'A Hearty Laugh'

Winter now is passing, daytime temperatures are climbing and Kyiv,

Ukraine residents are climbing out of their cramped homes to their

nearly immaculate parks where they congregate to enjoy each others'

company. Here this Kyiv pensioneer treats himself to some

homemade pickles, some distilled potato 'juice', and has a hearty laugh

with friends in a local park. Your ratings and critiques are invited and

most welcome. If you rate harshly or very critically, or if you wish to

make a remark, please submit a helpful and constructive comment;

please share your superior photographic knowledge to help improve my

photography. Thanks! Enjoy! John

Great picture. It's so easy to focus on the guy laughing that you almost miss the gal scoffing in the background. Well done capturing this moment-Regards.

I take an awful lot of ordinary photos, but once in a while take an extraordinary one. 

Wait until I have this one worked up by my Photoshopper (it won't be posted here, as I do my own work, however rudimentary, for posting here).

Then it will be stunning; he's got tremendous skills and it will be gallery worthy, I think.

This is just a rough workup, to start things off from four 8gig chip today and a little left over from yesterday (two cameras).

Thanks for the high praise.

Be sure to come back from time to time; you never know what you'll find here, from news to nudes.

john

John (Crosley)

Life radiates from every pore, beautiful!

So, you have distilled what it is I try to do.

To capture LIFE.

This time I think we both agree I succeeded.

(I do other things as well; the more 'arty' things, abstractions, portraits, more 'street' where I am known to be anonymous (certainly not here), and so forth as well as 'nudes to news'.

But in shots like this and in almost all 'street' shots, most 'portraits' too, my goal (and my specialty if I have one) is my quest to bring LIFE out of people and to do as I did at dinner tonight;

To charm the life out of neighboring diners in 2 minutes to the point where they were photographic putty (nothing pejorative intended) so they really revealed themselves, shedding their defensiveness, so charmed were they by actually seeing THEMSELVES captured as they appeared to me in their charmingness and 'realness' as opposed to a 'snapshot', 'wedding crowd' pic', portrait studio photo or otherwise -- just sitting at a diner table goofing around with each other . . . enjoying, then projecting that enjoyment to me and my cameras, and soon, ultimately through this sevice, to you and others like you.

All in two to three minutes.

It's almost miraculous to see the transformation; instead of people running from this 'street photographer' they sometimes practically climb over themselves trying to inject themselves into my photographs.

(One couple, whom I refused to photograph because they were simply 'uninteresting', on a train today/tonight in between cities on today's 9,000 mile jaunt, started making snarky remarks in retaliation for my having refused to photograph them, and then refusing their money when they suppposed I would change my mind about their not being 'interesting enough' if they gave me money

'I don't sell out', I told them, which left them decidedly sour, then I took a fantastic photo of the person next to me, which will appear here in a week or so (it was INTERESTING, which is a main criterion of mine), just to illustrate the point to them.

(They were boorish Capitalists, male-female, trying to one-up each other on how wonderful each was and how knowledgeable and 'powerful', and I put a damper on their game by refusing their money or participation in their game of demonstrating their 'power' games.)

I have a tendency to do such things.

;~))

I'll bet you do too, but with such consummate charm, such people don't even suspect how greatly they'e been outclassed?  (rhetorical question).

john

(who knows class when he sees it, and he sees it in your photography.)

John (Crosley)

As candid a shot as you can ever get. Love the expression and the reaction of the lady (was she reacting to you?).

Quick question: what lens did you use? And what determined the choice of lens for this shot?

It's anybody's guess without speaking to the woman what exactly she was reacting to, though I would suspect to this man's pretty outrageous laugh, and being photographed in the middle; perhaps because it's in her mind a little unseemly.

Russian and Ukrainian women are very conscious of 'looks' whereas men like this man are decidedly NOT, and she and he were somehow engaged in conversation and may have had some other 'connection' -- who knows?

For choice of lens, I like the Nikon (Nikkor) 12-24 of which I've had a large number. It has a very strong/stiff barrel and is both extraordinarily sharp and rugged. I almost never sharpen beyond minimal (and sometimes never) captures made with the lens.  Others find it not that sharp, but all my versions have been very sharp.

The idea was to have it as close to him as possible.  Autofocus point on his eye, and 11 autofocus points activated but 53 followon autofocus points activated in case of movement. (and it's clear he moved, keeping where his eye was on his mouth, for a wonderful help -- his rotting teeth and mouth are in clear focus -- which is the focal point of the photo.  What a great happenstance.

A superwide DX lens is chosen for getting in super close (often I left reluctant subjects peer through the lens to see how 'far' away they appear, then they calm down, when I practically shove it in their face or down their throat (figuratively).

I took a few, told the man simple and crude joke, he roared back in laughter and the rest is depicted.

All in a moment.  I don't think the woman heard the joke, so she is not recoiling at it.  

He obviously is delighted. 

This is just what the doctor ordered, of course.

If heart disease is from inflammation and inflammation starts with dental decay in many cases and travels to the circulatory system it is no wonder why so many Ukrainian men die of heart disease before age 60. I do not know his age.

I am delighted with the photo/not my own photoshopping and am traveling and cannot fix the photoshopping now, but later it will probably sparkle.

Best to you Samrat.

john

John (Crosley)