'Cold Spring Showers'

For those in the Northern Hemisphere, especially in higher latitudes, it's

mostly still pretty cold maybe with snow and ice on the ground, particularly

for those subject to 'continental; weather (not near a warming ocean current

which distributes ocean heat far inland). Here, a pair get drenched, despite

their umbrellas in the season that follows winter, from a strong wind and a

driving rainstorm in Spring, in front of an Eastern European train station.

Your ratings, critiques and observations are invited and most welcome. If you

rate harshly,, very critically, or just wish to make an observation, please

submit a helpful and constructive comment; please share your photographic

knowledge to help improve my photography. Thanks ! Enjoy! (it's still a long

wait until summer's heat john (Crosley)

Everything about this photo makes me really feel how wet it was--I can almost hear the rain and smell the raincoats. I think a lot of that feel is from the starkness of the black and white rendering here--it really works well for me, and it sure makes the glistening pavement glow. The elements I find most striking are how darkly you've rendered the main characters here and how important that thin light rim to the umbrella is. Rainstorms turn us all into semi-anonymous islands, each hidden in rain gear and surrounded by a sea of rain, and the darkness seems to drive home that sense of isolation, as well as creating a very strong visual statement. At first I was a bit disconcerted by the tilt and perspective distortion, but the more I sat with the image the better I liked that aspect--I think it contributes nicely to the feel of this image by implying a sense of haste on the part of the photographer, which makes the scene feel even wetter. Really nice. 

Very nice comment and compliment, and accepted with grace and thanks.

A short and sweet critique, similar in a way to the photo -- economic (and yours, well stated).

Merci, heurseusement.

john

John (Crosley)

Every once in a great while I get such an astonishingly good critique, that I just point it out to viewers and say 'that's what I would like to have said if I had the thoughts, the words, and maybe the insight as I was being pelted in the face by cold, wind-driven downpour pellets like cold bbs stinging so much, stutter-stepping for a briefest moment on that tarmac, steadying myself for a second's fraction, taking the photo, then another, closer, (not as good), and a day or two later reviewing this on download and saying 'that's a very interesting and intriguing shot -- pretty simple, but also I like it.  I might post it some day.'

So, three years later, almost, I posted it, and now receive this wonderful comment/critique by you.

It speaks for itself (your great skill and insight), and I politely direct viewers who are interested to this photo and/or your critique to 'help understand' this photo of a moment in time I will not forget.  (humh . . .  smelly raincoats and light trim at the edge of the black umbrella top -- missed all that completely)

You've written one terrific critique.  

Congratulations.

And thanks for honoring me so.

john

John (Crosley)

You've made my day, John! It's so rare to get feedback on comments, and it means a tremendous amount to me--thanks!

It's even more rare for me to give feedback on comments that are superb.

You may not have noticed, but there are 19,000 + comments on photos in my portfolio just under the photos themselves.  

On a regular 22-in screen, one can also scroll down 100+ pages of comments from individuals and members under my main portfolio, though the system has changed so few post there any more and it's become now rare to get a comment there.

There's a wealth of information in those comments -- there may be a post graduate education in shooting, composition (and maybe life and some other, wide-ranging subjects ranging from poetry, philosophy, science, politics, economics, reminiscences and  even some great story telling.  For instance terrific member Dennis Aubrey wrote at least one and maybe two that got just as great or greater response from me, just as yours .

It was memorable, and there have been a number of great posts in critiques not always just confined to the photo but using the photo critique as a starting point to tell a story and somehow making it related -- however thinly.

I am the curator of the comments here, and it's worked this way fine for a long time with very little abuse.  Only one member has been banned in all the time on the site, and that for persistent, nagging trolling (I doubt if that person even would recognize that).

This kind of photography does not exist in a vacuum or at least it doesn't arise in a vacuum the way I create it - it has an etiology, and sometimes I explain the process, though less and less.  

But if you look through all 19,000+ posts and those 100+ pages, there's a real education to be obtained, and understand, I replied often in length to almost every comment.  At least half those 19,000 comments are from me in reply, with much of my best ideas expressed and also my experiences about 'street' as well as myriad other subjects evoked by this or that photo or the discussion.

If someone takes the effort to share their thoughts with me and go to MY pages to express them to me and with me, the least i can do, I feel, is to acknowledge their effort, even if I do not feel bound to agree.  Healthy discussion without name calling is highly valued.

I have made a good reputation this way that was the first  on this site to do so I think, and has been copied with great success by others.  There have been some who just trolled my photos in past times just to read the colloquy. . . . . that collloquy has drawn a sort of member, like yourself, who is often a cut above the rest.  Some of the discussions have been terrific, about photo posted, about photography and just about every other subject.  Name it, and we've probably discussed it or mentioned it.

Look at my 'call for comment and critique' and you'll see that although it's standard and rote, it's also carefully worded to elicit a thoughtful comment.  it has stayed essentially the same now for a long time because it works to get the BEST comments and critiques.'

People who stop by here, from novice to long-time PN graybeard, learn soon enough they'll be welcome; that I'll try not to chase them away but welcome them.

If I could give them a drink or a pot of warm tea or a brew of hot coffee here in my SALON, I'd do so.  That's right, I inadvertently but deliberately, divorced myself from the once-warring factions that dominated Photo.net (written about in Sociology journals on web misbehavior) and set out to make this a cozy place, where almost all would feel welcome.

I had the interesting fortune of commenting on one of hundreds of stunning photos taken by a landscape photographer from Europe who lives in a small country and certainly must see such comments and although his country doesn't officially read or write English, but almost everybody in that country knows English, and that person's travels suggest that that person is both affluent and well-traveled as well as being one terrific photographer.  Certainly that photographer is well versed in English.

So I left a good, affirming comment on that person's photo, and like almost everyone else who commented, it was never acknowledged.

Did I ever leave another comment?  You're right.

He's probably a better photographer than I, probably by far.

And I'm more idiosyncratic and hairbrained in my willingness to take chances, but I'll bet you I have learned more than almost anyone on this service courtesy of the  'lessons' imparted to me by the skillfulness and abundance of good comments (as well as a huge number of ratings so many of which are helpful and thoughtful).

Most of my thoughtful followers now do not rate, so my 'ratings' suffer, I think, as a result, but that is not much of a concern -- only an acknowledgement that my commentators most deride the ratings system.  

They'd rather comment, which is a much, much higher honor.

Also, a rating means little, since there are few standards, though with notable exceptions, the totality of a good number of ratings on a photo (or even their absence) can not only be very telling, but also on this site at least if comments are laudatory and ratings abundent it can be a sign members think the photo is pretty good.  

Not always in the 'fine art' world, always, as you'd be surprised maybe what is seen as 'successful' there -- sometimes rather maybe 'boring' stuff there is highly successful, but often the successful fine art work is 'conceptual', often an important word in the world of 'art'or 'fine art'.

I shoot many genresbut do not post all those genres and confine my postings, though there is a good mix, but not what you'd see if you viewed my entire shooting, even from one moment to the next, same camera.

Famous 20th Century great Garry Winogrand did not shoot themes particularly though he tended to go back to certain, recurring subjects.   He just shot every thing he saw in record amounts so when he died at a fairly young age of cancer, he left tens of thousands of rolls undeveloped and a staggering number of contact sheets unreviewed.  

He preferred to shoot 'now', and look later, make the editing/curating decisions with a fresh, critical eye.

He and I went to the same school, Columbia College, Columbia University, NYC, he starting on the year of my birth, and we share the view one grows and 'can see new things' when one detaches 'emotion' from the act of shooting and feelings one experiences on the street from the pure aesthetics of a particular capture.  You must be enormously critical of your own work/ that's why it's so nice to get wonderful feedback like critiques of other aficionados such as yourself, expressed coherently.

I am going now through 1/2 to one million photos, reworking some previously edited images and finding hidden some astonishingly good ones I completely never understood, but took on instinct.  

Others I am rediscovering I was just in too much of a hurry to work up and left for 'another day' then forgot.

Occasionally, I come across a stunner of a photo never seen or the potential of which was NEVER even understood, then work it up, post it, and get terrific feedback, even 12 years later.  As a result, it's a rare day when I delete, and I take great care to ensure that all captures are backed up and saved forever.

Come back; this is a place of ferment.

As you can see.

And I see that your mind is both able and in ferment.

You are always welcome here to share your ideas; able minds are cherished here, and onlya thin wisp of a relation to a photograph need be the key to a posting if the thought in a post is somehow related and good enough.

Best wishes, thanks again, and welcome.

Come again as you wish.

john

John (Crosley)

Hi John

There are so many good things to say about this image: the motive is very good and it tells a story about getting wet. The texture of wetness is most interesting. Your handling is very clever, you choose to turn the picture to the dark side and you choose a nice scale of gray colors. The only question I would like to ask is, if you considered to cut of about 20% of the right side of the image. If you do, your wet persons will be placed in a better place of the image. Please don't cut of the left side of the picture.

Tommy

I've been thinking about your suggestion, for which I thank you, and somehow I just can't visualize it.

For me this is a 'centered subject' photo, and to place the subjects 'off center' somehow goes against my grain.

However, the genius of Photo.net is the chance to post your own workup to display your alternative view, and let me 'see' your vision; perhaps you'll win me over.

I like my view, because in part it has something that is important in a successful photo -- 'balance' and not just 'symmetry', with 'tension' being added by the skew of the wide angle 12-24 lens distortion.  Also, see the guy in white, right, running into the wind, with just a 'hoodie to protect him, which helps enrich the photo, I think, and I suspect your crop would eliminate him (and the enrichment and tension he -- and the skewed buildings -- would provide).

Please let me see a posted version of your vision.

Let me visualize what you see; win me over (or not).

That's the wonder of this site.  

I invite you.

And thank you for the compliments in your post.

Help me 'see' what you 'see', and let's let others 'see' as well.

This is a collaborative site, and such sharing and alternative workups are encouraged in the 'Terms of Service' as opposed to many sites, which makes such comparisons a unique sharing/teaching tool.  

Thank you Tommy, so much for sharing.

john

John (Crosley)

Interesting street scene!

Many times we have the same places and even people available to us at least in public . . . on the street, and our styles and work differs so much.

I am so pleased that you find my work interesting; it fills my heart with delight.

Thank you so much.

john

John (Crosley)