'Savor Each Moment'

Three diners on a poster preside over three diners in a fast food

restaurant in a US Metropolitan area. Your ratings, critiques and

observations are invited and most welcome. If you rate harshly or 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

A better title might be "Hey 'mf' no smoking!"

You suggest that somehow the caption read 'Hey motherfucker' . . . . as though that were appropriate.

It isn't.

This is a father and his two kids.

You somehow introduce the subject of smoking.

No one here in my photo or the wall photo is smoking.

It's forbidden in public places in the state where taken.

I can't imagine a comment so far wrong as yours.

Fortunately your workup shows better; mine looked fine on my screen but posted dark, and I'll be changing it.

Posting, as I was advised when I first joined Photo.net, is an interesting art in itself, and the adviser was quite right.

This most pleasant father deserved credit for having two of the most well-behaved children I've seen in quite some time, and I told him so directly, and congratulated him on being a good parent, having observed him.

To have addressed him or captioned this photo as 'hey motherfucker' would have been both racist and demeaning beyond belief. 

Shame on you.

John (Crosley)

member of Photo.net

The display image has been substituted.  It may not have worked its way through PN's at least three servers yet, and if you have previously viewed this image, it may be cached in your browser, so to view the updated image you may have to clear your browser.

In view of the comment about 'smoking' above, I have the following comment.

The upper rightmost hand does not belong to any of the persons whose face appears in the wall photo but to another individual, and as such the fingers are pointed toward that person. 

An examination of what is being held reveals it is square cut and long, and obviously a French fry, and not some vegetable matter to be lighted and inhale (unless you're in the unusual habit of lighting up your French fries as you eat, if indeed that's possible).  In any case, the hand holding the French fry has fingers pointing to the face and mouth of the person, right and out of frame in the wall photo.

I hope that clears things up.  Restaurants in almost all of America do not allow smoking; even in states where smoking was once confined to a 'section' have seen those sections largely abolished.  It is a common sight in America to see workers outside office buildings huddled far distances from office or factory doors smoking their coffin nails, since in many states they are forbidden from standing and smoking near public entrances or windows.  

As a consequence in the US the percentage of persons who smoke has plummeted -- in my eyes a very good thing, as I'm allergic and the vast majority of my near ancestors died of smoking related illnesses apparently before they might otherwise have succumbed.

Tobacco industry executives in the United States now are being forced by a US District Judge who had a part in the massive tobacco litigation to publicly acknowledge on behalf of their companies that their companies LIED TO SMOKERS IN THE UNITED STATES AND HENCE WORLDWIDE THAT THEY DID INDEED KNOW THAT SMOKING WAS HAZARDOUS TO HEALTH AND FATAL WHILE AT THE SAME TIME THEY DRESSED UP ACTORS AS DOCTORS AND FAMOUSLY ADVERTISED THEIR WARES AS HEALTHFUL AND DENIED IN COURT AND IN ALL VENUES TO A ONE FOR DECADES THAT THEY HAD NO EVIDENCE TOBACCO WAS UNHEALTHFUL OR FATAL.

Lawyers who sued them dug up documents while they kept losing case after case after case for wrongful death and smoking related diseases, but those documents supplied by the tobacco companies under court orders found their way gathered by plaintiff attorneys in a document repository or sharing service among plaintiff attorneys that  finally broke the tobacco industry and caused them to enter into the billions and billions of dollars in  the massive tobacco settlement with the states.

Whoever said plaintiff lawyers never did anything useful?

In this case, their work literally is reflected in the increased average lifespan of the average American.  Despite increasing obesity, the dramatic and permanent cutdown in US tobacco use has added years to the average Americans' life expectancy.

First thing:  thank the lawyers.

'The hearse horse snickered as he carried the tobacco executive to his grave' [play on the old saying about lawyers and the hearse horse].

Soon, that US District Judge is going to make those tobacco executives admit that their companies indeed did lie to the courts and the public for decades that they KNEW the harmful affects of smoking and tobacco and actively concealed it in a vast conspiracy.

Expect it.

It's 50 or 60 years too late.

In the meantime, the tobacco companies have moved on.

An executive I traveled with who does business in China told me that as a businessman in a meeting in China he is expected to give all participants a carton of American cigarettes to each meeting participant as a gesture of goodwill.

There's a billion Chinese and smoking is rampant and largely unregulated there.

The tobacco industry largely has written off the USA as an unfriendly place to do business and much the same with parts of Europe, where regulations are becoming increasingly unfriendly, even if many Europeans are scofflaws at anti-smoking rules.

Corporations have no morals except as their leaders impose on them gratuitously, and a corporation's one goal is to make a profit

Tobacco companies largely have been driven out of the US and found more friendly territories abroad.

When I was a young lawyer riding elevators, the big name law firm plaintiff lawyers who got multi-million verdicts who rode the elevator with me five floors above mine at my first office where I went into solo practice used to smoke openly inside elevators.

If they were smoking cigars, they would hold them low, and then the smoke would waft up into my nostrils.   Offices were always filled with smoke.  Clothes and hair daily smelled of smoke.

Those who long for the good ol' days should remember going to the funerals of their relatives who died at young ages of heart attacks, strokes, and other smoking related illnesses.

I did, and I never once smoked even one cigarette in my life.

Smoking kills the collagen in skin. 

Some youth today as I photographed tried to guess my age; his and his girlfriend's guesses both were 15 years younger than my true age, in part because my hair has not turned gray and my skin is smooth -- no smoking ever. (hair hereditary).  [even though I felt quite old]

john

John (Crosley)

If you brighten I expect you'll need to use the lasso tool so that the outdoors does not blow out -or some such other thing- and feather and brighten in steps,  not one step otherwise you'll get a boundery line on the lasso . However there may be better ways. I have only a 10 year old version of Elements.

Meir, thats not a cigarette, its a french fry. I too thought it was a smoke at first, but something did not look right. I then realized that it was not the mans hand, it is a hand form a person out of the frame. Still are some places where you can smoke in dinning facilities even in the US.

John, another excellent image. Thanks.

You'll notice now the image has been replaced and the outdoors looks much better now.  I do not plan on working on the outdoors more, and if it is blown, so what?

You're at your zenith working on images, so why bother with captions.

I do give credit for the fact you're blind in one eye and have difficulty with vision in the other, but you also should make some allowances for that before committing yourself.

Thanks for the technical advice.

john

John (Crosley)

Thanks for the words of backup.  Some of my more astute viewers actually take great care to READ my photos before interpreting them, and you're one.  It's dangerous to make snap judgments about them because I review them pretty thoroughly before I post them, although I am perfectly capable of overlooking important things, which is why critique is helpful.

I'm glad you like this image.   It's not often one looks at the diners at the next table, finds they are in a group of three, from large to small in descending order, and above them is a poster showing 'threes' in ascending order from low to high.  ;~))

To me that's 'reverse mirroring' of a high order, and something one almost would never see in life, so why not capture it?

If I ever revive my 'Threes' presentation, this will make its way there, with the special 'double threes' portion.

That's a sort of 'high water mark'  in a photographer's day, which makes a photo like this treasured even if it  says nothing and means nothing otherwise.

That loving cup (photo of the week) and the ten years membership, next to your name above your comment do mean something when it comes to a critique from you suggesting gravitas, which you've earned and which is reflected in your comment.

john

John (Crosley)

The updated and revised photo has now worked its way through the servers.

The displayed photo is now the photo that was means to be displayed and shown to its best advantage, which is always a challenge when it features an individual with very dark skin, as this man, dressed in black against a more neutral or light background.

john

John (Crosley)

I see very well thank you. Did I say "motherfucker"? I did not say it; you said it. Why do I read this stuff? What's wrong with me?

Signed; One of your "more astute viewers" (all in good fun).

Meir, I took you to task for using the term 'motherfucker' above in your comment because you used the initials 'mf' which are the same as using the word in street parlance.  No more, no less.

It was inappropriate.  It assumes either an aggressiveness in case one is angry or a familiarity that was not implied by the photo in case one is joshing with the fellow, as the term in familiar surroundings can be (contrary to what many think) one of endearment or closeness).

Neither was present here; not aggressiveness or upset, nor endearment or closeness and thus the term MF was entirely uncalled for and inappropriate.

You previously had written you were blind in one eye and had a terrible, incurable disease afflicting the other, so the implication was it affected vision in the remaining eye, if I recall correctly, and I do have a pretty good recall.

There's your explanation.  You note that you only seem to have problems with me when you start attacking or otherwise playing around with the captions, rather than the photos themselves where you often give great help.

Remember your promise?

john

John (Crosley)