'The Bus Stop VI'

The bus opens its door at its last stop as it turns around and lets

off passengers including me, and new passengers with snow

swirling around them are anxious to clamber aboard. 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

This is the equivalent of a 'hip shot' which is rare for me.

 

Actually, I was holding onto a railing, which for me is necessary, as I tried to descend, and held a camera and fired with the other hand.

 

I couldn't resist what I had seen as the door flung open seconds prior and descended prepared.

 

john

 

John (Crosley)

a very intense scene, full of life. 6. favorite. regards.hen Ry

What a nice comment.

 

Early returns show a ratings hit.  What a surprise if it continues.

 

Best regards, and thanks.

 

john

 

John (Crosley)

Has a sense of "being there". Works well enough for me that I can feel the chill in the air.

It's a whole crowd of chilly Chauncey Gardners ('Being There').

 

That's a wonderful comment.

 

Thanks from the bottom of my often very soft and grateful heart.

 

;~))

 

john

 

John (Crosley)

The white flakes of snow against their dark winter coats and the slightly skewed angle of the composition work very well here. I don't think they particularly cared that their picture was being taken; they were probably much more interested in just getting inside a warm bus.

On reflection, I think one reason why I like spontaneous candid photos like this is because there's a certain frankness or honesty - not to say "truth" - in these unguarded moments.  Nothing wrong with posed portraits where the photographer takes a few moments to engage the person's attention and show them in another type of honesty.  But there's an immediacy in the spontaneous glimpse that always appeals to me, and has done since my first exposure to the concept of "street photography" as a teenager growing up in NY.

About the composition; the angles are the result of firing without viewing through the viewfinder and even then I had to straighten partly in Photoshop and crop the left edge somewhat.

 

For collectors of trivia, the store in the background's sign translated says basically 'Stock, Second Hand' or Second Hand Store'.  Things aren't as foreign as they appear, now are they?

 

Yes, the large, feathery snowflakes from just freezing air as opposed to very small, dry flakes from extremely cold air, do contrast nicely with the darkness of their outerwear.  This one worked well in the conversion to black and white.

 

Now as to being seen photographing, since I was alighting form the bus as I took this picture, with one hand on railing, stepping and other hand on camera, they weren't even aware I had tripped the shutter, as there was no hesitancy on my part other than would be expected from someone alighting.

 

Jack McR, I appreciate the time and thought it took to comment, and I have each and every time in the past you've commented.

 

Thanks!

 

john

 

John (Crosley)

Some of Henri Cartier's greatest photos that night now be classified as 'street' were posed.

 

Think of the cotton workers in Paris in  front of mountains of cotton, for instance, all shades of whites and grays with each individual subject standing and looking into the camera, but simply a superb composition.

 

He took a few photos in Mexico where there were no humans at all; during his flirtation with 'surrealism' and 'surrealism photography' but still which fit into the concept of 'street'.  Think 'shoes' for instance.

 

Was the man twisting his breasts while seated posed or not posed?  I'll probably never know, but suggest, now that I know better that it was posed or he started to take an unposed photo and the man reacted and twisted.

 

They do that sometimes for me -- when starting or asked to 'pose' subjects do unusual and unexpected things which I then immortalize or at least memorialize . . . . if immortalize is too strong a word.

 

Perhaps you are thinking here is the lack of formalism that is revealed by the lack of a level horizon . . . . . which reveals that I did not have camera to eye.  In that regard you may have some affinity for the work of a certain New York photographer who tiled his camera sideways intentionally in much of his work to give it 'attitude' (not a word he used).

 

You know whom I mean, of course, as the curator of the Metropolitan Museum called him the  'Greatest photographer of the second half of the Twentieth Century'.  His work for all its 'candidness' was extremely studied and he had a most studied approach to the candid approach that now we call 'street'.

 

In fact, I've no idea when we started calling it 'street'.  I certainly never heard the term until I came to Photo.net about nine years ago, though I actually may be one of the few here (or the only one) who actually met Cartier-Bresson (Tony Dummett comes to mind as another possibility though I can't recall his writing that he actually did).

 

Spontaneity can be great in its place and it certainly has a favored place in 'street', but not all 'street' need be spontaneous, though in my book I strive for it when I can get it.  One look through my now huge portfolio will reveal too many oddball situations for one man to have invented and posed individuals - -so they must be spontaneously captured.

 

Also, I didn't have money or willing participants to act out those little dramas I found on the street, but was and still am adept at spotting them and memorializing them.

 

And, Lex, I do so enjoy your comments. Feel free any time to add another.

 

Even on a photo like this, which obviously did not have a perpendicularity consultant.

 

;~))

 

john

 

John (Crosley)

Maybe it's very cliché and stereotyping to say so, but this image breathes the standard idea that the west had about the USSR for ages: cold, people in a queue, no smiles. That puts it in a nice contrast with many of the photos that come out of countries that formed the USSR formerly, I think - images of capitalism, growth, wealth.

Both stereotypes, I am well aware, but a cliché or stereotype can have its function. At the least, the stereotypes I think I see in this image made me think about the "now and then", about how that shapes the stereotypes we have and how easy we react to them.

This might not do justice to the subjects of your photo, John, in which case I hope you will carry forward my apologies. But it does leave me with a photo that made me stop and think a while, a photo that transmits something well beyond the boundaries of what it actually shows. In short: a darn strong documentary shot.

Stereotypes have their function.  They become stereotypes because they are oft-repeated truths (pardon me for overlooking your pithy comment for a few days as it fell beneath my radar).

 

I think the truth is the people of the former Communist countries now shop in supermarkets stocked with lots of things but struggle (except in Moscow) to pay for the things inside.  Bazaars in Kyiv where this was taken are everywhere, even on the steps and inside the tunnelways of the Metro, where women trying to supplement their meager pensions sell truck farm produce and gee gaws for a slight profit to heat their small flats.

 

The new wealth of Russia's Moscow has not yet hit Ukraine -- it was far wealthier before 'the crisis' when an overload of Western Capital infusion that got caught in a web of corrupt money managers and banks, and much of it got drained away or literally vacuumed out as banks failed from 2006 on.  But before 2006 there were precious few banks and very few supermarkets at all, and through it all, there has been progress.

 

New luxury buildings abound next to Khrushchev era buildings.  There are the haves and the have nots.

 

But the entire system was built around public transportation.

 

Although the Soviet System  built enormously broad boulevards, famously empty except for a an occasional top-level bureaucrat's car, those same boulevards now are crammed to a standstill as the people rush to buy cars.

 

BMWs and Mercedes four or five years ago were common even in poor sister Ukraine, but many disappeared, vacuumed away in 'the crisis', but still the people have endured, and for those privileged great number who do drive and get stuck in those traffic jams in the central regions, they have good enough cars, often European or Japanese built, and for a few, even some built by Korean manufacturers in Ukraine.

 

But so long as the super-efficient Metro takes the people for 25 US cents to anywhere in Kyiv, the jitney buses will take feeder routes, (as this) to and from farther out parts and the people will scramble to get good seats on the buses, but in a leftover from Soviet times, the people do know how to queue and they do, ever so politely.

 

Yes, unlike the Germans at a Swiss ski resort who trample others' skis in lift lines trying to be 'first', the Ukrainians who are far down on the economic pecking order' are a far more polite people in a queue, and if you need to go get a bottle of beverage to queue a thirst, (or smoke a cigarette so the smoke doesn't bother) they'll hold your place, and if there's one line for two different jitney buses at a stop, those waiting for the bus that hasn't shown up yet, will politely step aside and let those for the bus that just showed up, walk politely by to their seats without causing disruption to the line.

 

These people show anxiousness because the snow is unlike the normal winter snow -- it's right at melting point and therefore sticks to faces and drips water rather than just blows away, so it's especially uncomfortable, and they've been waiting an hour, I think, as this bus is infrequent. 

 

Many buses leave quite frequently, say every ten or 15 minutes, with time to sit before they leave.  However, the buses can become crowded, and passengers may have to stand for an hour's journey if not willing to stand in the cold to wait for the next bus.

 

Note:  These people are NOT trying to crowd past descending riders onto the bus; they're waiting politely, enduring snow that's melting on their faces, which can actually be colder than very frozen snow that just blows by.

 

So long as the Kyiv Metro runs, which will be for at least another 100 years, I think, there will be such scenes.  The only difference, is the Metro stations will be extended somewhat as the Metro grows, bit by bit  -- something it does now, new station by new station.

 

All in all, Kyiv is a pretty well run city, considering there's not so much money to spread around, and the state of Ukrainian government.

 

And it's all in part because of the people, a great percentage of whom would love to become Americans, but are also proud and very sturdy and enduring Ukrainians.

 

john

 

John (Crosley)