'Enthusiastic Youths'

These five youths show their enthusiasm during a summer rally at the Kyiv, Ukraine

square called Maidan that later would be the center of Ukraine's recent revolution.

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

I like it very much but overlooked it somehow until a recent review in search of something else; I can't imagine what caused me to overlook it.  That frankly happens quite frequently, as I have one photo in mind, I look for it, I find it, then I pass over the entire download, overlooking in the process something that has major qualities.

You can take a million photos (I have) and not take a photo to match expressions and arrangements of them like this, and that's the case here.  Surreal?  I would like you to expand on that in a followup comment, as there is something interesting about this photo and the arrangement from light (front) to dark (back) and if processed somewhat differently and more dramatically and in color, sculptural.

Thanks for an interesting comment.  Happy holidays.

john

John (Crosley)

Hi John,

I was about to critique this one and realized that i've actually critiqued several of yours before.  I am definitely drawn to your street photography.  This is a great shot.  I love how you really gotten close to the subjects and cropped out everything that doesn't add to the image.  The honest and consistent emotion of the men is very compelling...they don't seem to be "mugging" for the camera but are caught in a spontaneous display of happiness.  The fact that they all have same haircuts adds to the camaraderie and fraternity that gives this a fully developed back story.  Compositionally, their eyes create a fantastic spiral leading-line that gives the image some great visual depth.  Great job and i can't wait to see more!

--PatrickD

I don't have too much to add to your remarkable comment.  I had overlooked this one in favor of others that were somewhat better, then just never looked at this download again until the day this was posted here when I worked it up.

You make an important point, I point out, about the spiral, a point which I had hoped someone would see and comment on, as it is a major compositional device that I have not quite used  before, and a variation on the 'C' curve and nearly as effective as an 'S' curve.  And worked up, as I noted before, somewhat differently, darkening more the more distant person and increasing contrast, this photo can be made more 'sculptural'.

Best to you Patrick.  You chose a good one; there are tons of mediocre ones I post too.

I appreciate your comments.

john

John (Crosley)

You managed to capture the moment very well.  They seem to enjoy the moment and that is credited to the photographer.  Harsh but good B/W.  Cheers!

I was ill a month ago and seen by a professorial doctor with a gaggle of medical students and residents in tow.  It was 'grand rounds' when the aging and soothsaying professor dispenses his wisdom to his proteges after first giving them a stab at the solutions to a medical problem, such as the one I had.

But first there were introductions, as I was quite lucid, and I introduced myself as a photographer among other things (ex-lawyer, ex-investor, and so forth), and was asked where one could see my photos, and replied 'just Google my name' thinking nothing of it.

But in 24 hours time, the same gaggle returned and the professor HAD indeed googled my name and gave a pithy summary of what he had seen: I portray life's less fortunate but in a healthy light.

But however much I wanted to object that he had not seen the entire works or summarized them entirely well (he had only seen what he wanted to see, perhaps being a doctor who treats the 'less fortunate' himself), he missed photos like this one which are sprinkled throughout my portfolio.

This is a photo of pure joy . . . . these five men (four visible smiles) are genuinely moved and happy, if only for the few seconds that I was pushing the bunch of them over backwards -- unexpectedly for a much older man/photographer which they did not expect -- and they were absolutely surprised and delighted.  I had one hand on camera and one hand on the chest of the nearest and ever so slightly was pushing back this bunched up group, and they were jammed so tightly together they could do nothing but fall backward slowly and with enormous mirth and surprise.

You are right; this is a photo of creation; my creation.  It didn't exist but for the interference of the photographer.  Philippe Halsman had a gimmick in his photos in which he had all his subjects 'jump' including Cartier-Bresson, I think, but the Cartier-Bresson photo has never been shown.  He called it 'jumpology', and it was supposed to reveal something 'innate' about his subjects, but it just made, well, good, unusual photos and frankly revealed nothing special other than his unusual technique.

Well, from time to time I come up with some novel device such as just pushing over this group of youths (which I did twice that day), always different, interacting with willing participants I never met before and probably never will again -- for instance, I have no knowledge of having met these young men again.

I probably never will shove a group of intertwined men (or women) backwards or in any other direction again just to get a reaction.  It's one of a kind per photo or at least per day.

Then on to something new.

I don't like to repeat myself very much.

I like to try to keep it fresh.

I take my share of down and out people, as I am not on the super rich party circuit, and I'm particularly good at gaining trust of people who never get attention, and giving it in earnest.

But I take other photos as well.

The doctor was only half right.  He had tunnel vision; he saw what his profession and training allowed him to see; and got shortchanged -- and while his analysis was good as far as it went (as he explained to his gaggle of medical hangers on in 'grand rounds') it was only half right.

Some people refuse to look at my photos because they are abhorrent of seeing those 'less fortunate' than they; and to them I say 'you'll make good Republicans' or perhaps 'oligarchs'.  I take all subjects, and my feelings for my subjects (when I take the photos, if only for those brief moments) are genuine.  I may not like them as individuals in real life in every case, but in photographing them, I form a bond, or I'm not likely to take a meaningful and view-worthy photo.

If I were among the hoi polloi more often (and saw the potential among them), I'd be taking their photos too.

Oh, and I'm much better now, almost cured.

Thank you for a gracious comment and Happy New Year.

john

John (Crosley)

Great expresseions!...and yes, you have been close enough!

I guess that if you're pushing a mashed together group of celebratory youths backwards slowly with one hand while they're standing but cannot fall because held up by the crowd, and at the same time photographing them, no can accuse the photographer of not being 'close enough'.  Ref.  Robert Capa:  'If your photos are not good enough, you're not close enough'.

I've always kept that quotation in mind, though it's not a maxim for everything.  There are some circumstances where safety and/or compositional values dictate adding a little or a lot of distance; e.g., the foreground and surrounding areas also are part of the subject even if not clearly delineated - -a blank surrounding area can be quite necessary for some photos to show, for instance, isolation and for other uses.

Here it was just plain fun; these youths (and another group I did the same thing with) were amazed that this older man had the temerity and the youthful attitude to do such an oddball thing that not only did he get away with it, but they rewarded him with a photo oh pure joy that will maybe outlast the photographer's lifetime.

(the others that day surely will -- they can be found in the Early B&W Portfolio -- two of them with different subjects -- really great photos compared with the rest of my output and from the same concert group that day AND even a tad closer to boot.

I doubt I'll ever have an opportunity or inclination to do the same thing again, my bag of tricks is no where near even being more than slightly used -- it varies from shoot to shoot -- with every shoot where there's any contact with the subject being 'custom', at least.

I practiced law the same way back in the day.  Everything was custom; nothing cookie cutter.  Everything got personal attention.

That's why I could never do 'graduation photos', yearbooks, or anything else in photography that required mass producing images -- I work on a 'custom basis.

A professional photographer contacted me today, and reviewed my images on the Internet, and told me (among other things) that my 'new' images looked very much like they were 'classic' or 'old' images from 'back in the day' when B&W was in its 'classic' heydey.  I took that as a huge compliment, as that's the look I am comfortable with and seek to produce.

At the same time, this makes a terrific, contemporary looking color image -- up to date if you view its the color counterpart, processed at the same time but not desaturated and channel mixed.  Plus the fellow, right, has a royal blue shirt, which makes for a stunning color photo!

Color has its uses and so does B&W.  I like and use them both; sometimes I'm stuck between which version to post.

Best to you Philip, thanks for commenting, and Happy New Year!

john

John (Crosley)

In the JPEG and NEF downloaded versions of this photo the young man, left was somewhat blurry but not from camera motion or 'shake'.

I know that Photoshop CC14 was meant to correct camera shake, but frankly there is little difference between 'camera shake' and 'blur' from other reasons such as subject movement (who knows for sure why the guy was slightly blurry anyway -- had he moved at a relatively high shutter speed as he was very close to my 'kit' lens, was he just 'out of focus' as I believe, or was there some other reason -- certainly my lens was clean, so that's not the reason, but even if it were, I would have tackled the task in the same way.

In Photoshop CC14, under sharpening, the first fly-out choice is 'shake reduction' which brings its own window and menu which reminds one of a plug-in, and in fact really is a built-in Nikon plug-in.  And it does its job reasonably well, with the ability not only to analyze the entire photo and reduce 'shake' overall, but to choose certain areas for blur reduction -- including multiple areas.

I chose the man's head, then applied the filter, and voila when the long processing was done, the head appeared reasonably 'in focus' with few artifacts, and given this was 'street' and 'street' of this sort is very forgiving of artifacts and more interested in the subject and composition, artifacts would have done little harm.  There is an artifact slider/control in the filter, too.  I also sharpened the photo, but minimally, as it had already been 'sharpened' in NEF processing, a practice 'Corbis' agency recommends as opposed to sharpening after processing is done, as there are fewer artifacts when sharpening is done from the NEF To JPEG conversion.  I viewed that in tutorial film the company puts out.

In any case, on casual examination, all the faces appear 'in focus' and without evidence of blur, including the young man, left whose face was once blurry.

Perhaps long ago I viewed this photo, did not have the Shake reduction filter available to me, already had two GREAT photos from this day processed and just gave up.

Now I have a new tool, and now I have another very good photo I can show to anyone proudly.

And a process that is not just related to 'shake reduction' but to any photo (or part of photo) that is (not too) blurry.

I often use this filter routinely even to analyze photos to determine if they have maximum sharpness -- if the filter starts to work, the photo was not optimally sharp as I had thought when it tackles the whole photo and not some area that was intentionally blurred.  Then I let it run its course.  There are dozens, perhaps hundreds of photos in my 'finished' list that are due a run through this filter, but I will have to do the complete processing from start to finish rather than apply the filter at the end, since it appears designed as 'middle step' before final 'sharpening'.

john

John (Crosley)