'Healthy Respect for Pit Bull'

Pit bulls will slurp to death with friendly tongues, but if provoked and

especially in packs become murderous baby and man-killing beasts.

This pedestrian seems to have a healthy regard for this pit bull

(American Staffordshire Terrier-- pit bull mix or pit bull mix) on a

street crossing in Venice, Ca., near the beach. 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

It should say in Request for Critique above:  'Pit bull or pit bull mix . . . . not repeating 'pit bull mix' twice.

Apologies.

john

John (Crosley)

My cat has just recently attacked my neighbor's pitbull and sent it running for it's life!  I really hope the cat doesn't make a habit out of doing this because if that pitbull does manage to get it's jaws locked on it once it's curtains for kitty.

That's exactly the point.

Few dog owners have more loyal breed followings than pit bulls, and I think it says very much about the personality of the owners' individual psyches.

Psychoanalysis through breed choice.

How's that sound?

Just a 'pet' theory of mine, pardon the pun.

Thanks for contributing.

john

John (Crosley)

(Pray that cat learned a lesson.)

I do not trust the dogs of this breed, particularly when they walk without a muzzle.

Big man on a small bike. Taut leash. Pugnacious creature. Wary young man. Perfect timing and composition. Why f11, I wonder...

You are exactly correct in not trusting dogs of this breed; they are bred for their fierceness, loyalty and for never letting go once their jaws are locked (see comment above).  Packs of them can bring down a bull.

They are particularly fierce when females are in heat or they are in a pack, and often have been known to attack for fun small children and maul them to death -- and that even can happen with unsupervised kids in a home where one or more pit pulls (American Staffordshire terrier) are kept as 'loving' pets.

Once they get started in their biting or attack frenzy, there's almost no stopping them.  In San Jose CA, one bit and flattened four tires of a policeman's American car with very large American-size tires while the cop was trapped inside (the dog was shot).

Seldom does a month go by in American news without report of a pit bull mauling a child -- most often to death, and sometimes with horrible, catastrophic injuries.

Drug gang members raise them to protect crops or buildings and parade them around to show their 'toughness' and indeed they 'send a message' about 'terror', as they terrorize all around them, while making wonderful family pets until some stranger sets them off, then 'curtains' for the stranger and huge hospital bills, or the mortuary.

People in America almost NEVER muzzle their pets, even pit bulls, unlike Ukraine where one will see such animals muzzled, which is much more sane.

Sorry to have overlooked your comment; it came during suppression and removal of comment notification, so I just didn't see it until today.

john

John (Crosley)

Every so often one sees in a split second a scene deserving of being recorded when one's camera is not set optimally.

I would have chosen a more sensitive ISO and a different, f stop -- with a narrow depth of field if I had some warning when I turned around I would be taking this shot, but I was walking the same direction as these people when I stopped to look around, spied this, put camera (unadjusted to eye) fumbled with autofocus and took this photo, just barely making the capture.

The image is suboptimal for the light, but nevertheless it's saved (in my eyes) and memorable enough to post because it was a scene that told a story and a memorable one -- one that was worth telling and likely to capture viewers' eyes.

F11?

The camera was set for the nearby beach and sunlight where any ISO required such stopping down, but the sun was dropping into the ocean and light levels were changing, including especially on this city intersection in Venice, CA. where buildings shaded the sun which was beginning to set.

Is my answer satisfactory?  I hope, because it's the only truth.

Good question, and it shows that you are a good detective.

Thanks for asking.  Hope the answer is satisfactory.

john

John (Crosley)

Happens often with me - reacting to a scene instinctively; not wanting to lose the moment, shoot first, and then find a less than ideal setting on the camera...

[Was traveling, hence the delay...]

I sometimes have shot with the world's most expensive equipment and especially that which allowed special buttons for changing certain settings almost instantaneously.

I still have a problem with 'command dials' and 'subcommand dials' for setting aperture as opposed simply to rotating the lens aperture ring.  They may make sense, but it's less sense than the 'feel' of the rotation one feels when one works the ringed aperture to reset a wrong aperture -- one can 'feel' the correct aperture for a given light and ASA/ISO setting under certain circumstances and needn't be looking at anything to make an instantaneous correction.  Here that was not possible or even to KNOW the aperture setting was f11 which I assume you found from the EXIF info attached to the photo.

Now I sometimes shoot with more budget cameras, or one expensive and one budget camera, as budget cameras produce four times better photos than the first $3,000+ cameras did six years ago with much higher ISO reach/sensitivity, so if one doesn't need all the bells and whistles, and one can get an identical image off the sensor, and one also can make sense of the reduced number of options and special, dedicated buttons and wheels designed to make instantaneous changes in things like ISO/image quality, etc., 'on the fly' one can take GREAT photos with a $350 camera.

I've learned to make such compromises sometimes, and still get sometimes wonderful results -- even shoot occasionally with a 'kit' lens and get stunning results, which goes to show that all those who crowd the equipment forums are just like I was at first -- worried they couldn't take a good photo unless they had the latest and best equipment.

Now I'm sure that even with a budget camera of today I can take a good photo, and was taking them with film auto nothing cameras in the 1960s, but not at as great a clip and of course missing lots of great opportunities that arise because of the ability to autofocus and zoom which we now have.

Yes, auto everything is helpful, but I'm versatile.

I haven't forgot what it's like to shoot not only with a manual lens, but with a manual lens that doesn't stop down the aperture -- you had to stop it down manually or it stayed wide open which you used for framing the photo, then stopped down with a special ring for taking the photo.  They were inexpensive, but often the optics were good -- sometimes great and some of my best photos were taken with such lenses, which often sold for $28 to $45, as secondary lenses before I moved up to a full line of manual focus Nikkors.

I can still shoot with such a lens as I proved to myself not too long ago, and get a good capture, even with the manual stopping down to aperture.

You're right about the thesis that really nothing beats the capture -- all the rules in the world won't make a perfect capture if the subject is crap, and all the most wonderful equipment in the world won't make wonderful captures if the photographer takes uninspiring photographs.

One commenter described in portraits to me how he used a common mathematical formuola (I won't describe it) to 'center' his models, because it was somehow close to perfect and has been so recognized since 'Greek times' and sure enough a look at his photos revealed rows and rows of women models posed almost alike, with centering almost always the same -- his quest for perfection.

I just press the shutter when I see something I like or that interests me and if I can make a good composition out of it, all the better - I try for that, and if it doesn't work, so be it.  There's always another photo to take.

For your information, my most viewed photo, at over 1/4 million 'views' is mostly blurry, except in one key place where it counts all on account of having my vibration reduction mechanism on my long zoom lens inadvertently off (brushed off by a crowd I was in no doubt). 

Yet, the subject was SO INTERESTING, it's my most viewed photo, and perennially so.

Even blurriness that's noticeable does not disqualify an otherwise worthy photo.

Technical perfection is great for architectural photos and some others, mainly product shots in a studio, but there always are compromises and this is one.

I wouldn't enter this in a contest for lack of great 'image quality', but it's still very viewable, and I only wish it had greater light and a better ISO, instead of being stuck at f11 like you note, but that's all water under the bridge and the thrill of capturing something rather than just letting it go because I couldn't get perfection always is untenable.

I'd rather get something and cull through my discards and share the interesting ones with viewers like you than self-curate everything and maybe miss for lack of my own approval a blurry photo that might have been my most viewed -- but I would have been afraid to post because it would be not 'technically' perfect.

It's 'the photo' stupid is how Clinton would have put it (in his first campaign.

It's not the rules or the equipment, it's 'the photo'.

;~))

I've taken nearly a million photos that didn't quite have 'it' many posted on this site, but look at the John Crosley (me) 'My Photostream' on Flickr.com (if you can zero in on it)(difficult) and see what's there to see a few that passes muster for myself as some of my most viewable and view-worthy.

About one out of a thousand.

That's good enough for me.

Best to you Rajat.

john

John (Crosley)