'Legs'

'Legs', in my view is self-explanatory and without 'motive'. Your ratings,

critiques, and observations are invited and most welcome. If you rate

harshly, very 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

It's a good one. I can't say exactly why this looks good for me..I guess it's because I can't see faces and those moving legs against the static legs makes it interesting..and also the fact that all the legs are covered with the same color clothing but there are slightly different blue tones. I guess these things makes it a good one.

blurring the walkers with photo.shop is so obvious.  doesn't work for me.

Too Negative.

Wrong Photographer.

No Photoshop.  Long exposure instead.

Bad surmise; simply wrong.

john

John (Crosley)

I am heartened by your critique. 

Contrary to the negative critique above which seems to pin the blur on Photoshop, that simply is wrong; this is a slow exposure taken just before sundown in late afternoon shadow hence the overall bluishness.

I like very much the idea that you seem a bit puzzled by why you like it, and acknowledge the same.

That's a form of honesty that I value. 

Thanks so much.

john

John (Crosley)

To start, I think this photo is different compared to the ones you usually post. Not only because it is in colour but also because it is probably not immediately apparent why this photo was taken. Timo above is unsure why he likes it; in all honesty, I'm unsure whether I like it or not...kind of caught at crossroads. I'm not sure I would have paused to take this shot, long exposure or not.

The only thing that catches my eye is the tension in the photo between the person on the left and the people moving in the opposite direction. The slant in the photo perhaps accentuates this, but again, I'm not quite sure. Could you please elaborate on the idea behind the shot?

I have uploaded something similar which you probably have not seen. Taken from my erstwhile first floor kitchen window more than a year ago. Regards.

This post is about opposition.

Not strong opposition but opposition with symmetry -- all sort of casual and spotted within the second.

The painter paints the curb, two legs spread.  Two passersby walk by, equidistant from the center (or one of them at least) and create a tension in the opposite direction, both of their legs in synch with another, spread as they walk and blurred to emphasize that they're walking, but here, from the gait, not too fast.

It's a sort of visual 'pun' - a 'play' on the theme of opposition.

It's also a photo about 'threes' but disguised. 

Notice that four against two equals when reduce to most common denominator two against one = three.

It isn't about constructing artificial triangles though as many of my photos with 'threes' are -- this 'three' photo is fairly linear.

About your photo -- it's also about threes in a big way.  Did you realize that it contains three, three-sided figures.

You have two traffic direction triangles in white positive and the dark negative of the absence of light defines an 'opposing' triangle.

I think that is what you wanted me to see, whether or not you could put your finger exactly on why you wanted me to see this or could explain your own photo.

It's also about opposition, but in your case about triangularity and threes.

It's also a very good photo (which I indeed had not seen, and if I had might not have recognized).  Good job in posting it with this photo, as this might easily have been a Wednesday photo theme or some such in a forum with great contributions, if a bit obscure to name.

You get an A+ with your posting.

Not such high marks for explanation this time, but your inchoate intelligence shows through in the mere act of posting that particular photo - it's completely a pro pos.

Best wishes,

john

John (Crosley)

I take a lot of 'different' photos and in between the taking and the posting there's quite a lot of choosing -- editing.

So if you were to go through my 'raw' captures, you might be a bit surprised at the vast variety you'd find.

These days I just pick an old file and begin to go through it and pick out three to six or more old photos that I had not paid attention to, and 'work them up' and find that I shoot with amazingly different interests, from one shot to the other, especially when carrying two cameras (as here).

;~))

I'm an inveterate shooter. (not invertebrate, inveterate.)

john

John (Crosley)

Rate Away!

This was inadvertently submitted without a rating request.

I do like critiques very much, but ratings also keep me grounded.

They're a good indicator of PN 'popularity' and for that, they're honest.

If nothing else.

So, wise and not so wise raters, rate away.

;~))

john

John (Crosley)

It has been said that any good photographer can take good photographs from one's 'garden' or front yard.  Some of my first posted photos were taken from mine, and they still work today.

One famous photographer (more than one really) has taken and published great photos taken from New York City balconies of parks below their buildings, street scenes taken from on high (in winter), etc. when it was just too cold to go out, or they were too feeble.

Any place you can get a good capture is a good place, and it can be from a window, or even inside your home.

So long as it truly is good -- even if quite different from the style you seek to be known for.  See the (expanded) work, for instance, of Andre Kertesz and others.

john

John (Crosley)

I like how you sandwiched the white triangles with the dark triangle of the shadow -- dark touching light.

Good, sophisticated work -- like a puzzle being fitted together.

You had to have taken a number of shots to get that, but no matter.

It's the ability to choose the best that marks the good photographer, not just the taking but the choosing. If you take one or one hundred, if you post a good one, little else matters.

john

John (Crosley)

Now that makes more sense...(I did get the 'tension' bit right, I see), thanks for the explanation. For me, such descriptions help me get into the photo a bit more and opens up new avenues. The tilts to the right and left also 'balance' the photo.

Glad you liked my attempt. I am not too much into the theory of photography but try and fit things in. You are right; I did take several shots (seven, I think) till I got this one.

Samrat, the main or only reason I got into the 'theory' of photography was essentially to try to explain primarily to myself why certain photos 'worked' and certain photos did not work.

In that regard, your critiques along with those of Deb Cloud, another standout, are some of the best on this service for someone who does not have a longstanding career here.  I look forward to your critiques, sometimes only for the questions they pose, for they often are important ones, the answers to which will reveal to you that which you seek.

john

John (Crosley)

You wrote:"Too Negative. Wrong Photographer. No Photoshop.  Long exposure instead. Bad surmise; simply wrong. My response:

(1) "Too Negative" Agreed. Better to have written; "appears TO ME to have been blurred in photo.shop. That is irrifutable and constructive.

(2) "Wrong Photographer" Agreed.

(3) "No Photoshop" Then I am wrong. Not the first time.

(4) "Bad sumise" Don't know what that means.

Why I said photoshop: The motion bluriring does not make sense (to me). In some areas the motion appears that they are walking forward and in other areas, walking backward as I think might appear in "rear curtain flash sync". The left foot of the walker in the rear -where is the foot? There is a hint that the foot might still be solidly on ground but then it would be stationary and not motion blurred. Anyway, where is the foot? It seems TO ME like bad photoshoping. The paint roller? It is a very strange appearing area like in botched photoshoping. A glove maybe? but not on both hands. All the above is why I thought "photoshop".

I was not exactly knocking photoshop. Just that if you used it to blur you did a bad job.

 I would not expect motion blur because I would never have guessed that this photo was taken in low light near sunset. I see no hint of such. Appears TO ME to be taken, middle of the day, on an overcast day. Photo meters are not linear which accounts for why evening looks like evening and noon likes noon.  

Have I redeemed myself?

By the way for the future; harsh short wave length  blues and UV preponderate during the day (why I don't like to photograph then) whereas towards evening blue is filtered out (scattered more) and the warm long wave lenght reds, orange pinks and  yellows come out (straight through), more than the blue. That is why the sky is fucking blue in the day and sunsets are beautiful.

I will note that if one is exposed to full sunlight at sunset time or just before, reds, oranges and yellow predominate.

But there are times when the yellow, reds, and oranges are cut off by buildings, etc., and the light comes from overhead, and that light principally is bluish and comprised of those same blue wave lengths that predominate at noon and devoid of those other wave lengths that predominate toward the horizons - they being blocked.

I've known this since I first shot film, when it often was painfully obvious, since with transparency film there often were evening shade scenes which photographed as mostly blue when the sunset was bright yellow/orange/red but out of view and illumination was from the blue overhead, both before and after the sunset -- especially after the sunset, but before too.

When those rays from the area where the sun sets (or those rays that appear after the sun sets) predominate, then all is bluish.

That's why this is so blue -- overhead rays from very late afternoon. I don't recall if this was from time of sun;s shadow and blue rays from overhead only or after the sun had set beyond the horizon (I couldn't see the horizon anyway) - same blue illumination.

You don't need to be profane, sir.  You have a large enough vocabulary to express yourself without that.

john

John (Crosley)

About colors of light vs time of day.  Your position is not consistent with my learning and experience so I'll have to think some about it. Maybe  you could start a forum and get the expert's opinion as well as the rest of us -and invite me. Profanity. Ah, yes, I  too am against profanity. "Profanity is a show of disrespect, or a desecration or debasement of someone or something" unquote. The "f-word"serves me simply as an "intensive". In 1971 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that its public use is protected under the 1st and 14th Amendments. Get that forum started!

The use of the f-word as an 'intensive' only serves to highlight the debasement of your use of the language in civilized discourse.  While it may be proper for those who dig ditches for a living (and there's certainly dignity in those who do, and I photograph them and have done that), in a public forum like this, where its use is largely gratuitous and a host of other words will serve your purpose its use can be seen mainly as course and gratuitous.

Although the Supreme Court did indeed keep that word's utterance and written form from being made 'illegal' that does not equate with making it an acceptable form of expression in comments here.

There may even be places, even here, where it occasionally might be acceptable, even as an 'intensive', but you, sir, have overdone it in several degrees, and it's time to stop.

OK?

Now, the use of a second Photo.net identity, which I have discussed recently and for several years now, is a debasement and hence a profanity by your use of the word, and must be stopped, also sir.

You cannot say I have not complained and warned the 'second identity' who shares remarkable similarities with you, sir, especially many statements of that identity in postings which were erased before the editing privilege was taken away. 

You recall we had a serious discussion and difference over 'disappearing posts' of yours which started (1) initial animosity here and (2) I stopped responding to your posts because of that then (3) immediately thereafter a supposed countryman of yours of about your advanced age judging from a  partial body photo posted, with similar tastes and similar writing patterns (and similar experiences, interestingly enough) began to make posts under my photos, but at that time had no biographical photo except for a partial body photo showing the body of an old man without face, and no posted photos, and at that time his/its only purpose seemed to be to make nettlesome comments under my photos.  I note you claim very advanced age, also.

That identity's only current use seems to be the same as before as far as I'm concerned as its only contribution under my photos is anything but making 'constructive comments' as requested and as courtesy would dictate.

I don't think this is a case of a 'split personality' either, but of a plan and scheme that have simply been out of control for too long and must be stopped.

It's time that we cleared the air here and got rid of that doeppleganger 'identity' which bear an uncanny resemblance to you, sir.

I am making this a direct complaint to you, here about that so you make take appropriate steps.

john

John Crosley

Photo.net Member

I am not aware of anyone using my name except me and frankly not interested.

I did not suggest anyone was using your 'name'.

I did suggest you were using another name - that you were using a doeppelganger on this service,and that it began and continues as a means to harass me with useless comments that are not constructive and sometimes seem just meant to harass and annoy. 

For that seems sometimes part of your character -- you seem to get some enjoyment at times (not always of course, as you have a pleasant gentle side to you) in annoying people just for the sake of the annoyment.

I suggest strongly you should stop the doeppelganger subterfuge.  If you want to say something, don't hide behind a second identity, or (as you did for some time when I banned replies to you here for over a year) erase your posted trolls after I replied.  That then was posssible for you to do, but now no longer is because all posts are permanent after a short edit period. 

Is that direct enough?

Then we can become friends.

Again.

john

John (Crosley)

I didn't know that we weren't

You wrote John (above): "The use of the f-word...serves to highlight the debasement....of the language in civilized discourse.  While it may be proper for those who dig ditches for a living...." Then John you should brush up on your history -in Wikipedia for example. If you think its use is for ditch diggers check out likes of millonaires; Joe Biden, Eddie Murphy, Julia Roberts, Andy Murphy, Serena Williams, and beautiful  Maria Shaparova in the middle of tennis matches " and Tullulah Bankhead  and on and on. I bet preachers on Day Star use it off pulpit.  Go to the movies and and take out the ear plugs. Two of my daughters use it so often that one day I thought, "my god; what a wonderful word" and been using it ever since. If the word offends you (don't know why it should) I'll try to watch my pints and quarts ("p's and q's"). Aval if you are wanting to censor, don't even think about it. To censor is inappropriate everywhere except in the U.S. Congress and United Nations. Incidently -and you will be happy to learn as I was- that the model in "Christina's World" -minus the arms- was no other than Wyatt's wife, Betsy James Wyatt. Now I've forgotten what foto I am supposed to be critiquing. Your fault.

It may be constitutionally, (US Constitution mainly) impermissible to censor certain speech uttered in public places, but try calling a US Federal Judge that word in US Federal Court and when he/she says 'Say What Mr. Samel?' repeat that word to the judge, and find out how many days or longer you'll be spending in the slammer for contempt of court.

You won't even get a trial, of peers or otherwise, because for contempt you get no trial -- the judge has viewed the offending conduct and is free to sentence you right there on the spot.

Censorship also occurs on the airwaves in the United States, sanctioned, although I am not much in favor of that -- there always is with so many channels to choose from, the freedom to change the channel.

I too can be added to the list of those who have uttered that word and add that scientists and doctors find there indeed may be some transient relief to pain when the recipient of pain redirects energy through the utterance of otherwise forbidden expletives.

The problem is that when an expletive enters the language and just becomes another word instead of being 'otherwise forbidden, it then may loses that  specialness that apparently that endows it with those pain relieving properties.

Instead of indicating 'freedom to break the rules' it also can just become a another convention to say that word. 

In other word it's just another habit and style where it becomes de rigueur to break the rules, but in doing so, it just becomes another convention - one more social rule and thus it loses its specialness and just becomes boring and signifies little more than inability to express one's self with individuality.

I presume you and your relative are now caught in that convention.

Rap music stars are caught in that convention, I think, based in the words I hear as I walk down the boulevards of Inglewood, California with the deep bass beat of black rap busting through even often closed windows of passing cars, vibrating everything around with awesome deep drum machine beats and the oft-uttered 'F* word'.

But repetition loses shock value and just become another convention.

What would be shocking would be to hear some really good rap without the f* word, except very sparingly and same with some comedians' routines.

That word makes up for paucity of expression and uttered too much just loses its shock value - one part of its specialness.

Listen to a genuine English cinema correctly portraying speech of the English middle and lower classes and how often that word is used in common parlance, and soon it becomes just tiresome. 

Of course, they use the word 'fooking' instead of as we pronounce it.

I am not a blue-nose.  I enjoy salty language sometimes, but believe it has a place, and that place is generally not to try to cause harm or offense to others who will be offended unless they have first given great offense and/or otherwise deserve a taste of being offended.

In that case, perhaps they also deserve to be offended by being the object of that word too . . . . however repugnant they find it, and I've been known to utter it to such people just for its shock value.  But if it loses its shock value, then what's the worth of uttering it?

I'm no moral purist, but I'm not for using this columns here, read by the 800,000 registered members of Photo.net, as a place for free reign for salty language.   This is a place of great diversity, and not for offending people just to show them you know how to use and/or misuse salty language.

Salty language has its place, and of course it isn't just for ditch diggers.

It's for when that Dungeness crab bites you with his pincers across your thumb right to the bone, and you hurt so badly as you try to shake him off that you let out a throaty 'YOU FU*CKER' as your throbbing and aching hand swings wildly in vain attempt to try to throw that pinching crab off.

It's for yelling at the top of your lungs when that bullet that has entered your thigh and gone to the femur, nearly shattering it, then traveled all the way to the kneecap, with shockwaves destroying thigh muscle tissue all the way down, and only then when the initial anesthetic of penetrating shock wears off and the real pain begins to sink in. 

Then you can be excused for saying the word repeatedly.

In front of God and all mankind.

It's even for telling someone close that they're a real 'f*cker' as a term of endearment perhaps,  maybe if they play a practical joke on you or tell a story on you out of turn, just for the laughs or to make fun of you to show them you're angry but not too angry.

But it's not necessary or desirable every day in the critiquing of photos here, as I've experienced you using (and overusing) the word, and to that I object.

I've read that you've lived part of your life with prostitutes, feeding their narcotic habits, photographing them in their lives, and having a very interesting life yourself and with them, and doubtless much of that life was filled with salty language.

There is a time to be salty and a time not to be, and I feel that you have crossed the boundary here too many times and inappropriately in my comments section.

I'm no blue nose, but I feel your use of the word here has been inappropriate on several occasions.

I ask you to use the word elsewhere if you must; and see if you can use cleaner language here.

All kinds of people read my comments and the replies, and I invite them here; I wish to continue to be able to to that without having to warm them, and yes, that includes church ladies and some people who carry their morals on their sleeves.

I don't intend this place to give them a lesson in Meir Samel's claimed free speech rights, but to view and maybe enjoy my photography . . . . . so please let them be offended, if they will, by my photography . . . . . and if you want to use coarse and salty langauge inappropriately, please do so in your own pages and comments under your own photos.

Nobody, having viewed some of my photos, can accuse me of being too rigid or morally sanctimonious, I think, or even very much in favor of censorship.

The staff and administration of Photo.net can and might censor you. 

I'd hate to see the start of that slippery slope.

It would be entirely within their legal rights, as this is a private forum, and in such a forum you have NO US Constitutional right to 'free speech', except as they allow.  

This is an adult site, but how adult is up to the Administration to determine.

If you prefer to stretch boundaries that far and inappropriately in 'free speech' kindly please pick someone else's photos and comments or even your own to do so under.

john

John (Crosley)

re; your comment July 17, "I won't belabor" got me interested. From your description and some reading on google -selective scattering versus reflection, etc. things are no so simple as I imagined. In any model I can think up including yours, something is missing and/or inconsistant. As an aside, I did a color correction on your image to take out the blue. One might say that the 'blue' is too blue or the corrected is too green (or whatever) and/or there should be a compromise.  Either way, the problem you had with film is fixable in digital -in the camera or post processing.

I have always known not only about reflective vs. selective scattering that with longer exposures there was the issue in film of 'reciprocity failure' easily fixable in the color darkroom by filtration.

Reciprocity failure comes when film, designed and engineered (or whatever the correct word is) for exposures of one second to 1/4000th of a second or shorter, is exposed for a longer period.

Different chemicals in the film designed to capture and react to different colors then begin to behave different than their design; they were not designed, especially as in color transparency (slide) film, to show true colors at longer colors, and so a longer exposure often would get a 'blue cast' to it in addition to the bluishness from a post-sundown sky, or even being, say, in a mountain shadow.

It's not that the blue didn't exist, but reciprocity failure vastly exaggerated the blue and would dominate a photo.  There's one of them posted in my Color, Then to Now, folder, showing a waterfall, hand held (yes hand held) at 2 sec., elbows braced on chest, back braced against car, where I felt I almost willed my heart to stop. I've always been a steady holder and never was steadier than that day.

When I sent that photo out to color labs, it always came back in greens and grays, instead of the bluishness that the reciprocity gave it, which I happened to like -- it was blue monochromatic, and I did like that.

The other version also worked too, and I easily could fix that in Photoshop.

Your version, here, while interesting, is not what it looked like in reality, but then NO photo captures colors precisely as we see them; our eyes constantly are adjusting and readjusting, and I know from experience one eye sees colors at a slightly different hue than the other (not tested, but from experience, shooting transparency -- slides).

And looking through the viewfinder.

I never shot color negative until eight years ago, agencies and publications would NOT consider color negative captures when I was shooting color, so I just didn't shoot it.  There's some rigor to shooting slide/transparency.

Either you're right on, or it's a dead shot.

On the mark or nothing.

Thanks for the reconsideration . . . . I try not to write by pulling crazy ideas out of a hat somewhere -- I try to consider what I write and often do research before I write or call on some considerable experience (or both).

Thanks again.

john

John (Crosley)