new -- color & b&w 'It Was a White Shoe Kind of Day, He Decided'

Movement blur, lack of focus sharpness that ordinarily are 'problems' are

ignored here in this photo of a pair of white shoes amid black and other

dark shoes. Can you ignore them and 'focus' on the photo's 'gestalt?'

Your ratings, critiques and observations are invited and most welcome.

If you rate harshly, very critically or with to make a remark, please

submit a helpful and constructive comment; please share your

photographic knowledge to help improve my photography. Thanks!

Enjoy! john

All are ignored here.

Go to many museums and 'art galleries' and you will find that a great number of the more modern works especially eschew sharpness,  detail, and even the rules of perspective in order to present a 'personal view' that instills in the viewer an 'emotional response' (or at least often attempt to do so).

I take a great number of well focused, sharp (or nearly so), and carefully framed photos, but occasionally I go down a different path.

This is one from that other path.

john

John (Crosley)

The shoelaces of the white shoes are essentially cross-hatched, and thus are a 'pattern'.

A look at the floor surface (which is NOT a rug or carpet), shows an also blurred but cross-hatched pattern, for a sort of mirrored effect -- for me, a bonus, in evaluating this photo.

john

John (Crosley)

i don't know about 'gestalt'... i find this image mildly interesting as i myself enjoy photographing feet (and elbows)... it's interesting how people plant their feet, some in ass-gripping fashion some a li'l apart; some in parallel, some have it angled. Also, the kind of shoes people wear - some like it loose fitting, broad at the toe; others go for tightly hugging ones or strangulating pointed toes; some laceless, some ... etc etc

what we have on the rightmost side above is totally obscured and unidentifiable

Your critique interestingly told me more about 'YOU' than any of your prior critiques.

Maybe commenting on this particular photo has worked like a  Rorschach test -- 'elbows'???

I guess no explanation is necessary; I find pretty or interesting (or both) shoes on women attractive, but they do not generate 'ardor' in me - they just can complement an otherwise nice package or enhance someone who needs some enhancing, and do so more than most fashions -- for reasons I cannot explain and don't have the time or interest to inquire about further.  It's what's inside or wearing the fashion that counts for me.

Having viewed so many of my photos -- well over a thousand by now -- I'm sure -- you must be very aware I SEE SO MUCH MORE than most people when I glance around, and I see SO MANY INTERESTING THINGS (to me), I time their occurrence (when necessary) to capture 'the moment' or 'moments' when they are most interesting and photogenic, and that involves studying body language, such as placement of arms, feet (elbows of course), heads, facial expressions -- always facial expressions, and as Elliott Erwitt would argue -- hands -- always the hands, because actors and actresses are skilled in making facial expressions to order that are essentially 'lies' as they form characters on demand for this or that particular script, but faking use of hands by those unaware that their hands are being observed is a skill that is largely unknown except by a few with special skills, needs, and instincts, and are one reason I often can predict human behavior before it occurs (not always precisely or course, but generally WHO is likely to engage in 'interesting' behavior and of what sort -- generally -- so I can be around with camera ready to capture the moment . . . . .

Like skilled poker players who read 'tells', I am skilled at reading people on the street 'as a whole' and determining my ability to move in, not move in, use a telephoto (when I have one available and the situation will last long enough to either attach it or bring it and/or its camera out . . . . while lately I depend more on a more wide angle lens.

But telephotos still have a wonderful place in my arsenal, and if I'm going to do some real serious shooting, I'll have 12 mm to 200 mm covered by zooms so nothing can escape, and that means carrying two cameras (three is very difficult to handle).

Best to you, my elbow watching friend.

From your gestalt-observing photo friend, John.

;~))

john

John (Crosley)

I enjoyed reading your 'response', John.... >)

When we 'talk' we do reveal a bit of ourselves...

Unarguable that a photographer has to be able to see... I'm still learning to see - with some help from your work (and of others)...

A shoe tells us a lot about its occupier...

I've photographed feet like

photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=9281177

and

photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=9617318

elbows

photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=9710039

a foot and elbows

photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=8829712

Elliott says "My 'work' is about seeing not about ideas." Ingenious!

As for zooms, for the time being I've decided to do without them - only primes...

Perhaps reading in between the lines is also 'gestalt'...

Warm regards, my learned friend.

Thank you for sharing the above, my friend.

Yes, what we write reveals so much about ourselves, even if we try to hide it (which you do not I am sure).

Surely this photo stands against (pardon the pun) against nearly everything that the limited experience of the Photo.net participants stands for, few of whom have been to an art class and few of whom know or appreciate 'art' in the larger sense, or maybe it just is a mediocre rendering -- I'd be proud to blow it up large and put it on a wall.

john

John (Crosley)

Thank you for sharing the above, my friend.

Yes, what we write reveals so much about ourselves, even if we try to hide it (which you do not I am sure).

Surely this photo stands against (pardon the pun) nearly everything that the limited experience of the Photo.net participants stands for, few of whom have been to an art class and few of whom know or appreciate 'art' in the larger sense, or maybe it just is a mediocre rendering -- I'd be proud to blow it up large and put it on a wall.

john

John (Crosley)

You enlarge pictures. You "blow up" busses. Not the same thing.

Meir, check macmillandictionary.com. They have six definitions for "blow up" on their menu. The first item [explode/make explode] would be what you are referring to, the modern penchant for blowing up buses and many other things besides - but the sixth item on the menu is "make photograph bigger"... a much more civil use of the term...

A bus is a vehicle that we are all familiar with.  A 'buss' is a kiss.

Busing is what we did in an attempt (however ill-fated) to end desegregation.  We did not buss.  It was not bussing.

We did not engage in bussing.

Journalists had a hand in the matter; in part to avoid ambiguity between 'buses' (vehicles) and 'busses' (kissing), and so as I recall from Associated Press days we used the word 'busing' and never 'bussing' unless the latter referred to kissing (petzaloy in Russian -- pronounced in English phoenetically as pet za loo eee).

As to 'blowing up', it is a common term for 'enlargement.

There were many days when I ran the Associated Press's central darkroom as a photo editor in New York city, but was not a darkroom worker or the head darkroom tech.  When I gave them an order for a larger photo, I often would tell them to 'blow up' this or that particular photo, and other than an occasional jokester pretending, I never was misunderstood.

I understand as an Israeli, you may have some sensitivity toward that term, and it's fully understandable.  I would be too, if I were an Israeli or even a Zionist Jew.

My former wife (and her three new boychiks) are all Jewish, and I am sure they have feelings about the term 'blow up', but remember also that there was a movie called 'BLOW UP', and that movie had nothing to do with explosives and buses, but about enlargements and photos (and a few busses). 

I am sure that almost no one who heard the movie's title misunderstood its subject, at least at that time.  Maybe times have changed, or it was not marketed in Israel under that name?

;~))

John (Crosley)

I hope you don't mind my expansion on the subject of 'bussing' above, more than your expansion from MacMillandictionary.com which was right on point.

Thanks for weighing in which was greatly appreciated (of course, you know Meir is both thorn in shoe and tongue in cheek, and from day to day, one cannot tell which he is, or perhaps it's a Rorschach test of one's own character from day to day -- just how one takes Meir's remarks here.

;~))

john

John (Crosley)

Terrorists would blow up anything that is nice and especially those things seen as nice and especially comfortable or comforting such as babies, buses, and busses and anything else that begins with the letter 'b' or any other letter of the alphabet.

They are 'anti' anything that enables people not to have to think about their next move and to have people they do not 'like' take comfort in their lives (even in their afterlives I would imagine).

So, I wrote the above in a little haste, but did not mean to denigrate the motives and actions of terrorists and how evil they are.

My apologies.

I know they add 'hell' (such as it is recognized by a Jew) to your life.

john

John (Crosley)

John, I love it! Appeals to me since I am a "shoe girl" (and handbag girl, and jewelry girl, etc.). I love the movement in this one - just the type of abstract photo that really gets my attention! Nicely done! Thank you for sharing. :)

This is not a photo for everyone, nor a typical Crosley photo, but it's to my taste or at least in part.

I like to switch it up from time to time, and I am pleased with the 'artiness' of this; it wasn't aimed for the 'shoe, purse, jewelry, accessory viewer, but if it pleases you, then it pleases me.

I like that it's more abstract, and it pleases me that I can take photos that are sharp as anything and more abstract on the same download (see the next posted photo). 

Like I wrote above, I like to 'switch it up', and feel that I can do almost everything photographically IF IT INTERESTS ME.

As I wrote another critic, I don't like to be seen as a one trick pony.

Thank you for a nice comment.

john

John (Crosley)