'The Respectful Celebrators'

These two men, one a poet, celebrate their country's largest holiday,

victory from Nazi conquerers, with a quiet smoke and sober

reflection, while most other countrymen use it as an excuse to get

very, very inebriated. Your ratings, critiques and remarks are invited

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

make an observation or remark, please submit a helpful and

constructive comment; please share your photographic knowledge to

help improve my photography. Thanks! Enjoy! john

Touching for me that they don't get inebriated! A matter of attitude, nothing more, nothing less!

Warm regards John!

PDE

interesting! grazie, John ;-} dp

The man, left, was the poet.  He was clearly a gentleman.  He made a point of showing me his journal and his founatain pen, reviewing some of my photos, and then assuming we were kindred spirits (I think we are).  He dressed up for the occasion, I understood.

Yes, they didn't get drunk on a day when everybody else got drunk.  They know their history and showed some respect. (there might have been some alcohol consumed, but they were definitely NOT drunk.)

john

John (Crosley)

'Interesting' you say.

I think that's just about the most appropriate comment; this is a photo about 'form' and really little else.

It's all about composition, and has almost no other meaning other than the arrangement of the bodies, their actions and their relation to this skylight structure for an undeground shopping center.

But I like it so much!  (so did these guys - one embraced me for my 'success' in this one or two second endeavour).  ;~))

Thank you, Donna, for your comment.

john

John (Crosley)

I like it!

I'll make some suggestions but they must all be seen in the light of me liking this picture.

To my eyes the composition might be better with a slight pan left and a slight pan upwards.

The pan left is because of the vertical pose of the right man (to the viewer) needs less room than the pointing foot of the man on the left.

The slight tilt upwards is probably because I have the feeling we should be looking up at these individuals. But I'm not sure on that one. It's intuitive...

The picture might improve from a slight darkening but I'm not sure if that would be the start of an endless fiddling with brightness and contrast ratio's.

That said it's a well seen and well executed shot, bravo!

Matthijs.

Yours is an excellent critique -- one of the best.

Let me try to address your concerns.

Pan left:  That would have meant exposing the background buildings, which I didn't want to do - it would have destroyed the composition.  Although it would have included more curve of the dome, since depth of field was sufficient, and no fog, the background buildings I felt would have created assymetry on the left for this otherwise quite symetrical photo.

Pan up:  I am not sure of that one, I like it like it is. It just feels 'natural' to me and 'right'.  Intuition I guess and artist's choice.

Lightening - darkening:  It might be improved with endless tweaking -- this is a near twilight/evening shadow photo, and Nikon's exposures need some help in such situations; they are notoriously difficult to work with, yet it is far better than the original desaturated version (the color version looks very good, but differing colors destroy the symmetry  - too many reds in the stonework and in the right guy's clothing for the symmetry I wanted).

There might have been some darkening of the curved structure of the dome but that would have been too far for me, as it would have resulted in too much manipuilation for a 'street' photo of mine.  For a 'landscape' no problem but 'street' or 'documentary' - an issue for sure.  I would have liked to see different light on the dome structure, for sure, with more darkness on the ribbed glass frames for better 'lines' (I think, but I would have to work it up to see for sure). Unfortunately a trip to 'channel mixer' would not help as there is no color in that structure, and I do feel OK using and/or emphasing color channels within the 'street'/'documentary' format, and still keeping the ethos.

And ethos is important - so many photos on this service are Photoshopped to death to be 'beautiful', but mine which seldom meet that standard still gain prominence just from their natural and innate appeal mostly -- from their composition and often from the interesting subjects.

I pride myself on that.

I am not sure I addressed all the points.  I'll double check after posting.

Thank you for such a nice review and helpful critique.  I can see you spent some thought on this photo, which is flattering.

john

John (Crosley)

Tilt up:  We are looking up at these guys -- it may be not so perceptible, but we are looking up two to three feet --about  a meter even.

Their feet are the height of my waist, but I am far away with a 24-120 at full tele extension on a crop sensor Nikon, so it may not show well.

Thanks again for sharing your insight.

john

John (Crosley)