black and white: then to now 'Out of the Subway'

This is the scene one day as pedestrians, two and four-legged, left a

major Kyiv subway, framed by an outstretched arm and hand, all of

which to me appeared slightly surreal. Your ratings and critiques are

invited and most welcome. If you rate harshly or very critically, please

submit a helpful and constructive comment; please share your

photographic knowledge to help improve my photography. Thanks!

Enjoy! John

:)

;~))

john

John (Crosley)

An excellent original shot, John!

With best regards,

Ruud.

I felt it was one of my best, but wondered if raters would understand or agree.  

Time will tell.

I'm glad you like it.

I really like it so much, and just for gathering a moment that will never repeat, and one partially that was unpredictable but for which I am self-trained to react.

Kind thanks.

john

John (Crosley)

The decisive moment :) as H.Cartier-Bresson said.Like the moment you have caught here and the arm on the right.

Milena

Outstanding shot. I know that you have to take it quickly but nevertheless composition is outstanding.

John you got it again, no more words needed. Aside the surreal situation the umbrella and the arm do enhance this shot so much. A keeper again!

Ciao Axel

EDIT: Only now saw: Yes this one is in the upper league of your shots.

Thanks for the comparison; if I were knocking at the Magnum Group of Photographers door, this would be what I would show them along with my first post here (Balloon Man) and my Photo of the Week a couple of years ago (The Progression of Age, showing a man with poster of two smirking girls in background).

For me it's the height of my work.

Thinking quickly is the hallmark of what it is I do; and when an obstruction gets in the way, like this arm, I don't wait, I fire away.

You never know (and it very often happens) that the extra element of what some might wait for and disregard as an 'obstruction' will provide the 'magic' that 'makes' a photo work.

So when children go running by (or almost anyone for that matter), my shutter's snapping, and same with obstructions; I just try to include them and make them part of the composition.

Here, unlike so many other times, it worked out as nearly perfectly as I could have hoped.

Best wishes.

John (Crosley)

Quick?  It's hardly believable how quickly this shot attained this height then deconstructed.

I fired two shots with my camera set at 'C' drive, which at 8 frames per second it often does with just depressing the shutter once.

In one, the hand was almost touching and covering the back end of the pony;' almost unusable and unviewworthy.

The is the other, as close to perfection as I am likely to see in my lifetime for such an impromptu shot -- a shot where I had been following the pony and owner just for such a shot (going out of the subway/underground), because of its incongruity.  How many ponies have you seen in a subway tunnel, anyway, and of course, that's the incongruity.

Then along came the hand and at a shutter speed at 640th of a second and at 8 frames per second, that hand moved THAT MUCH -- from viewworthy to unviewworthy within a split second.

Thank God for split seconds!

It's hardly believable this shot exists at all.

There is an old fairy tale that a princess kissed a frog and it turned into a prince.

Modern dating services have turned a phrase from this, for all those dating women who keep hoping to find their prince:  'You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find one prince.' they'll advise.

Well. metaphorically speaking, my cameras and lenses have kissed more than their share of pictorial frogs; maybe this is my prince of a shot.

Who knows?

Ratings are still out.  

For me it's still among my royalty, anyway among my best of the best. 

Whether or not it gets crowned by anyone.

Thanks for the helpful and supporting comment.

john

John (Crosley)

The 'upper league of my shots'. 

Too bad I'm shooting in the Ukrainian Premier League and not the World Cup where such a shot might really MEAN something.

This is one of those 'how did that guy ever get all those things to fall into place so well shots?, in my mind, that so often seem representative of this or that great street photographer's portfolio.

Truth is they used the old Cartier-Bresson trick.

Exercising the right index finger.

Pushing the shutter.

If you push it enough times, you're hopefully going to end up with something splendid every once in a while.

I'd like to think it's more, but watching a video of Cartier-Bresson describing his talent (exercising his right index finger on the shutter), helps keep me straight. 

That's my talent too, but my right index finger isn't 1/1000th as good as his was.

And never will be.

Thanks Axel for the kind comment.

john

John (Crosley)

I'm glad you saw the humor in this one - perhaps its surrealness was something that resembled humor.

I'm ALWAYS glad to see you have stopped by.

Thanks for the high compliments!

John

John (Crosley)

Everyone in the photo seems to be taking this surreal moment in their stride. But, I suppose, if you can take a bike on the train, why not a pony? Anyway, this was well seen, John, and it's great that you were so quick on the draw with your camera.

And then, when you go to photograph it, have someone stand there, arm and hand outstretched  in most unusual lighting to 'underline' the entire affair.

The Photo Gods have smiled and this time I was the recipient!

Makes up for those 100s of thousands of photos where they frowned, I think.

I appreciate your comment.

john

John (Crosley)

Very interesting and original shot!

I think that this shot proves (if nothing else) that if you move around enough, keep changing your ISO enough as you move in and out of undergrounds/subways, if you follow your nose (I followed the pony and man from underground just to get this photo) on some occasion, some propitious woman will stick her arm under your more ordinary photo subject, become part of the composition, and transform it into something focusnik (magical).

It's partly a matter of how much shoe leather is worn off the bottoms of shoes, as well as the continual twin exercises of (1) looking through the viewfinder, even when others would never expect there be the possibility of a decent shot and (2) following Henri Cartier-Bresson's dictum:  depress the shutter mechanism with one's right finger on a regular basis.

Sooner or later, something worthwhile will turn up as a really good capture. even for the more mediocre photographer.

;~))

Otherwise, how to explain it?

john

John (Crosley)

This Lucie Award winner and master printer who had begun to mentor me and mostly without remuneration had undertaken to review all my captures from my lifetime, especially the last five years, had said' STOP SHOOTING, you have already enough high quality work to get into museums ms and first class galleries.'

I said that shooting was part of my blood, and that it was part of who I am and what I do to shoot; I get tremendous psychic rewards from shooting and creating my photos, particularly my street photos.

Also I told him of a personal situation I wanted to continue.

He said 'it's your life . . . you can do as you want . . . but I advise you to abandon the personal situation (paraphrased) as it's nothing but trouble, and concentrate on getting into museums and galleries.'

Then the economic crisis:

I was still shooting and ended up at Nikon's West Coast Repair Center in El Segundo.  I spoke with a photographer who has much of his work bought by the Getty Museum.  He said the market had dropped out of 'fine art' sales.

'Keep shooting,' he advised me, 'so you have good or better inventory when things improve - fresh and new stuff. Keep active in the field, and when things 'turn around' you'll be ready.'

Well things have not yet turned around, but I kept my 'personal situation' despite occasional difficulties, all to my ultimate reward, and my mentor watched the floor drop out from under the 'fine art' market.

The last time he and I met, he said 'I have more and more respect for you and the decision you made . . . you're happy and you're producing first class work.'  In the meantime, no one was selling any 'fine art' photography or for that matter, the amateurs giving away their work for next to nothing or even for nothing lured by their name in print, had sucked much of the work out from professionals in some parts of the 'pro' world.

In another trip to Nikon Repair, a pro photographer, a woman, extolled on the quality of business, about one year ago.  'Everything's wonderful, everything's fine' she said in a big voice, then switched to a lower voice and said 'everybody's really running scared because the book of business for all sorts of photography is drying up.'

If commerce slows, advertisements which require photos slow.

If people have no money, people don't buy magazines in the same number.

Meantime, there's a revolution underway in the periodical business.

Newspapers are going out of business and have NO budget to buy photos, even at a standard rate of $25 or so per photo. 

They're often literally going out of business merging and/or going bankrupt.

The new paradigm for magazines (periodicals) suggests that within ten years we will be reading magazines on computer readers like the Kindle or the I-Pad and their successors, distributed by the web.

Nobody will pay 'squat' for a web photo, and the market is disappearing for paid pros, except in certain high end markets for the best established photographers (and for the best wedding photographers whose talents will always be in demand despite all the Uncle Bobs with their digicams and new SLRs).

Everything is highly competitive.

So, I kept shooting, and my mentor in a recent meeting said to me 'I have a new respect for the decisions you made. 

If I had given up shooting or curtailed it dramatically, there would be no such photo as this (currently my highest scoring ever in the originality category and one of my finest ever.

Maybe I'll never be in galleries or museums, but maybe again I'll be better poised when acquisitions begin with strength because I've created two more years of a 'body of work,' including photos such as this.

Moreover my skills have improved considerably; I can scarcely go out without getting something really good, postable or even among my best.

And, I've never had to make a compromise in my photography to make a paycheck.

One pro, on seeing my work in Los Angeles/Hollywood said to me 'You may be the only worthwhile photographer I've met in years who hasn't 'sold out' his art to get work.

Reason:  I'm not in the business; not really.

I'd like to be, but who buys works such as this except collectors and then those people are mostly out of money right now. California's unemployment rate is 12.5 per cent right now, and the money no longer flows as it did before, in CA, NY or elsewhere in the world.

Starting out is hard to do, but I'm ready to start.

But not to 'sell out'.

No need to.

I didn't move when the market was 'hot' but poised to 'fall' so I didn't get hurt by that at all.

And I have new, wonderful (in my view at least)  photos because I refused to 'stop shooting' when it was strongly suggested.

I also have greater insight into the art, greater ability to produce 'on demand' across genres  (not just 'street') and a confidence then I didn't have.

It's a good place to be in.

I'm glad I didn't take that well-meaning advice.

And my mentor now is too.

In retrospect.

The existence of this photo is one example of a reward for my obstinacy and independence.

john

John (Crosley)

Like another 'important' photo, my photo titled 'The Progression of Age' -- Photo of the Week three years ago, with two laughing, giggling girls behind an aged man, it was a photo that depended on WHERE it was taken as well as unusual circumstances.

Here the circumstance is a horse climbing out of a subway, mysteriously underlined by a hand, happily rendered extremely thin by most of the arm and hand being in shadow so only the thin line of the hand and arm show -- creating a 'line' as opposed to a whole body part.

In effect. this hand has become a sort of personal 'pointer' to the scene being depicted, and it is fortuitous for that - completely unpredictable.

And the hand, umbrellas, and even water dripping on the steps make up part of a story - it's raining outside, but not so much that one doesn't have to check first - it's not a downpour, but just enough to check to see if one has to take out an umbrella.

And consider then if the horse with its hooves will slip on concrete steps -- what experience do we have with 'ponies' (this is actually a pony) on concrete steps?

Moreover, the layout of the climbers creates a nice diagonal across the frame (thanks in part to left cropping) and the left diagonal plus the mass of the stair climbers and the rail (a mechanical device) to the right, make the stair climbers into a 'V' shape - a most felicitous shape that is view worthy or visually agreeable.

By the way, this photo was taken with a D300 at ISO 4000 with no particular 'filter' except perhaps Imagenomics anti-noise filtering somewhat -- but not strongly. (noise still remains but is not intrusive and even itself may not be distracting.)

All in all, one of my most 'important' photos.

It would be my highest rated except for the 'final rating' which threw cold water on the highest ratings I've ever received to date.

john

John (Crosley)

John - your portfolio, as I work my way slowly through it, is like carefully unearthing a series of little treasures in a box of very fine dark chocolates, and every now and again finding a really unusual flavour that sets my taste buds tingling anew.

This is one such treasure, a wonderful slice of life, perfectly captured. I choose the word 'perfectly' because to my eye it has that rare quality of being 'just right'. The human elements are beautifully aligned - the top couple, the middle 'almost' couple, the horse, the arm, the steps, the lines on the rhs of the steps.

And then there's that whimsy at its centre like some rum-soaked cherry that you least expected.

As we say here in the highlands, it's a wee beauty!

I'm smiling hugely, having just woken up to see your wonderful critique.

It also agrees with my own assessment of this photo, but in words that themselves are beautiful in themselves.

You have paid me a triply high compliment by choosing my best to comment on, then writing highly original metaphor to say that you are pleased, for which you are due greatest thanks.

It is for comments like this, from appreciative viewers, that I devote my life in photography.

Thanks.

john

John (Crosley)

I do note the correct spelling of your last name.

Sorry to make a Mick from a Mack.

I'll try to be more careful.  Before when editing was enabled for more than a small part of an hour, it would not have required a separate comment to make this correction, but I do not like important things like name spelling to survive incorrectly.

Thanks also for your beautiful bit of prose -- more like poetry -- about this image.

john

John (Crosley)