"The Bus Driver: 'From the Country to the City and Return, for a Lifetime'"

This is a bus driver on the Zhitomir, regional city, to Zhitomir Metro

station in outlying Kyiv --a run he makes probably several times daily

and expects to make for his working lifetime. He's usually personally

fueled between runs an intake of nicotine, now smoking no longer is

allowed on short or long haul buses. Notice the 'M' for 'Metro' sign

on the much 'posted' wall behind him. 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

Realistic portrait!

I just noticed that my logo for Photo.net shows a '9' year mark next to it, meaning I'm starting on my ninth year.

From the start, I've always felt I've been able to get the essence of people, even strangers on the street (see my photo of the 'Wife Murderer' as an example, both in color and black and white and a photo taken minutes before, of the black woman with the word 'dignity' in the caption - title).

Both are among my best ever and taken within months after joining Photo.net.

I enjoy the ability to approach a stranger and take his/her essence away in a photo (without taking their soul), but maybe capturing a part of it to share with others.

;~)

john

John (Crosley)

Knowing some background from your note,the intense look you have captured might be this man's making a mental run of his route to his next stop and also next fix of nicotine.Good shot!

Meilleures salutations-Laurent

I'm glad you read the comments; some love them, others would rather see them shorter or vanish, but detractors are outnumbered by boosters by about nine to one.

This shot was taken at or near dusk with impenetrable overhead clouds; it didn't really look this light or colorful to the naked eye; there was too much darkness, but darkness brings out colors when one can see -- too much light washes away color.  That's why this looks so 'saturated'.

Also, everything looked more 'blueish', if you'll excuse the expression -- no discrimination against 'blues' intended.

The cigarette's red glow would not ordinarily even have been visible in broad daylight, but at the end of dusk on a heavily clouded, very cold day, with night's darkness almost arrived, the red glow was easily captured -- something maybe few would think of.

I always look for smokers to take a drag, though I abhor cigarette smoking -- far too many relatives have died of smoking and smoking related illnesses to even number here.  It's astonishing, but the result is I've never had ONE PUFF in my life.  Honestly!  Maybe I'm one of the few of my generation never to even have had one puff, not just a cigarettte, but a PUFF.

Tobacco that is; the other stuff I'm horribly allergic to, and I almost lost my job the first few days at Associated Press when newly hired when someone gave me a few 'hits' of the other stuff; my head, nose and ears sealed shut for a week and a half and I was off work that long after working only about two days.

Tobacco also causes allergic reactio for, truth be told; I grew up thinking allergic reactions were a way of life, not knowing otherwise in a house of smokers.

My father smoked three packs a day and mother two.  I vowed never to smoke, but I will readily take photos of those who do, because that is who smokers are, and ideological considerations take no part in what I portraits I make; I'm not a Hollywood studio looking to sell tickets to teenagers awash with angry parents protesting the evil weed.

Smoking not only is a habit, it's a way of life, too, so I use that to help put subjects at ease. 

It frequently determines who you will marry or who will stay with you, and at the end how soon you will die and how many and what severity of diseases many will have as they go through their older years.

So, I wait fo the extra puff; if smoking subjects resent that, they can't resist that puff anyway; it's what subjects who smoke do, and they do it naturally, and it ultimately that puff relaxes them and tames them somewhat for subsequent shots, especially when I show them their photo of them engaging in getting their 'fix'.

(Sorry to be so long-winded, but then I have lungs full of breath, never having indulged.  Excuse me for badly mixing a metaphor.)

The key is to get subjects to relax, and for those who smoke, this is one way, another way, as Cartier-Bresson so easily put it is to 'get the fox in his den'. 

Here's one fox in his den, in a manner of speaking -- I seek my subjects out, not the reverse.

Best to you Laurent; I haven't seen a comment from you before that I recall; you're always welcome here.

john

John (Crosley)

Shoot!I did notice that glare on the cigarette and failed to associate with ambiant light.And yes I did comment some time ago on one of your images and in your reply,you signed off with your name in french,reason why I used it in my comment on this take.Always nice to read your long and interesting reflections on your and others' images.

Meilleures salutations-Laurent

I do remember signing with my name in French to a 'Laurent', but have another 'Laurent' who contributes, and did not recall your less than usual last name, so please pardon my error.

I'm very sensitive to things like just the color of the tip of a cigarette, as that can indicate whether the smoker is 'dragging' or is somewhere else in the smoking process or even just holding the cigarette. 

Any light or color also sometimes can be welcome to me as a 'writer of light', as surely you can understand, provided it doesn't detract.

You never now which of the many photos I take during a certain time will turn out to be 'winners' or 'losers'.

I recently took a photo of a man on a Metro, cap hiding the front of his face and two onlooking advertising women's faces on each side framed by Metro windows, that I consider one of my best ever, and Google shoved it right up in the first four listings in their 'Images'  (in the US and most of Europe), but it got mediocre to OK ratings on this service, and not very high views . . . .

Yet I'd say it stood for the best I have to offer recently . . . . even over my shooting lifetime . . . I already put it in with a 'shadow portfolio' of my lifetime best.

Raters and viewers haven't got it all right, all the time, even on this service, which rates certain 'looks' highly favorably and sometimes passes other good work by unrecognized.  This is particularly the case with 'street' which is idiosyncratic to judge.

All in all the rating system works pretty well, but occasionally it fails horribly.

PN high rating photos put to the test against 'gallery exhibited work' and I think much of the PN work would get mediocre marks from critics of the art -- the photo connoisseurs. 

There are just two different worlds out there -- the connoisseurs, and the PN artists who produce good, workmanlike work at their highest level but few would make it as 'artists' rather than as able commercial photographers or amateur artists if they were selling their work. (there is a huge difference).

I quit the business after seeing Cartier-Bressons' greatness when I met the guy (he would never have noticed having met me even ten minutes later), and then undertanding that the Associated Press, my new photographic employer,  wanted me to photograph football, baseball and basketball as a maintstay, and much of the rest of of the time their photographers (then) hung out waiting for assignments, rather then prowling for good photographs. (They were like firemen, then, hanging around the fire station).

A onetime colleague there in San Francisco (Sal Vader) later deservedly got the Pulitzer on an assignment I might have drawn, but he was a great, even 'swell' guy, who as an individual as well as a photographer was a sterling person. 

I think he was instrumental in promoting my career with AP, and a friend while I was in San Francisco.

(We're long out of touch, but I'm a lifelong admirer.)

I just couldn't stand the thought, as one staff member who sent me to meet Cartier-Bresson said to me: "your work reminds me of my old friend, Henri's" [Cartier-Bresson] and then to be sent to photograph basketball, football, and baseball games', about which I cared nothing.

If I were going to be a photographer, I wanted to compete at a higher level or not at all.

I hoped for an Aperture Monograph and basically that was the end of the line for my talents, at that time.  Photography then was barely seen as 'art' and that was an uphill battle.  Ansel Adams then was still photographing chairs and other things to make ends meet and getting stiffed (I hear) by numerous clients.

I decided then about life as a mid-level journalism photographer: 'not at all', and quit to be a writer.

End of story, except occasionally for about three decades, I took photos here and there, with some good work interspersed but very rarely.

I just knew I could never compare with "Henri's" vast, wonderful collection of work.  It discouraged me so much about my own ambitions.

Little did I know then that he was the quintessential photographer -- I had never heard of him - I just recognized his greatness through his photographs, and I understood I never could hold a candle to his photography.

And so I acknowledged the truth and went other paths in life

Until now.

Best to you, Laurent.

jean.

John (Crosley)