him again if I saw him - we got along well.

Just not a nuclear scientist.

I never heard him as a drummer, except in a Santa Cruz, CA 'street' 'pickup band', but I am sure he's wonderful doing that, maybe even world class.

Others can design nuclear power stations.

He makes music.

Thanks, Mark for a highly literate comment.

John (Crosley)