'Curiosity'

The caption 'Curiosity' just about says it all for this 'street' photo,

taken recently in a city that could be just about anywhere in the

northern and western world.. 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

Interesting combination of sausages and marine wildlife. :-)
I like the strong diagonals in the image and the younger guy watching the old man peeking through the cracks.

Thank you for a skillful and able critique.

From the moment I saw this, I figured it as a 'droll' capture, and tried my best to convey that using best compositional devices -- diagonal, one figure overlooking the other, and of course, the man bent over looking for or at WHAT? 

He's obviously not a workman, and I'm at a loss what he's looking at - not the sausage and fish photo on the closed kiosk next door, and why look at that part of those rolling shutters?

Life is surreal, and this, my friend, I hope has captured a little of that droll surreality.

Thank you for a kind and able comment.

john

John (Crosley)

Fantastic!! Great shot!!

I took over 600 photos that day.

This 'simple' and 'droll' one is the one I chose to share.

Thank you for the endorsement of my choice and my taste.

It just suited me in its simplicity and its drollness.

I'm pleased to see this is getting a warm reception here, so far. 

Best to you as Spring comes round the corner.  I'm sure he's not looking for that, but who knows, anyway; I was there and couldn't figure it out.

john

John (Crosley)

This photo was exceedingly carefully worked up.

It was cropped from 2:3 format closer to 4:5 because of distracting vendors, left.

In desaturation, extraordinary care was taken to achieve the line of the man's bent body by keeping the darkness of his coat and his dark pants, but not letting them slip into total blackness -- a delicate balancing act.

Further, the man, left, in camouflage, had to be 'selected' and his 'camo' blended and darkened a little to make it far less distracting, otherwise the viewer's eye would have been drawn to the man, left, and away from the bending man, the main point of the photo.  If this photo had not been 'worked on' with care, I think it would have been far less effective.

One can 'previsualize' a photo when one sees the 'scene', but bringing it to fruition especially in face of distractions such as a 'too dark overcoat' and competing and distracting camouflage drawing eyes away from the scene can ruin one's 'visualization', if the photographer does not take steps to keep his vision, as I've tried to do here.

I'm satisfied I did the very best I could do, and would not do otherwise.

This is something that could have been done in a traditional (read 'film') darkroom.  I know because briefly at some times I was in charge of supervising the huge world headquarters darkroom at Associated Press in NYC and sometimes even the retouchers, although nominally both fell outside my job description of world service editor. 

I have dim but distinct memories of what those crusty men (all men) did so long ago to rescue sometimes horribly messed up incoming wirephotos -- fouled up by electrical failures internationally often from surging and plunging voltages and crossed telephone signals as they were transmitted over aging cables lying on submarine ocean floors, which was how international transmissions mostly were made then (a few were made by the new 'satellites') 

My how times have changed.

john

John (Crosley)

You are entitled to your opinion, however in view of your opinion, perhaps an e-mail to me would have been more appropriate, since, as you say, these comments you feel are to critique the photos, something you fail to do.

However, I am of a different opinion:  I hold to the ideal of Photo.net that this is a sharing site.  When I joined I critiqued greatly.

Based on the quantity and quality of my critiques, I was asked to join an elite critique group which was quietly sponsored and acted secretly (its membership never was revealed, and its members, including me, had no relations with each other than simply to point out a 'worthy' candidate photo to critique, then if each of us felt it worthy, we'd each take a shot at it, offering our best critique and style, all in an attempt to avoid making Photo.net a fishbowl for cookie-cutter photos and to emphasize photos that otherwise might go low-rated or uncritiqued or undercritiqued that we -- in our own opinions -- felt were worthwhile.

That was great fun and very successful.  It lasted several years and produced great critiques individually and without any influence of one member of the group on the other, as inter-group communications were forbidden and that stricture was adhered to.

Now that I've gained some notoriety on this service with tens or even hundreds of millions of views, the 'sharing part' I feel is best served still by 'educating' viewers, but by using my work as an example in many cases.

I get a lot of e-mail and other comments in favor; in fact the positive to negative comments on this method is about ten to one, which puts the tenor of your remark in the very distinct minority.

Of course, you are entitled to your opinion, and even to announce it, but to do so publicly instead of privately to me contradicts the critique principal you stated in your comment above, which I find curious, since my e-mail is known to membership and also is on my bio page open to the world.

All the best.

john

John (Crosley)

I too am guilty. I wander off the track and call to task: self-serving titles, unsubstantiated claims and inventions that pop up on the forum such as "...asked to join an elite critique group..". I confess however, that I find the stories interesting.

Maybe better written via email but to whom?

Really, the point of this whole exercise is not 'onanism', for that would entirely turn off viewers and readers, and I have no dearth of viewers and readers; many write me and have written me over the years to say they really enjoy the writing here and the numerous comments (including yours).

The enemy of great photography or any photography is 'dullness'.  This photo is not spectacular, but it's workmanlike and technically, in my view, it's fairly well seen and good, but it's not GREAT or something to write home about.

At the same time, viewers like to read the comments, and I try to be honest in them -- to educate readers, just as from time to time when you're at your best, (not too often Meir, but sometimes), you have educated me and done so well.

I'm different from most posters here, but most were not writers before they joined Photo.net; I was a photographer whose writing skills were evident to those who hired me as a photographer, and when Henri Cartier-Bresson discouraged me into quitting immediately my first paid photography job, Associated Press just changed my job title and duties to 'writer' and 'newsman' and set me about writing stories, which I could do ably to this day if I had such a job, I think.

It's basically a rare combination, though editors now are giving writers cameras and telling them to 'illustrate your story' with a 'point and a shoot' camera, but the mindsets of the good reporter, listening to all and the photographer who to do the best job must wander about unencumbered by all except the idea of getting a good capture (or several) are contradictory, as its something I've tried from an early age (22), and I found it almost impossible to perform adequately in one setting, under deadline pressure.

The mind cannot concentrate on f stops, framing and shutter speeds and focus while simultaneously getting age, spelling details, and 'the story' and still try to visualize a scene or 'move about'.  Mostly the two modes are antithetical in most circumstances.

That's why photography departments so long were separate until newspapers started dying and like that Chicago paper, started firing their photographers en mass.

If one has time, however, and has skill one CAN do both if no great deadline pressure.  I have done both and even occasionally under deadline pressure when I worked in a bureau where it was 'unacknowledged' that I was really taking photographs and technically was a writer/correspondent/editor but took my own camera.

I think I ably can write and take photos, if under no deadline pressure and not at an 'event' but given a longer time line to do a 'story'.

Please see Sunday's New York Times article on the highway towns and the stories that illustrate several of those towns on that highway between Moscow and St. Petersburg, and gaze at the illustrations and video that went with it. 

It is a highly produced affair with words, video and video interspersed with still photographs, and from my personal experience in other parts of Russia (and now in Ukraine) I find it to be an extraordinary job.

You can browse that article free if you have not had a recent subscription, and see the various stories that comprise the cities along that aging route . . . and get the feel of 'rural Russia' as I once did, but now up to eight years ago when I last was there -- perhaps more recently.

I found it a very compelling exercise, but with some investigation I was unable to perform the tasks as the writer(s) did because it was done by a Russian speaker entitled to ask questions that I was not tasked with doing then.  (I had relatives, etc.,, and learned other things, and since I still have relations (though severed by divorce but still some good relations) those things I don't write about.)

Someday there may be a book or a series of stories about my experiences . . . . I've been thinking about various episodes  that would make for some very interesting stories.  E.g. the man with $100 bills stuffed in every nook and cranny in his house, for instance, the graveyard with bas relief (black) gravestones five feet high of young Russian Mafia big shots and their girls gunned down before they reached thirty -- a whole cemetery section dedicated to such young people as they tried to climb the crime ladder -- the number of young women I met whose 'brothers' had been 'blown up' by a warning bomb, since each owned a hotel (or other business) with a 50% partner who tried to by their 50% share for a pittance, and those men (after the explosion) were confined to hospital for six weeks, before 'selling out', the woman (my translator) who was secretary to the head of the huge Moscow hotel where Clinton stayed whose American boss and hotel owner was gunned down in the Moscow Metro and 'no one saw it' and so far as I know it, no one has ever been apprehended'.

Interesting?

What about the man in the hotel Cosmos beaten so badly a dentist I was with who saw it, said the man either sustained a life-threatening concussion, or later just died, but no one came to his aid, not hotel security and NO POLICEMAN WAS EVER SUMMONED AS THE BEATING WENT ON FOR A LONG TIME, ALL DURING YELTSIN'S REIGN.

And the experience of crossing a street.  Just the sound of a car made anyone crossing a street, even in rural areas, panicc, for they knew the driver was going to swerve to try to hit them or come as close to them as the driver could, and since any car with driver was a 'taxi', being in a hired car (taxi)) that did just such things to others.  Mothers with children who heard a car in the distance RAN for sidewalks or hid behind trees at the sound of a car a block or more away, really, in my personal experience!!!

In Putin's favor, he put an end to most of that -- personal safety is important, and the Mafia ruled and disrupted people's expectations of living without being killed on the street.  Cars on Prospect Mira if traffic were jammed then during Yeltsin's time would quite frequently start driving down the very wide sidewalk!

Putin did some good things for Russian society, especially individual personal safety.  He's wildly popular with many Russians, and for good reason.  (There of course are political exceptions which is not my intent to write about here'; I'll leave that to the NY Times.)

Good stories are what drive mankind's interest, and frankly who wants to look at a bunch of dull photos without some kind of break or at least in some instances, discussion or maybe for some -- context.  It's far from necessary, as each photo should stand on its own, but why not something more . . . . it hardly can hurt?

I try to provide that kind of break, and at the same time write what I hope is regarded as 'Gospel' in that I intentionally try not to write anything false or wrongly biased so that viewers/readers can rely on what I write, and from time to time when I am wrong or make a mistake, I try to admit that, even though I'm fallible.

It helps gain readers' trust over time, I think.

In Sunday's NY Times on that road from St. Petersburg to Moscow, one reads about the Gypsy girl, 14, a head taller than most men in her village who's married off to a boy 13, both of whom seem to have been held out from school, because her extraordinary beauty is recognized and the gypy family 'had to do something to keep her from 'messing around''.

One reads about an elaborate monastery, amazingly well kept in an area where poverty abounds, but it seems Putin has a summer residence within line of sight, and his helicopter flies so low overhead occasionally it is rumored he (from time to time) converses from it with monastery visitors.

One reads about the prostitutes who line the road into Moscow as one passes the airport (Shermetyevo II, I know from experience), and passes one of or THE largest shopping center in Moscow/Russia),and how they are rounded up by police to put on a show, then again are out on high heels, selling their wares -- refugees from the far off regions selling what they can.

I think that's interesting, and parts of the amazing article are quite well photographed (videoed too) but not the prostitutes, for reasons unexplained. 

The 14-year-old bride is pretty, and a still photo shows her towering over her 13-year-old groom while the text tells us he sits aside playing on his hand-held video game during the festivities, which are shown briefly in poor surroundings.

I know some of this area; others are left to my imagination from other experiences I had in Russia and qualify to match things I have encountered.

And are similar to things I've known and witnessed in Ukraine, which is not so different from Russia outside the big cities . . . roads lined with vendors selling things in summer, including tea from samovars and farm (truck) produce mostly grown locally.

No other newspaper in the world produces such features, and for me, I supplement that with my own 'reporting's' by personal photography with accounts of my own photography techniques and occasional (or more) recounts of my own experiences whether in the USA, southeast Asia, Argentina, Europe, Russia, (or most often) Ukraine.

Some people as they get older get

You know the really good ones, even and perhaps particularly the subtle ones that many might pass over.

The obvious ones are dictated most often by the photo that 'has to be taken', and most photographers on seeing the situation could make something workable from the subject, even if not how I capture it.

This one is different, as I think you've noticed.

That's why I treasure your sparse and caring comments -- I know they are studied and indicate a genuine opinion of worth, which I value highly.

Best wishes to you, and thanks.

john

John (Crosley)