'Look Out!'

This photo exhibition attendee might have a surprise if he turns around and has a look

behind him! Your ratings, critiques and observations are invited and most welcome. If

you rate harshly, very critically, or just 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

Just a thought if we could see more of the gun and the hand holding it, there may be more dramatic impact.

Cheers,

Keep clicking.

Thanks for the nice comment and your view; I would love to have seen a hand holding the gun, but that's a photo of a gun -- no hand that I recall, and this is a HUGELY distant telephoto shot with HUGE (YUGE?) compression.

If you get my drift.

I really had to stop down to keep both in sharpest focus, as they were some distance apart, forward to back, and you can imagine what that did to my shutter speed, hand held at that, in the middle of a YUGE crowd (there it is again, it's catching!).

Thanks again, and best wishes no matter whether you say HUGE or YUGE.

John (Crosley)

Note the roundish light reflections seemingly emanating from the tip of the gun.

As a photographer, I couldn't have hoped for better placement of those reflections; probably ceiling lights, but oh, what good fortune to have them THERE and lined up like that, just like gunsmoke.

Outcomes sometimes are anticipated, like lining up this photo, but some parts are just the opposite, like discovering the light reflections lined up 'just so' without planning.

;~))

john

John (Crosley)

At first, this looked like something from an exhibit, with serendipitous positioning. Your explanation cleared that up :)  I guess part of photographing is seeing what others don't- and then capturing it- you are good at this.

I wrote a still unfinished treatise for Photo.net back in the days when people still read such things about 'Photographers:  Watch Your Background', and part of the thesis was by watching one's background, and incorporating it properly (or avoiding bad backgrounds, or just using them intelligently), one could make or break a a potential photo situation.

It was widely read and has over 60 comments, when last I looked.  I think thousands read it, judging from the numbers who referred to it who did not comment there, but later referred to it in their photo comments.

It's still there, I think, still unfinished, because old management refused to install the 'handy dan' new software for moving and rearranging one' photos (and comments) which it installed for our portfolios and folders.  It would be a horrific job to rearrange the photos to make that a coherent text without redoing it, and it's L O N G with more photos commented on than you can imagine.

But surprise!  In writing about what I did and worked, I not only learned how to repeat the process more intellectually, but also learned how to teach others with thout out explanations and clear expressions.   Win, win.

Now also I've taken tens of thousands of new photos, maybe hundreds of thousands of new photos, and easily posted a thousand more here, so the points I was making have new and often better photos to illustrate them.

But with no backing from old Photo.net management, the project was sunk.  It has stood dormant, by far PN's largest and longest and best thought out -- certainly its most ambitious, and never to be finished, but worth transforming the text with new photos for illustration into a basic text or part of a text for photo students, especially doing street, but relating to other genres as well.I like 'street' (and flying bird shooting) because it requires fast thinking and reflexes with no do-overs.

I'm writing a text on 'street' and 'how to do it successfullt (a great deal has to do with one's own psychological makeup which is somewhat malleable), and afterwards may come the text on how consciously to arrange your photo elements in a hurry when you have a little time (maybe even very little), you can move (even a little) or wait for your subject to move in a perhaps predictable manner.

I have literally hundreds and thousands of potential very good illustrations, so I'm glad you put me onto the subject once again.

As to this photo, it has its inspiration in two photos by the great Henri Cartier-Bresson, an early one in which a youth stands right in front of the firing line of a cannon lined straight at him and perpendicular to the photographer. who is far away.

A later one of the same theme shows the huge suspended counterweight overhead of an alpine ski tram with its huge cement and/or steel weights hanging by thin-looking cables and a sole individual far away standing weight that appears ready to fall on him.  

Theme:  imminent, unseen danger.    Subtheme: Sublime unawareness of the danger.

Here, i recognized the gun photo as 'danger', then looked for someone to fulfill the second part, and since I was far away, just stood there with my telephoto for not long, and soon enough this guy depicted walked by, milled about, paused, and 'snap'.  

The reflections, noted above, (disregarding those I cloned out), were very fortuitously placed and might be gun smoke.

The man was quite nearer me than the gun, but foreshortening made him appear in its firing line.  With a long tele, indoors, I had to stop way down, then use a very long shutter speed hand held and pray he or I didn't move for at least one shot.  There was only one, then the situation vanished but I had a capture.

Essentially, I had an 'idea' and I 'built' this shot.

It is a 'constructed' 'street photo' that depends on foreshortening and knowing the effects of varying depth of field and knowing enough to stop down to extend the depth of fields to avoid blurring either subject to keep the optical illusion.

It also helped I was using a camera with an APS-C (reduced size) sensor, as that helped increase depth of field versus a full frame sensor.

So, that's how it's done, but extremely quickly, and so fast that you would not have been able to turn around for more than two to four seconds before I had my entire capture, man, gun, 'gun smoke' and all, then to my memory card and already prowling for my next capture.

I hardly thought much of it until I found it in review, but I like it very much.

I'm not ashamed of doing such things or writing about them; anybody worth their salt if they're honest will do such things from time to time, or practice other manipulations which I might not -- it's personal choice and there are few rules in 'street' except it has to be an authentic capture (even if it depends on foreshortening).

Remember, however, this is not journalism, and no sane photojournalist would turn this into his editor except as a feature and 'for fun', certainly to be published with an explanation of foreshortening.'s effects.  Or the photographer would be out of a job. 

I'm glad to have both of you as viewers and critics and I welcome your participation; it is nice to get feedback, and writing  like this hones my writing skills.

john

John (Crosley)

:--)

Your and my tastes seem to run in parallel.  This was not so popular, and to me, there's no accounting for tastes.

That you noticed has given me a boost.  Thanks.

john

John (Crosley)