'The Old Lady and the New Sci-Fi Movie'

A billboard for Disney's new big budget sci-fi blockbuster with

lumbering sci-fi beasts -- 'John Carter' (here written in Cyrillic)

-- dominates a entire Metro wall, but this aged woman will probably

never understand what it's about - let alone ever go to a see it

considering her meager her monthly pension. She's obviously not the

'target demographic'. 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

Great tension in! BR JV

Beautiful, not to say excellent picture but I'm not happy with your explanation. You said that she " will probably never understand what it's about - let alone ever go to a see it considering her meager her monthly pension."

Well, I can tell you that she DOESN'T CARE! what it is and if her pension allow she will probably go to Bolshoy theater to watch a ballet  than some Disney's halfwit production.

She's an European after all.

As a many times patron of the Bolshoi, and a devotee not so much of the opera (though I do like the Bolshoi's 'Golden Cock' production by Rimsky-Korsakov especially), I agree she'd probably like to go to the opera, not because she's European but because she's of Russian/Ukrainian background.

However, she's in Ukraine, not Russia, so she has nil chance to go to the Bolshoi, however, Kyiv has an opera, in season now too, and seats are not outrageously high priced, but still, I think, above her price point.

You are right; there is appreciation of high culture among Russian and Ukrainian older people.   The Soviets educated them, and it always was one of the Soviet successes to take the highlights of high culture, especially Russian/Slavic culture and bring them to the masses and also allow the masses to be highly educated.  In fact that high education may have brought about the downfall of the Soviet System!

Even now, Russia and Ukraine have one of the world's highest percentage of college graduates despite Ukraine's economic crisis, and my model fees, cheap as they were, helped pay many models' university tuitions in times past.

I do not denigrate this woman; she would hardly (as you say) be interested in a Disney extravaganza, and probably would be more likely to enjoy 'Aida' with an elephant on stage than a pseudoelephant creature from the movie 'John Carter' (illustrated).

I'd have liked the photo's low light quality to have been better, alas, but you take what you can get.

I've lived in the culture you describe, and I think understand it better than you may have given me credit for.

'John Carter' is for the young people who go to McDonald's while I posit the Kyiv, the Bolshoi and regional opera (and ballets) are for those who will truly enjoy them (me too, soon enough).

Maybe I'll see you at the Kyiv Opera?

Look for the patron with the camera.

Trying to look inconspicuous.

Thanks for the fine (and patriotic) comment.

john

John (Crosley)

Thanks for noting the tension in this photo.

I pride myself on things like that.

Notice how the woman just fits in the corner of the rectangular frame of the movie poster.

In a sense, she is 'part of it', even though she is quite apart from it.

That's the tension I hoped for.

Two geometric shapes, one morphing into the other, so the second stands out - her head and upper torso seem to grow from the lower part of the poster frame.

I just hoped for better reproduction quality, but you take what's available.

Best wishes and thanks.

john

John (Crosley)

Elliott Erwitt, three times President of Magnum Photographic photo agency, had a maxim:  'Always Watch the Hands'.

He felt they often were more revealing than people's faces.

This thinking man's photographer realized many people, for a variety of reasons are pretty good at putting on false fronts or disguised expressions with their faces  -- especially actors and politicians -- but few are so practiced as to know how to disguise their feelings with their hands.

I look for 'hands' as a mode of expression and use them routinely in my photogrphy.

If I have a static subject frramed, I often wait take one 'safe' frame then for other frames wait until they do something unusul and/or interesting with their hand and/or hands. 

That's when I snap next. 

It's easy enough to wait for that split second when a hand raises to push glasses back up that are falling down a hose, or to hold a beard while pondering a thorny quetions or even to brush back hair.

Hands are an iimportant part of portraiture, often missed by many photographers.

john

John (Crosley)