'Shush Yo Mouth, Boy, You Got No Manners, Heh, Heh!'

In spite of the caption and the seemingly aggressive nature of the photo, this is

a photo, as I experienced it, that demonstrates family love, trust and affection.

Your view may vary. Your ratings, critiques and observations are invited and

most welcome. If you rate harshly, very critically or you 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

Best regards

PDE

Thanks for the compliment.

If I had an entire portfolio of such shots, I'd be immensely proud.   For me, no matter the ratings, this is a prize.

I dare say no one else has a shot like this at all, much less any white photographer; people seem to be at ease around me, and I return the favor.  I grew up in a multicultural household; people from all nations passed through, and there was never a disparaging word about anyone.  I learned to treat each person on merits, and the reward is in life and photography as well.

Thanks Pierre.

john

John (Crosley)

Hi John,

There you go with your special way for the moment to shoot. Brilliant capture.

Regards,

ricardo

I think others see these things out of the corner of their eyes or they avert their attention, maybe pretending not to look.

I look precisely for such events, and if possible always have a camera, most often two with two different zoom focal lengths, so i don't miss anything.

The few times I go out without my  equipment, I see amazing things, it's uncaptured, and for all intents, it might as well not have happened.

Who's to know that a mom shushes her son in a loving and personal manner like this, if not captured and shown?  It's my pleasure to share such things with the world; not averting my eyes and making a point to show people like these how important their small gestures are to who they really are and how that differentiates them from the rest of humankind -- no small feat, and a social good, when I show a capture like this, i think.  More than that, it's interesting, a prime goal of my photos.

But of course, the capture is its own end, socioloigical and humanitarian ends aside.  Those're just fluff beside the 'art' I see, but lest anyone throw the word 'voyeur' at me with a sneer, they'd better think carefully; I done a lot of thinking about the social and artistic worth of what I do.

Including the historical worth, here and abroad, where in one country i may be that country's most prolific and artistic cataloger of contemporary social mores (along with my colleague Svetlana K.)

Comments like yours on a photo i think has personal significance as 'art', just for being unique if nothing else, helps justify the blisters on my feet, the ache in my back, and the mornings spent downloading and editing until 6:00 a.m.

Thanks again.

john

John (Crosley)

John, this is another extraordinary one that you just seem to be able to crank out at will, but without effort.

--Lannie

This seems to be a divisive photo.

This who comment seem to think it's pretty outstanding (as do I).

Raters, overall, tend to rate it about 'mediocre'.  I think if we could see the split there would be a lot of very low ratings and a number of pretty high (but no highest) ratings.

Some of these that i 'churn out' are 'hoary' in the sense they were taken a while ago and are now being caught on review.  I have literally hundreds of thousands of photos, and about 1700+ downloads, often with from 70 to 1,500 photos per download, so do the math.  

For the last seven years, I've been cherry picking certain ones for Photo.net and another service just what I wanted to take from each download, ignoring the potential of the rest, and now on re-review am sometimes being stunned by some of what I have passed over.

Garry Winogrand had it right.  Sit on your photos for a long time (but don't die in the meantime), then look at them afresh, and be your own worst critic.

You may be in for a big surprise.

(I might add that Ontario police assigned to this mall were pretty hostile to me, just because I had two large cameras, and that hostility was entirely unwarranted by my behavior.  These days everyone has a camera phone, and everything is being recorded from overhead by cameras, but somehow they focused in on me as being an 'object of interest' just for having two cameras and without anything more.  I told them to google.com my name and look at the huge results, (or have their dispatcher do it) and they refused.

Photos are forbidden in most US malls, but they weren't mall cops, but regular police and outside the mall on its property.  I went into the mall, and into the stores where it's 'owner's discretion' -- here this photo was taken inside a sporting goods store, with the boy trying to explain to me the coolness of the sporting equipment he's holding, interrupting momma, who shushed him, here.

I would suggest the Ontario police (in introspect and with passage of much time to reflect) need to read the US Constitution and find out where it says 'carrying a camera' makes a person a 'suspect' even though there's been no crime committed or reported and the person is dressed nicely and behaving normally, EXCEPT they have TWO cameras.

I was put off by them; they could learn something from the LA Police,, who despite a once very bad reputation are much more informed.

(Ontario is in Riverside County, East Side of the LA Basin.)

Lannie, thanks for enduring this critique of the local constabulary who would try to discourage you from seeing captures such as this.   I'm up to good, not no good, and these guys were just bored and prerjudiced with the same old police prejudice, plus I think they were thinking somehow since the 'mall' forbids photography, that was their purview, instead of keeping order, (not enforcing mall rules which is the purview of the mall cops . . . . who can waive or not waive such rules . . . if indeed they exist . . . .as let's face it, one can see the flash of cameras everywhere or raised cameras for 'selfies' or taking photos of price tags and friends everywhere throughout stores (including all malls) these days.  It's prejudice against 'larger or professional looking cameras' which is interesting, since some camera phones now record 16 Megapixels.

I met a guy on a plane, whose job was to go around the USA surveying properties whose borrowers were seen as in 'near distress' to ensure the security for loans was OK or not to huge lenders.  

He had a clipboard with his questionnaire and notes, and at the top of the clipboard he had affixed upright a 16 megapixel thin point and shoot, so he just held out his clipboard, set the frame to 'widest', took a photo of the whole building, then went around and took photos of anything he felt deserved special treatment . . . . and on his reports and photos, multi or hundred million dollar decisions about loan maintenance, future terms and/or foreclosure were made.

My photography, on the other hand, is quite visible compared to his, and the only outcome is whether a few photo aficionados get to see them and evaluate whether they have social and/or photographic worth.

See how things are kind of mixed up?

But in the end, I just ignore such chaff, for this wheat.

And aside from an occasional rant like this, the chaff  blows away.

Thanks Lannie, I shoot for you and those who do appreciate and/or contribute valuable critiques even if they do not like a particular photo so much.

(I received a very valuable critique from an 'old friend' the other day, asking what a photo meant' and my reply was 'it had to be taken' but 'I'm not sure', and 'I'm not in love with every photo I post'.  His was not a bouquet or compliment, I think, but I'm indebted to him for posting it.  Compliments are fine, but so are trustworthy critiques.

john

John (Crosley)