'Kyiv Couple'

As Spring approaches each year after Kyiv Ukraine's usually harsh

winters, some young couples turn toward kissing and other mating

behavior while the babushkas and dedushkas (grandmothers and

grandfathers -- or colloquially old women and old men) simply take

an opportunity to get out of small flats and onto the street, as here.

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

Older women in Ukraine are rather common.

Older men on the other hand are much rarer.

When I met younger women, the instance of former husbands who left pretty young widows after they were in auto accidents and drowned in the vast Dnipro river while 'fishing' (read that:  while fishing and drinking so heavily they fell overboard and could not be rescued) was startling. 

Fatty foods, obesity helped by wives who ate more lean and pushed the fatty foods onto husbands (because they believe husbands deserved the more Western foods and the meat -- which mostly was fatty) plus  deteriorating medical care, for which there were unaffordable medications or 'free doctors' who demanded corruption or put you in lines that might stretch weeks or months for needed care all have contributed to a low life expectancy for males -- females tend to live much, much longer, and the Ukrainian supply of widows seems to be vast with a great number working on the street as vendors and kiosk patronesses.

Many able doctors have fled to the West -- just look for Russian and Ukrainian doctors at your local clinic in the US -- I've been treated by several who fled up to 10 or 15 years ago - some of those country's best in a great drain of a once vaunted medical system that in Russia left cardiologists making their living giving 'massage' on the side.

In a way, this is a somewhat uncommon scene in Kyiv; more common in outlying villages, but still not so frequent as in the West -- touching to me though.

john

John (Crosley)

This is from Ukraine as you can see; I'm in the US right now for a while or longer, and the style is the same, but the subjects of course are quite different.  (I'm involved in a documentary production.)

I think you would recognize my photography no matter what the location, as many have who have followed my work -- it's all about composition, light and shadow -- but especially about what I find 'pleasing' that moment, as I seldom do 'assignments'. 

Some are 'gritty', some are aesthetically more pleasing, some are just 'interesting', or even a mix, and my  ultimate goal -- to take 'interesting' photos no matter where I am and if they're aesthetically pleasing, and compositionally well formed, so much the better.

Thanks again, Rejith.

john

John (Crosley)