'Laying Up Nets for the Season'

Taken from a 'street', these three fishermen clamber over a storage

bin as their fishing boat deck crane and pulley arrangement (top) lifts

the purse seine net they are piling onto land storage, topping with

some Comet to repel rodents, then quitting net fishing for the

season, perhaps to fish for crabs with pots, quit, or do some other

type of fishing. Your rates, 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

Great vantage point for this shot. A fine capture indeed.

Easy to visualize a good capture here, looking at it now, but with these guys all moving and never having seen such a sight before, it proved baffling.

I relied on determination, instinct, and feedback (yes, feedback) from the critiques, (others, and mine in reply.) to help come up with something I felt would be worthy.

Interestingly, I got just one other out of dozens of shots that I felt was equally worthy, then both were also VERY good in color, as the buoys are deep yellow and dominate the lines of the photo.  Watch this or another service for those, as I seldom post two from the same outing on this service, unless a great deal of time passes, but sometimes will post a color and a black and white shot that are different scenes.  Stand by (for a long time I think, and watch another site where I post.)

I had an idea of what I wanted, but these guys were not captive actors and moved as they wanted and as the lines lay, and I was stuck 'outside the box' (literally), on the ground, unable to move much, so I took lots of shots and tried to choose my moments carefully, varying shots much, and keeping an eye on visual lines -- notice the strong line of the buoys here, and imagine it in color with them deep yellow!

This is just one more case of 'working the scene' after the initial survey and attempt, and thank the Lord it turned out somewhat successful because with all my bobbing and weaving, I worked hard for it.

Thanks for the compliment.

john

John (Crosley)

The angle of view makes (together with the focal length used) it look grandiose!

Best regards, John!

PDE

Thank you for your kind analysis.

john

John (Crosley)

Hi John,

This is a nice image, the strong element is obviously the "snake" of buoys that guides the eye to the people. It's a well told story.

One element that somewhat disturbs me (but looking at it again, I'm getting less sensitive to it) is (what I suppose to be) the wide angle perspective distortion on the face and cap of the ma to the right. Of course there is no way you could have avoided it, except changing completely the framing.

Ciao

L

Welcome.

I don't recall your previous comments - forgive me if I've overlooked your name and previous comments.

You see well what you call the leading line of what you call the 'snake' of buoys' to the men, as that was the plan.  Your sensitivity to wide angle distortion is understandable - it goes with the territory, especially with a zoom, as with prime lenses, often the distortion is less pronounced.  It's just a hazard of the game.

You're quite welcome to come here as frequently as you desire; your analysis is spot on.

Thanks.

john

john (Crosley)

Good POV, nice action shot!

It's rare when one gets to shoot such action from such a low vantage, but this storage for nets began literally at street level on huge pallets and within the bounds of the pallets began to move upward, so when I came upon the scene, the nets already were 3-4 feet high. 

I understood that the buoys would make good lines, and planned for the buoys, then waited for the men to get in an action pose and fired away.  Of course I took other photos in the interim in case such a good pose could not be obtained, but it was, and this was one of two good shots from the entire shooting episode which lasted about one-half hour to 45 minutes, but the real shooting took place in 10-15 minutes . . . the rest was just looking for something 'artistic' and not 'action', and I'll be reviewing my captures far into the future to see if I can make something out of other captures.

Thanks for the kind recognition . . . . this was a totally unexpected experience, but it followed by only a few minutes watching another crew from another fishing boat do exactly the same thing, though not with as many people (two instead of three and four) and not so active or well organized as these pros).

Interestingly, one man from each crew always had one or two hands full of canisters of Comet cleanser (or similar) which was sprinkled over the nets, ostensibly to keep varmints away while they were in storage -- like to keep rats from nesting, and maybe cockroaches from breeding in the net fibers which are soaked with fish oils and other detritus from fishing, being dragged over fish dumped on desks with fish oil, entrails, and other seafood things . . . . something even for the world's most hardy insect to feed on, if not otherwise repelled (I presume, but don't know expressly)

I learned a lot in short conversation with the fishermen of the two boats I observed that afternoon, about the type of fishing, where they fished, how they fished, (and crabbed), their travel and work schedules and more than I ever knew before.  It was a learning experience for me for things I had been close to but knew nothing about for much of my life.

Thanks for your kind comment.  Any comment, critical or not, is welcome when it is made observantly and in good faith, so I invite you back for more without restrictions.

john

John (Crosley)

Hi John,

no surprise you don;t recall me... I used to be around here fairly often until 2010, then I took an extended "vacation" from internet-photography... so to say. Reacquired the taste now, and here I am :-) Happy to be back, slowly working through a backlog of all I shot in the past 3 years!

See you around!

L

When I first took up photography there was no Internet and outside of, say, an Aperture monograph, and outside of publication in newspapers, periodicals, and advertisements, there was no place to display photography of my sort.

As a result and as a result of meeting Cartier-Bresson and being compared with my paltry work (favorably, by some no-nothing friend of his) and seeing the 'truth' that I could never hold a candle to his work, and not even knowing he was famous even though he had a major exhibition (I had never heard of him, so how famous could he be?), I just quit my job as a wire service photographer I had attended for about one day. 

They retained me to write stories for which I had no training, and I just 'faked it, but really successfully right from the start', hitting front pages the second day and international front pages the third day.

I took a few photos for them when they sent me to a remote bureau for training from San Francisco where I was hired, and those hit front pages nationwide, but I really had given up photography, then went to NYC AP as a photo editor and worked on photos sometimes of Pulitzer greats and other journeymen -- many, many great photographers as well  as the daily wire content worldwide which I edited (my shift).

I got my fill of photos.

I saw the exhibition of Brucer Davidson's East 100th Street when it was not yet printed and still on slides while he was searching for a printer -- he held a 'meeting' I attended, and I was among the first to see that landmark book, but I knew then I never 'had it'.

At least not to that great standard, and I only compared myself to those whose work I had seen, not the AP photographers, either, even the Pulitzer greats. -but the true greats -- the Cartier-Bressons and the Salgados.

I just didn't have it.  I was talked in every decade or so to taking out my cameras and took some pretty good stuff occasionally then, then when I found Photo.net decades later, I was looking for a place on the Internet (probably my own site) to exhibit my 40-50 old photos, and so many Photo.net viewers looked and rated my old photos highly, I decided to start taking photos again.   

It hasn't stopped in nine years since.

So, I know what it's like to take a respite.

My entire photo history is composed more of respite than actual photographing.

If I hadn't and hadn't met Cartier-Bresson, I might have drawn the assignment that got my mentor, AP photographer Sal Vader, his Pulitzer (wife running to returning Viet Nam soldier at Travis Air Base).

But AP was built on shifts, or being an anti-union boss, and I didn't want either of those things, so off I went first to a business publication (met Sam Walton and talked to him weekly for a year), then to law school and almost two decades of law practice before moving on.

This is something I do that is where my heart is; a camera or two around my neck wherever.

Even tonight two men who inquired at a restaurant, and looked up my photos on their smart phone bought me dinner I was informed after they had left and I went to pay.

What a kind sort of recognition.

Same with getting now nearly 17,000 comments (half at least by me, but still those comments are full of juicy tidbits, not just a lot of 'nice photos, but real meat, some of the best stuff on Photo.net in my opinion, and thanks to real thoughtful contributors like YOU, Luca.

john

John (Crosley)

Interesting scene from the life!

Svetlana, thank you.

Your work in Kyiv during the recent unrest has been heroic; I have watched it carefully, since I have not been there.

You have faced the constant threat of danger -- like a true photojournalist.

Remember Robert Capa's phrase:  'If your photos are not good enough, you're not close enough.'

You were close enough.

;~))

john

John (Crosley)

It's aways nice to get your comments; they always mean approval as I understand them, and I dearly like that because you have good taste.

There is another very good capture, maybe better than this, from the same vantage, that I passed over.  I may post it in good time.

We'll see . . . . it'll probably end up here rather than another site as it's strong and works in both black and white and color.

I've just got too many good ones lined up to choose from . . . . a very happy circumstance!'

Best to you this New Year.

john

John (Crosley)