new -- color & b&w 'Human Mating Rituals'

Human males and females engage in behaviors designed to see if they

'fit' together during courtship. Some of these behaviors are physical

and involve little more than mimicking the others' behavior with feet,

arms and hands, etc., to show acceptance, while other behaviors

involve far more complex social interactions. 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

i had logged out and this showed up on PN's home page... 3am here... still, i had to comment: her inside foot (the one away from us) and all thereafter seem oddly blurred - transition, abrupt

Go back to sleep.

It's just more shallow depth of field.

Obviously this was taken with a rather long tele lens,and as I recall with poor light, so depth of field was shallow, resulting in some blur towards the background.

That's all.

Most want to see the woman's feet sharp anyway, not the man's in sandals, I suggest.

Happy dreams.

john

John (Crosley)

The title really does reflect the feel you get from this terrific image, John. There are so many little things we all do to attract potential mates and this shows that even small ones are telling. This is wonderfully captured, well done!

Anyone who has seen one of those terrific nature films/videos featuring long, elaborate film of African birds involved in long, complicated and elaborate mating ritual flights and dancing may have said, 'well, that's OK for those African birds, how ODD?, but we humans have it simpler, we just flirt a little, and if it's returned, we get together.'

The answer is that flirting is just the beginning.

It may start with a passing look or glance, an interest shown at one's statement to others by someone of the opposite sex, even being eyed surreptitiously by a member of the opposite sex, maybe even for a long time.

(In my case, by a long-ago friend, from high school swim team told me of his 16-year-old sister, who still had a crush on me from high school and who lived her whole life and retired before I found out she had been crazy about me since age 16 or so in high school.

[Worse for me, she not only was hot, but she also was a doer, one of the nation's first female airline passenger pilots, very attractive and someone I never approached for fear her older brother would beat the living tar out of me.  I'd have been HOT to see and return her hidden affections.]

Anyone who read of the Congressman who was trapped in a gay sting in the Minneapolis Airport rest room, may not have understood that the policeman broke the code designed to protect the Congressman and others like him (gay and gay curious) only from those truly intent on making gay interaction.

The cop first stared through the gap in the men's room door for a very, very, very long period, then took the rest room seat in the stall next door, put his foot near the foot of the Congressman who was seated and then engaged in an elaborate signalling, called 'tap and response' before there was an apparent agreement to meet made apparent when the Congressman's foot touched the cop's.

Arrest.

Entrapment?

Probably, but the Congressman plead guilty thinking no one would find out and when they did tried to withdraw his guilty plea and that's almost unheard of.

[i once did that successfully, however, so it's not unthinkable, and then the charges were dismissed and I was vindicated 100%.  The cop was crooked and known by the judge who vacated the guilty plea as being crooked in her previous testimony to the point where the copy almost got tried for perjury, so her word was worth nothing. If she's been honest, I'd never have been in court.]

Well, women and men do such things like the 'tap and response' but usually less discretely and often with huge and elaborate variations.

Men (and women) are always checking each other out; men do so even when happily married, but the successfully married ones usually have developed an ability to 'check out' an attractive female by 'taking a visual snapshot' during a routine sweep of the eyes instead of staring that would alert a spouse and bring a jealout response, then the male can savour the image of the attractive female in the mind's eye without engaging the eyeballs by staring thus attacting attention.  I always could do that, and it's helped my photography.

I can gaze at a scene, lock in features I am interested in (like I once did and still do with pretty faces) gaze away, and study the image in my mind's eye, planning how I might attack it with a lens and camera or how the scene might have to change or I might have to change position for the scene to ripen.  It' part of my success on the street in not rousing suspicion by not staring too much.  I might even close my eyes mostly and appear to be sleeping or drowsing, while savouring and studying that image.

Only the less skillful get caught staring.

Women do the same thing, but when they're among themselves, they sometimes have lots of fun because they occupy a different place in the hunt and hunted hierarchy; it can be a game, especially in America.

Women set the traps and await for the male hunters to find them.

Men are forbidden to touch in general, so in porn houses, strip joints and other flesh houses, the mood usually is funerally somber (unless drinks are served or there is real debauchery afoot).

Women, on the other hand at a Chipendale's or other male stripper meeting are likely to be raucous, with hooting and hollering and maybe even some touching which would land the males in jail.

In America at least, the women on girls' night out may egg the male strippers on and enjoy themselves raucously. 

Men of intelligence are forever are wary of being 'off base' and forever wary of being told 'no, you can't have me' or that particular woman -- life for most males is a series of turndowns with an occasional 'yes' interspersed.

For a young marginally attractive woman, the only question if she goes out and looks for a man is what hour she will find a man and how inebriated he will be; a woman who is anything but absolutely fat, slovenly, smelly and maybe psychotic with missing teeth, can almost always find a man, most any night of the week - even if he's not a Harvard Business School graduate and the main question is what hour of the late night she will bed that man.

'Beer Goggles is a term that comes to mind, and it has its place in mating in most of the non-Moslem world.

Men, on the other hand, except for a select few -- the star athletes, other superstars, and select rich individuals (money is power and exchanges for sexual power), must spend much time alone or make many compromises betwen what they'd want and what they'll have to 'settle for' in their pursuit of a female companion or eventually a mate -- the best, most prized mates of the human species are highly sought after and can 'write their own ticket' in most cases and have a multitude of choices.

Yes Mark, it starts innocently enough with a woman raising her right foot, so, as depicted, and the man, innocently enough with his sandaled foot, mirrors that gesture, as he seeks to find if she'll accept him -- can he get close enough to her so eventually she'll accept him and they can become 'friends' and 'mate'.

Sometimes 'friends' is not even a goal for younger, college or high school age youths, until they're ready to settle down; women also can be promiscuous, but they have nesting hormones built in. 

In Ukraine they also have mothers who at age 21 are asking 'where are my grandchildren?' stridently, which reinforces those nesting hormones and pushes the mating process considerably faster.

(Written stream of consciousness at about 50 words per minute, off the top of my head; I hope you'll forgive any major sexist blunders, as I have not vetted all these ideas or given all these ideas lots of reflection as a unity, Mark.)

Best to you, and thanks for looking so carefully.

This photo is an expression of my thoughts, lens just aimed at an odd moment; without those thoughts (inside me, written above) this photo would never have been produced.

Only now that I've written about them, do I realize how elaborate they sound, yet they are just the stuff of everyday lives we all live and mostly ignore.

john

John (Crosley)

John, when I first heard about this photo and the attention it had received, I imagined a picture of "lotus" feet, the historical sign of beauty of traditional chinese women. Although only Chinese girls of certain privileged classes, or girls designated to become geishas, had their feet banded (pure torture!), small "lotus feet" became the ideal sign of beauty and female grace.

 I'm sure, John, you are aware of this common knowledge about Far East historical ideals of female beauty, which still survives among Chinese and Japanese men - and women. The least one can say is that big feet are no sign of grace and beauty for these people.

Feet fetisisme is therefor what I immediately had in mind seeing this shot of yours, despite the fact that the feet here are miles away from of "lotus size", and your title: "human mating rituals", in my eyes and for my ears is somewhat more common and international.

If I on that basis, should try to explain why so many seem to be attracted by your shot, my first reaction is that the photo has passed by especially Far East feet fetisits. A second thought is of course, that you are right about the mating analogy. Some kind of "Dance of the Cranes" is indeed happening, not least illustrated by the lifted foot of the male.

Whatever the feet related reason, the mere quality of the shot with the well mastered DOF and the just in time shot where both pair of feet are illustrating movement and some kind of coordinated dynamics, would by itself attract attention and admiration from viewers, that know when they see a quality shot of a highly skilled photographer. Great shot, John

Yours is one terrific critique -- and it is more like those I write when I do -- it's soup to nuts (and mixing metaphors) 'boxes the compass'.

Now when I first joined Photo.net I knew some of my old photos appealed to me and were good enough to get me hired by Associated Press and even compared by one or more to Henri Cartier-Bresson (but by no-nothings for sure as I couldn't hold a candle to the maître, as I found the first day I met the old guy before he became a much older guy, and viewed his work, causing me to shrink from photography, except as a hobby and giving up photographic ambitions.

But as I began to show some of my old work here on Photo.net beginning nine years ago, it became clear some of my old work stood the test of time and a few were historic shots -- really good shots -- which is why I had saved them for decades and decades almost on pain of divorce (well actually divorce among other things) and for decades showing them to no one, hidden away in a box.

Then came Photo.net, and appreciation, which blew me away

I had 'viewers' which I had lusted for.

But this, Anders?

How does it compare with my historic best, or my even recent best.

Consider comparing this with the 'porn star, shirt raised in front of the society mavens, one looking at his publicity photo (which you can't see the photo content of but which shows him in his foot long gloriousness), and another female maven reaching forth boldly to touch his washboard abs (his shirt up, remember), as her tongue hangs out of her mouth?

I think it's that tongue hanging out sideways which makes the shot; it gives it away as a candid and gives it almost a cartoon like character - I've never seen a photo with a tongue hanging out like that before.   She might as well have been drooling too, as she runs her hand over the porn stars washboard abs, you can tell as her tongue hangs there, revealing ALL.

To me that is a world class shot, even though it didn't get world class ratings.

To me that is what taking a Crosley photo is all about at least a 'modern Crosley photo'.

It's seizing the moment and nailing it perfectly and getting something worthy, totally worthy of showing to a huge audience for foreseeable time.

This photo was a mere happenstance, and I did the best I could with a tele across a broad square, but getting the most views out of over 130 photos in a folder, suggests it's been linked somewhere, and I doubt it's to a serious photography site, and instead to a foot lover's site, though I did find one 'street' site it's linked to, but that cannot be the source of all those views.

I think it's linked to a male foot appreciation site, and no problems with that; to each his/her own, and I have my own appreciations too.

But this folder has nudes, bare breasted women (including some very nice and popular ones) and other nice things, and this particular shot outdraws them all, and I'm simply astonished

It just shows the power of Internet linkage, I think, and I wish someone where it's linked would e-mail me showing where the link leads to, so I can understand.  My e-mail is on my biography page.

Or I'm completely myopic.

All this in spite of your absolutely terrific critique -- one of the best I've received to date on Photo.net

Best to you my friend.

john

John (Crosley)

Laurent,

Re:  the above, please compare this photo, 'The Porn Star and the Soviety Mavens' taken at a gallery opening in Los Angeles.

The woman left is looking at photos of his gloriousness pointing I think to the 'North Star', and the woman reaching for his washboard abs has her tongue out.

This is an example to my mind of the 'perfect photo' for candidness -- though we can't see the photos or know exactly that he's a porn star, we know he's being admired, and not for his face . . . I think, as I'm not a woman and really cannot judge female tastes in men.

Here's a link.  I invite comparison and an explanation of why the above photo today has over 8,500 views, far more than the linked photo.

http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=11647831&size=lg

I think the linked photo is among my top 50 or so photos I've ever taken; the above is not.

But perhaps I'm wrong; please tell me why (and anyone, if the above photo of feet is linked, please provide me a URL (Internet address) of its link so I can view it in context.

Thanks.

john

John (Crosley)

Views, as of today, 14,281.  That's far and away my most viewed photo in this folder, though the folder has been reworked several times.

This photo has to be linked somewhere.

It was once linked on Google or Bing or someplace to images of 'human mating rituals' but when last I looked it was not.

Ah, I stand corrected, it's reappeared on Google.com images under 'Human Mating Rituals.

Go figure.

john

John (Crosley)