new -- color & b&w 'The Beautiful People'

Sometimes advertisements take on special meaning with the addition

of passersby or adding people to the composition; rarely they don't,

as I feel here. Let me know your feelings, please. Your ratings,

critiques and observations are invited and most welcome. If you rate

harshly, very critically, or wish to make an observation, please submit

a helpful and constructive comment; please share your photographic

knowledge to help improve my photography. Thanks! Enjoy! john

An interesting bend to pause at in your subterranean journeys. I see potentials for stories in this double image and don't for a moment think it matters that there are no people of the non-billboarded sort in the scene... works well for me.

I seldom take photos of 'other people's art', feeling that to do so is just appropriation while adding nothing.

In this case, however, I added perspective and juxtaposition with my viewpoint, which I think counts for something.

It's a rare exception to my general rule not to post photos of advertising without people in them, but there are a few such photos, and the ones I have posted without people I don't regret, and not this one either. (Color version posted on another [unnamed] service.  You'll have to look to find the color version which is pretty stunning for its great colors, if it interests you.

john

John (Crosley)

Like with everything else in almost all my life, I almost always carry a camera; this was a trip to the doctor for something urgent, but it only takes a second, and sometimes I don't even have to stop to take the photo, or even just do what American basketball players call 'stutterstep'.

I learned my lesson the hard way when I just barely had bought my first camera and the Martin Luther King riots had taken place in Harlem which I photographed (aftermath) then headed for Washington, D.C. (minus film as the train left overnight and film was exceedingly costly at Penn Station where the train left from, so I planned to stock up in Washington, D.C. in the following morning when I arrived to take photos of the riots which shut down the city there. 

Instead, I got shot on the train, was hospitalized, was driven by cops through a new riot a few days later, the rioters broke into the police station and the cop with a shotgun (the only one left in the station) held off the rioters from tearing me (and him) limb from limb with a shotgun from atop the stairs, then after consoling a copy who shot one of two killed rioters that night, I walked through the lockup with literally hundreds of rioters yelling, cursing at me, threatening me, trying to grab me through the thin spaces between the cages and scaring the bejusus out of me, and all this without any film.

I learned my lesson.

I still had my camera.

No film.

Either one, and you view the most fabulous things but there's no record, so you might as well be blowing smoke through your rear if you try to convince people it happened.

And the group of photos might have been worth a Pulitzer, so great was the potential, and I already was published with my new camera.  I wouldn't have hesitated, either to walk into "Life Magazine' to offer them my film, and I am sure they would have bought it.

I did that later with other things and was greeted gruffly at first; warmer after they processed the film.  I did that with other publishers too; I just walked in and said 'I have film' for a story they might be working on, and who were they to say 'no'. to something they might need, even if they had their own assignment photographers.

Good film (or captures now) works wonders for a reputation or a reception for a photographer, and people in the business will justify lots of miscreant personality traits if a photographer is 'producing', but for me they never had to 'put up' with anything, as I was not trying to be a standout other than photographically, but to 'fit in' which pays off well in the kind of photography I do.

I learned may craft in a good incubator -- the vibrant streets of the Civil Rights and Anti-War, campus protest era, before it had the name 'street' and went by other names . . . . . I never heard the name 'street photographer' until I joined Photo.net though I kept in touch in intervening years.

I just carry a camera, and the photos I take often are just of my daily life; I rarely attend 'events', as they are often so crowded and so well documented that it's hard to get anything not already recorded unless one has a client, and I don't sell (except potentially for 'fine art', books, etc. that show my own special view.)  I also went to Viet Nam with a camera and stayed, only to be MediVacced.

Thanks for commenting (and bearing the time to hear my reminiscences.).

john

John (Crosley)

Wonderful composition, John ... lovely lines manage. Excellent work ... regards

Thanks for the evaluation and compliment.

Those are the qualities that caused me to post this photo, even though it does not meet my usual criteria for subject.

I saw this, and even though I was feeling terrible and off to medical treatment, I stopped a step and took it, because for a moment it just 'felt right', and I 'saw something in it' that I don't see every day -- which overall is more the test of what I'll take and post than anything else.

In fact, I can be persuaded to post just about anything if it looks good or 'holds together' and 'feels right' to me, regardless of 'rules', whether they be of the community or self-imposed.

Best to you.

john

John (Crosley)

I understand what you mean about photographing advertisements. But it is our eye, your unique look that gives a different meaning to these ads. A great image.

I keep thinking of those waifs painted with huge, hollow, haunting eyes, that were popular in all sorts of sales places when I was a young man, all painted it was said by a man known as Keene and bearing his signature.

They were distinctive, and from those I learned the power of 'haunting eyes'.

Many times now, I will slightly exaggerate or brighten the eyes of the subjects I photograph to bring out their clarity, as I did with the model, left, giving her more of a mysterious look than I think the advertising company intended, but it suited my purposes and created greater focus on her face and causes eyes of viewers I think to rivet on her face wondering (I think) how she has such an intense look and why it belongs there.  The answer is it was not intended, and it's a bit of post processing.  I do that with many portrait subjects too, just a tad to make up for lack of good studio lights, as if I had studio lights, I would light the eyes first thing, as well as the hair and facial skin.

Now about artist Keene.  Turns out he was married to a Mrs. Keene who became or was some fundamentalist religionist.

Worse for him, since he wasn't so fundamentalist, she claimed to have painted all those thousands of popular and increasingly expensive waifs with those huge and signature haunting eyes known as the 'Keene' kids.

At their divorce, she claimed the rights to the Keene waif children royalties, etc., and he said how could that be?   Everyone acknowledges (including her until this action) that I painted all those waif eyed kids.

Well, the challenge was on.

He hemmed and hawed, and prevaricated and procrastinated when the court finally put him and her into a paint-off.

It turns out he couldn't even paint at all, but it took months or even more than a year of his proudly and defiantly proclaiming 'how could she even dare claim she was the portrait artist of those waif kids with the haunting eyes?'

In the end, she drew for the court/he couldn't draw anything.

Case settled, she went off to join her religionists and withdrew for religious and other reasons the highly lucrative business of drawing waif children with huge (signature) eyes, burying one of the great art businesses of the 20th Century.

(not the greatest however, of course, as we all know the story of the famous artist who was the 'master of light' who enlisted 'apprentices to paint in his name and had franchise retail stores bearing his 'works' all over the United States . . . . who not long ago bit the dust (died), one of the wealthiest living artists in memory, and who had completely been bypassed by the art world as creating 'schlock' art.

And the Keene art was also schlock art, but it's part of the great schlock of the 20th C.

I hope that for slightly emphasizing eyes in some of my photos I make them better, and I don't fall into the realm of 'schlock photographer' making 'predictable' and 'signature' photos.

Fat chance, I think.  They did it for money; I get nothing.

I do it to make my photos better; they did their 'schlock work' because it made their work sell and essentially 'sold out'.

No one can accuse me of 'selling out'.

Or if they can, let's see the money . . . . .

Cause I ain't seen none.

;~)

Sorry for the long post.  I just couldn't resist.

john

John (Crosley)