'Ro-day-o Relatives' (Rodeo Relatives)

Ro-Day-O Relatives is just one view of California's giant rodeo held

every year at Salinas in Central California near California's coast and

the tony cities of Monterey and Carmel which are populated by

millionaires more than the 'common folk'. Less rich people travel

from all over California and the US to attend the rodeo at Salinas,

including worldwide rodeo talent. 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 one slice of Americana -- life at the 'sideshow' of the rodeo -- the photo booth, complete with bull's back and backdrop photo -- incongruously featuring a photo taken at the Cheyenne, Wyoming rodeo, not the very big, famous local rodeo. 

One assumes the photo booth vendor traveled nationwide from rodeo to rodeo with his big camera and backdrop, and didn't feel the need to change the backdrop for each rodeo city he worked in.

As to 'relatives' - that is my recollection from appearances then.  It is not a guarantee.

Enjoy.

john

John (Crosley)

Confusing to this viewer.

There's some mighty wierd light and shadow stuff happening with the shadow emanating out of oldguy's right cheek strait accross to our left and the down @45 to just cover cowboy by the fence.  except for the triangular splash to our left of kid. Most of the pic has colours evoking a faded polaroid 'cept for the 2 humans.  and then they look like Norman Rockwell (?) caricatures (maybe it's just the contrast like those optical illusions where a chess piece looks lighter or darker on a white or black square) . The bull apears to be an artificial structure for tourists to pose on in the same vein as scenes on plywood where people stick their heads thru cutouts. (I've been to a few rodeos, worked with cattle in corrals, and never seen fur with that texture).

OK so a photo's raising of  questions is many times a good thing, but really! Are we sposed to invert our belly buttons and contemplate our own multiple realities?

Now: i) I know I'm not the brightest bulb in the bunch when it comes to artistic vision,  ii) I've been thru quite a bit of this photographer's work, because I like it, and hope to learn from it,  iii) combining  i + ii = the failure to see the clothes on this emporer is probably (well, at least possibly, and probably likely, or something like that), mine.

So somebody help me out.

John: as the photographer - why the hell did you take this picture?

Other viewers: why the hell do you like it?

I took this photo in part because of what you term its Norman Rockwell character -- the older man and the eyes and look of the younger kid -- to me, priceless.

That's no bull, but a mockup, designed to look like a bull, for photo purposes only.  The illustration in the back IS a faded photo.

The 'strange light' you comment on is sidelighting, my preferred source of lighting when I can get it.

I have been looking at this photo a long time, and after reviewing gallery offerings,  a light went off in in a bubble over my head! 

This is precisely the sort of photo some are offering; I get from one gallery daily offerings of just one photo each day, often of Americana, into which this photo I think would fit well (color OR black and white).

Sometimes it takes a long time for me to see how a certain photo 'fits in', but I just take 'em and evaluate some part of them later.  I take what I like or might like, and wonder later why.

If you're puzzled, I understand, but I suggest you visit Americana or vernacular gallery offerings, and if you persist, this photo may reveal its worth.

(or not).

;~))

Thanks for the implicit kind words in supposing there really was something there that you might have been missing -- that suggests that I have some integrity and reputational value, and that you supposed that photo's worth may have just something you could not see -- which is a highly flattering way of critiquing something that you didn't see the value of immediately.

john

John (Crosley)

Good timing on the boy's expression.

The photo reminds me I've been to a couple of regular rodeos as a kid. Almost as boring as a circus or the dog tracks. Except once to a hillybilly, homemade, rodeo on a farm in rural Arkansas during the 40s. A scene like right out of the "great depression". They rode their milk cows. Did not have any bulls or horses.  I liked that rodeo -a bit of rural American history that I'm glad I saw. 

As nice as your favorable impression of this photo is your story that this photo evokes (I judge it's favorable in part by the fact that it's evocative to you.)

The story just in visualization is literally priceless -- a wonderful piece of Americana that I never would have guessed you had witnessed.

But then I know precious little about you other than what you have written, the way you write and interact here as well as the content of your photos and your consummate skill with photography.

Who'd have guessed that Meir Samel went to a hillbilly rodeo in the Deep South in the '40s where the participants competed on milk cows?

I never would have, and I'm delighted to learn that from you (and that this photo stirred you to share that memory).

That's the surprise of the day and one of the top comments of the week, (it might have been THE top comment but I got a fantastic comment just a few days ago about breasts by a member here who is large busted ruminating on the rigors, mindset and entitlements of being large-busted, which 'opened my eyes' in ways that surprised me.

I hope you choose to share some more stories of interesting and/or unusual things you have seen in your L O N G lifetime --- surely you have witnessed much that would make interesting reading, and this is a place where experience shows me one can safely share what can be made public.

Readers here come here because they are interested, and generally treat comments here quite favorably -- in times past when there were many more and more extensive comments, I got much feedback that aside from the photos, people came here  regularly just to read the comments and colloquy.

I think it's beginning to start up again after hiatus based on recent comments with renews postings by me.

Think about it please; why not share some more?

It would probably be appreciated not just by me but by those who really would like to know more about Meir Samel and what surely has been a most interesting life worthy of some fantastic (not derogatory 'fantastic' but 'amazing' 'fantastic') tales. 

It can be rewarding just to organize and write those tales, too, and see that they are valued in addition to your photographs.

Thanks again for a valuable comment.

john

John (Crosley)

(don't you wish you then had an opportunity to take a great photo and had done so?  My life is populated with hundreds or maybe even tens of thousands of such moments, and I'm now just making up for lost time, as I've witnessed so many wonderful and/or interesting things in a very full lifetime.)

jc

Without the boy's expression and the implied 'sharing' between riders, this photo never would have been chosen  for workup and eventual possible posting.

As a prior commenter wrote, the sympathy here is reminiscent of Norman Rockwell, but Rockwell endured for decades and his work was greatly loved and popular because he had a particular view of common, everyday occurrences in America -- he saw the love and the touching moments of life and -- however, schmaltzy those moments were -- he painted them because that's what he saw.

I don't make a point of saving the schmaltzy only, but this is a 'true moment' and for me, I look when I can for special moments that speak of 'truth', as here.

I and my photos do not always focus on bums, degenerates, poor people, people whose 'plights' might best be documented, or others . . . . .

If I hadn't taken up photography on the mean streets (as I saw them) of Manhattan) or soon after in the news profession, and instead grew my craft and stayed in the Midwest or Mountain States (and did not become a photo landscaper) this is the sort of photo I might have taken when shooting 'people' -- well at least part of the time.

But a steady diet of anything can become boring after a while; I like to 'mix it up'. 

Just when you think you have me and my style pegged, I post something like this that's unlike anything else I've posted.

Go figure, hunh?

john

John (Crosley)