'Reds, Whites, and Black'

This photo, to me is about color and composition on the street. It's

a mobile (cell) phone store salesman at his front doorway. Your

ratings, critiques and remarks are invited and most welcome. If you

rate harshly, critically 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

You've been very creative, John! These kinds of relatively close-up compositions have the tendency to get rather messy as regards geometric proportions and perspective. For this reason i think you've done a very clever work, succeeding in including harmoniously all the important elements of the scene. All the best!

This is one of those compositions that either is,as you describe it, and it resonates and is 'creative', or it is nothing and no one 'sees anything in it',and they wonder why I posted it.

It's a unique photo.

I think it's wonderful, and it also looks good in black and white -- one test of good composition, but of course the color really ties together so I posted it in color.

I have a rule now:  If color really works, and ties things together in street, post as color, even if works as black and white (or at least post SOMEWHERE as color), but feel free also to post the same photo somewhere even if not here in black and white, if the composition is strong enough.

But note I don't post many of my B&W photos unsatuturated as I once did, when the colors compete or don't complement.  Why do that when B&W works so well in showing off good composition unless tre colors coordinate?

Thanks for an intelligent (and of course flattering) comment.

john

John (Crosley)

Can imagine the idea, in reallity it is shown the strongest on the thumbnail. If watching the image, my eyes immediately get fixated on the persons in the shop. Without them the image would be lovely brutal and challenging, nearly provocative, the nearest to your goal I believe. John, am I wrong..?!    

And it would be an easy thing on rework to darken the shop greartly so the interior figures are not so easily visible.  I kept them light to avoid blacking out the shop, but it may have been a graphic mistake, in favor of being informative, but this is a photo, not a photo story.

Very helpful critrique, which guides me well.

Thanks so much.

john

John (Crosley)

In the middle of the night or halfway the early morning sharing about a shot..! Haha, great that unexpected fast responding..! Sharing..! Did read your story about insurances beneath the wheelchair. That's also part of the develish "system" Babylon, one really has to fear if grinsing being part of that. John, do have a weekend you would like to have in mind. Your double Dutch guy Olaf.       

Elliott Erwitt, thrice President of Magnum Group of Photographers on asked by a matron what was the correct exposure said 'Madame, f8 and 'BE THERE' for one of the most famous quotations in photo history.  Being there is the key, and for photograhers of street that is important, but light is essential too, though the quality of light not so essential as for the landscaper.

But it determines strange hours, and I do my editing in the wee hours, when I can't photograph, now trying to get enough sleep, though I can spend 12 to 18 hours downloading and editing for every four on the street - a crazy tradeoff not found in the day of film when photographers led more normal lives unless they were slaves of the darkroom.  But they had prints not the 25 hard drives of a terabyte to three that clutter this room.

Yes, I am an insurance expert, and they take in money now on promises then dream up ways not to keep their promises- then try to portray all claimants as insurance frauds -- an endeavour at which they're pretty good at.

But for every three claims I handled as an attorney long ago, in one I found my client had been cheated by his own insurer AND got a substantial recovery for that cheating, a seemingly universal phenomenon, and found in the largest German worldwide German insurers as well as those of America, Switzerland, etc. 

I once knew the man who was to become president of an insurance firm, a nice guy, soft spoken, but when he became an insurance president, (I practiced law in his office), his firm engaged in widespread fraudulent practices, and his wife, in the same law firm, a former public attorney, engaged in a very seedy deception with one of my clients. 

I felt like I had to wash my hands after dealing with him, after I learned what I did, despite his gentle manner.

Most have a practiced, gentle, understanding, manner as they stick that knife in your back 'when they think they can get away with it' -- not for many of their claims, but even those when they think an attrorney can be snowed, as most don't understand policy languge well.

I'm glad I had a reader - otherwise these are just soliloquies directed to the moon.

;~))

john

John (Crosley)

Note how the red tie is slanted almost identically to the red slash in the percentage sign for repetition - definitely one reason I took the photo.

john

John (Crosley)