'Winter Respite'

It's a long walk from the Metro to Kyiv, Ukraine's central train station

entrance, even with three very heavy bags on a makeshift trolley, so

this elderly man sits on a rudimentary seat for a breather. Your ratings,

critiques, and observations are 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 photographic skills. Thanks! Enjoy! john

Think 'threes'.

john

John (Crosley)

good hint to look for "threes" - found 3x3: three bags, three arches, three persons in 'center' of the action:-)). Besides recurring number, I like slight motion blur of the guy with phone and the flying skirt of woman rushing by between them - subtle but convincing contrast to the resting man.

Best regards, Wolfgang

Excellent analysis, Wolfgang, and responds well to my hint, plus adds some more.

If some early photographer, say from New York in the early 1900s, had taken this photograph and it didn't show a man using a mobile *cell* phone or women in more modern dress, this might have rung a bell with students of their work.  Starts with 'St' if you get my drift.

I'm not saying or suggesting my work is on a par with his (their) work, but this to me is reminiscent of some of their work from that period; the grayness, darkness, grimness, the snowy element (no horses, however) -- even his crude cart, stored no doubt in some ancient barn, under a house, or in some ancient shed?

Look at the tonalities -- I found them most interesting with all shades of gray, plus all parts of the grayscale from absolute black to absolute light.  I feel this is one of my most unappreciated and underrated photos of recent time.  It's not fantastic or GREAT in big letters, but more than workmanlike.

(These are just my personal feelings, which account for nothing.)

Thanks for the able analysis and taking the time to make it; just spending some time like that with the photo makes me suspect you appreciated it somewhat, which pleases me inordinately.

This is one photo of mine I can look at for a long time, and  my mind just wanders and drifts --- totally unlike most. 

Maybe the part of me who took this belonged with a camera a century or so ago?  It's part of why I spend time abroad - scenes such as this cannot be taken in the USA - I'm only a visitor, albeit a frequent one, to this country.

Just look at the man's 'cart', for instance.  

Heavens, you couldn't buy a rudimentary cart like that in the US during my 'long' lifetime (well over half a century).  That's reason enough to travel.

john

John (Crosley)

Great attention was paid to tonalities in this capture.

In part, they were naturally occurring and readily could be seen.  I emphasized them just a little in only the lightest parts, emphasizing textures.

In large part the changes were to emphasize the tonalities and the contrast of the fabric of the burlap bags on the cart.  I wanted the viewer to know they were heavy, coarse fabric and not some modern-day plastic wannabe, but the real cigar. (the real thing, in American colloquialism e.g., original, as in 'Coke' not 'The New Coke').

Those  bags, the way they are laid on the cart, the cart itself with its supersmall wheels, unsuitable for wheeling on turf or rough terrain but more suited for the smooth floor of -- say -- a warehouse, belong almost not only in 'another century' which last was 13 years ago, but to my mind, about a century ago, so I considered them the centerpiece of this photo.

Those and the crude (rude) chair on which the man was sitting. 

Where did he get that portable fabric chair? 

It belonged when I was younger in a thrift shop, and as I got older, in an antique shop where I lived, if there had been such a thing.

The man, his chair, the cart and the bags all form a 'triangle'.

A triangle is so named because it has 'three' sides.

Another three -- the one that I was sure no one would 'see'.

But people's eyes consider such things as a three-sided geometrical figure when they see other 'threes' in a photo - or at least mine do.

Best to you, Wim.

john

John (Crosley)