'The Hooded Guy'

The winter sum has already set with only the afterglow providing light, the winter chill

is increasing for a frigid night, and this man finishes his business on the street before

going home on a Saturday night. 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

A very good picture of a man with a strong face. He could have been hewn out of granite. This hasn't received much in the way of response yet but it seems members have become a little blasé to fine photography on this site lately. Maybe it's a sign of the times that with all our wonderful communication devices, real communication seems to be at a very low point.

John. A wonderful portrait with great textures, if anything I'd tend to crop off a little of the blank space to the right, but thats a minor personal opinion on what is a great image. Rgds. Rick

That's a wonderful statement, that this man appears 'hewn out of granite'.  I knew from the outset that this photo had great possibilities, and even a jpeg in-camera sataturation using NEF (raw) conversion and editing yielded a pretty good image.

 

But when downloaded into Photoshop, it appeared very light and for my taste way too 'washed out' and pastel-like in the color version, and worse for the color version, lighting was from different sources, so there were pinks and reds on his face with shadows that tended to orange and yellow if contrast were increased -- so there probably will never be a color version, at least as edited by me.

 

Presenting this 'as I saw it' took some work.  I often shoot on the very edges of effectiveness, and tend to take almost identical frames on 'C' drive as I can, in the hopes in low light and very low shutter speeds at telephoto extension that just ONE will turn out right.

 

This one came closest, but I couldn't even coax my D7000 camera into taking multiple frames, because the light was so low, even though I was a steady holder.  Other frames with slightly different composition -- maybe even some superior -- were not 'sharp' from my camera movement, the subject's movement or a combination.;

 

Yet in photography, I'm the eternal optimist.  I'll take a photo at 1/10th of a second at 150 mm (DX sensor) and effectively 50% greater than the 35 mm equivalent, and hope that it (or one like it) is sharp.  Often times I'm rewarded, especially if the vibration reduction coontrol is not dislodged and thus unexpectedly 'off', but even when that happens, I get far better results than predicted by the formula of shutter speed = 1 over the inverse of the focal length.  Thus at 50 mm, I might shoot instead of at 1/50th as a minimum shutter speed, try as low at 1/5th of a second, or sometimes have succeeded with exposure longer than one second.

 

As I saw in the movie 'American Sniper', the protagonist sniper is advocated to find the time between breaths and between heartbeats.  I think I was born with that ability, or otherwise to disengage my arms and hands from the rest of my body (or even to compensate if my body is (say) off-balance and falling one way, to let it keep off-balance and falling, and to compensate by upper body movements and arm/hand motions to keep the subject in focus and not blurry much of the time.

 

Because I carry equipment openly, I get stopped by many photographers, and when I see them BRACE to shoot, I am amazed by how studied their collective stances are -- firm hands around the camera and lens barrel, shoulders at an angle to the subject and one leg in front of the other.

 

If I had to 'square off' to capture my subjects in most instances, I would get nothing. I just raise the camera and shoot, even at absurdly low shutter speeds.   I do like pros do and shoot multiples where I can when using telephoto lenses so that at least ONE might turn out good enough to use.  (that's the one between heartbeats and breaths, I think).  If you can't time the heartbeat and breath, shooting on 'C' drive will mean that one or more shots will be taken at that time.

 

Turning the downloaded image, which suffered from ISO 3200 and absurdly low light proved a major undertaking, but it worked, and in the end that's what counts.

 

As to Photo.net reception, critics have been generous, and I find the rating system to have considerable rationality, but images such as this seldom are popular with viewers or raters,a and it seems views overall on Photo.net with all the web competition, are way down.

 

But I live to shoot, and for the compliments of an astute critic, such as you.

 

Best wishes.

 

And thanks.

 

john

 

John (Crosley)

When I processed this one, I took my time and that was considerable, but I had just spent five (5) hours trying to 'rescue' a somewhat out of focus portrait of another individual taken after this by about 15 minutes and although it looked great with great composition and expression, it never will be posted, because it's just not right -- not to my standards, and mine are not the highest, but it just failed. I'll keep it as a sign of perseverance.

 

This one took some considerable effort to process to see it 'as I saw it' rather than some  photo that is x per cent gray scale, as it is a 'dark' portrait' of a handsome man, but one who has the character of hard times evident in his face (he saw my camera edit in B&W and loved it - said it made him look like a 'Separatist' -- the Russian-backed forces, at least as he visualized them I suppose).

 

The Separatists are just people too, who probably hold the same view of this weekend seller - no one has a lock on justness and morality, at the personal level, in Ukraine in general though there are some notable exceptions.

 

I try to avoid taking sides -- I've lived in both countries, but I am a US citizen and an American, and thus welcome in Ukraine (and was welcomed also in Russia).

 

Processing took a great deal of effort -- at 3200 ISO with a D7000 does not yield a rich, deep image, and image processing must be done carefully.  One even runs the risk of processing so much there's 'banding' issues which must be avoided.

 

The other photo was taken with a D3200 which is better even at low light, though lacks many controls.  Images from the D3200 tend to be very detailed (at 24 mp.) and very rich, but still hard to work with at ISO 3200 and not much good over that.

 

As explained above, I often work in near darkness or when conditions are almost insufferable -- it's hard to let a good image go, and when you nail one in those conditions it just might be world class. 

 

As to cropping, note the crop here is where the hood meets the frame's corner.  Another crop might better or 'best', but I tend for critique purposes to post the most 'liberal' view to leave critics something to criticize and not make all the toughest decisions.  Otherwise, what's the purpose of exposing an image and asking for opinions and constructive ones at that?

 

I'll consider your cropping proposal if anything in the future comes of this portrait.

 

I may also reshoot it as I intend to do with the one of the fellow whose photo I rejected as 'not up to any standard' even after five hours of work (it looked GREAT, but close examination revealed many flaws).

 

It's worth going back just for the other guy, and these two were less than 200 meters (or yards) from each other.

 

In light that was almost completely gone behind clouds and after sunset.

 

I'm not what you call a 'fair weather shooter', obviously.

 

I shoot when I can and when I feel like it.  I get marvelous images, but alas must throw some of them away because of flaws.

 

Thanks for commenting Rick; I'll think about your proposed crop.  I'm not in love with mine as the 'be all and end all' of crops.

 

john

 

John (Crosley)