color -- then and now Walking the Dogs

Walking these two Spaniels was somewhat an entangling job for this

young woman dog walker, San Diego, recently. Your ratings and

critiques are invited and most welcome. (If you rate harshly or

very negatiely, please submit a helpful and constructive

comment/Pleae share your superior photographic knowledge to help

advance my photography) Thanks! Enjoy! John.

I saw the dog walker headed my direction, drove ahead, looking for a good background, spied this wall, parked my car in the middle of an intersection across from the wall (hiding my camera and pretending to look elsewhere, say for directions), then as she walked by, raised my camera to the car window and fired two shots rapidly. Later I invited her to view the shots. She thought they were wonderful, she said, and was surprised I caught her so well.

John (Crosley)

I think this shot is quite nice. The simple background is great and the way her right hand is going behind her back does emphasize her 'entanglement'.

 

I find her blue clothes distracting (though i'm sure some would find it a nice contrast to the plain background. I think a little bit more foreground and a slower shutter speed (to get some movement blur) might have made this picture even stronger and made it more interesting IMHO... i do understand this would have been difficult considering how you took the photo...

She does seem to have her hands full with these two. I think you did a wonderful job of capturing this image. I admire your determination and dedication to creating the image you saw possible.

Sasi,

 

Austria (and some other governments) have made 'choke chains', which I learned to train dogs with, illegal, thinking somehow that letting them pull the owner or walker along without any conditioning is somehow kinder.

 

I think a dog that is discipined is a nicer dog, so long as it is not mistreated -- a choke chain is NOT mistreatment -- it's how a young girl (my sister at 11 for example) kept our giant weimerauner from running away from her when she trained it as I grew up and the same for me at 8. It worked pretty well -- as the dog ran away from me, the chain cinched around the neck and the more the dog pulled the tighter it cinched around the neck, but the dog controlled the cinching and could just let up and control the effect.

 

Here, the dogs have leather collars and are out of control -- and the young woman may just be a dog walker or the owner -- we did not have a long conversation -- I stopped her to show her the photos (she wanted a card and I don't have one, she was young and somewhat Hispanic from her accent). She loved the photo and wanted me to take more.

 

It was the 'out of control' that I was trying to depict, and I think I did a good job, with the arm going around the back as the dogs really are controlling the walker, not vice versa.

 

And this is a tableau -- everything in two dimensions -- like an early Egyptian freize (sp?) or perhaps a bas relief, I think, as I planned it that way; I just drove ahead of these three (critics: notice the use of threes!) parked my car in the middle of an unbusy intersection on a Sunday morning and waited across from this plain and very high wall for them to come walking by and snapped two frames as they went by (this is the first and best). I was overjoyed when I saw this on my digital screen as it was just what the doctor ordered, for reasons I will write about later.

 

As for the color 'blue' - this is a 'street photo' and you take what you get (I don't clone colors or anything else and in fact just last week learned how to use the 'clone tool' although I did some time ago learn how to use the 'healing brush', a sort of semi-clone tool -- essential for digital shooters who get dust on their CCDs or CMOSs.

 

Do you notice anything interesting about the composition?

 

Thanks for commenting.

 

John

 

I am learning more and more that the photographer can 'create' the image (and I often did 'create' those images but was unaware of having done so in the past as it was unconscious -- and still is.)

 

Here I did the 'creation' consciously. The young woman was walking the dog past homes and businesses with 'confused' and distracting backgrounds and I was in a car, tired from overnight driving and lame and unable to get out and follow her and she/they were walking/half trotting. So I just picked a background, swung my rearview driver's side mirror around and kept an eye on her, hid my camera and she was so busy with the dogs pulling her every which way, she never saw the old guy with the car across the intersection waiting to 'shoot' her (I didn't even look her way for fear of spooking her until she was directly to my left, raised my camera, framed the shot and snapped the shutter and got this, all in one motion -- pretty good, hunh?)

 

I write about this process not to impress, but because I am becoming more self-aware and because I wish that when I began posting a year ago, someone else on Photo.net had written similar 'secrets' or hints about how they 'shot' certain photos; it would have made things so much easier. It's one of the things that makes photo magazine columns such fun/interesting reading for me -- when the columnists tell how they created a special photo or effect, and I think those who follow my work do so partly for the explanations that are attached to the work.

 

Thanks for the nice compliment. I really like this photo and am very proud, not only of 'how' I took this, but also for its 'feel' and 'look' as well as the whole 'composition'.

 

John

Those who are familiar with my work may recognize the theme of 'threes' (unconscious once again, but appealing to me just the same -- here three figures -- a walker and two dogs). And the same explanation for the attraction of 'threes' applies.

 

 

'Three' is a dynamic and unstable number, and it suggests the threee points of a triangle.

 

And, speaking of a triangle, notice that this composition creates a triangle from her rear foot, to her head, to the lead dog.

 

The triangle is a very dynamic figure, and although I couldn't frame a 'triangle' in composing this photo, when I saw that I had capured a 'triangle', I resolved that I would have to try no more shots with these subjects - I had just about as well as could be done.

 

(Photoshopping: Experienced PNers will recognize that had I saturated the colors and emphasized the contrast, this photo would have probably knocked socks off, but that is not what I try to do; I aim for 'naturalism' not high ratings. I'm satisfied to get high enough ratings and a good composition that satisfies me, which this one does.

 

John

This photo is entirely uncropped -- aspect and dimensions are as in the original (rushed) frame from the viewfinder, and the manipulations (all digital photos require 'some' manipulations), are basic -- no more than a negative photo printing machine computer would have -- perhaps a lot less.

 

John

One needn't use 'blur effects' to depict speed. When you view this photo, don't you get the impression that there is much forward movement (and no backward movement and this definitely is not a 'static' photo).

 

That's because instead of using a blur effect as you suggest (and life is too short to choose shutter speeds in daylight or to pile on neutral density filters in California on a summer-like day with diffuse sunlight through light, diffuse fog.

 

A 'blur effect' was not possible without setting this to the highest ISO possible stopping down to f22 and even then using several ND filters.

 

But, hold on.

 

The illusion of speed is carried forth in every part of each of the three bodies, just by looking at the composition and analyzing the 'body language' of the three.

 

Look at her 'stance' with her broad stride, and the dogs' extended pace -- the pull of the lead dog on the chain, all forward and the entangled dog behind her, also moving forward.

 

I blur effect I think would be redundant and probably confusing to the PN audience, and I think they would have rejected it.

 

(Blurs do occur when shooting at late night, and I do post them -- see my single photo folder for several, cable cars in S.F., beggar on skateboard in Thailand, etc.)

 

I think that there's 'more than on way to 'skin a cat' and that the idea of 'movement' can be conveyed through an effectively captured stride --- I'm creating a 'presentation' about just that, and this will appear in the presentation, all photos taken from my portfolio, in which 'stride' is a 'tell' of forward motion.

 

John

This is what I get for not paying attention! Missing out on the "rule of 3" game! Triangles, too! Sniff!

 

I love this shot, JohnC, for all the reasons mentioned. Also because it is so uncluttered - you set it up SO well! Perfect timing in the strides - all those legs. "Stealth Photography" at it's finest! Congrats!

Well, thank you, but usually don't set up the 'threes' (note 'usually'), but somehow am drawn to them, especially during the editing process. I note Tim Holte has his affinity for 'twos' if you view the highest-rated folders carefully and watch for a folder dealing with not wanting to be 'alone' or something to that effect.

 

The point is not to shoot 'threes' as a gimmick, but to shoot something that's pleasing, and if it turns out that it has lots of 'threes' in it in my photography, it is partly because the photo editor in me finds that a particularly dynamic (but uncluttered) number. Being odd, it is dynamic or unbalanced (not easily divisible like those symmetrical 'even' numbers) and dynamism is often what I want in a photo to 'catch attention'

 

There are precious few ways to 'catch attention in mundane photos, such as a young woman walking dogs, unless it's an awful lot of dogs. It might have been a very good photo had there been eight or six dogs, but two dogs and her seemed just about right for this background and to keep it uncluttered (and to make that triangle for composition that the use of 'threes' tends to make -- a bonus of using 'threes'.

 

If you draw straight lines around this composition, then view the geometrical figure, it should be more clear that this figure, like others in my Early B&W folder, creates a perfect geometrical figure, (a triangle) something I like to do in my photography.

 

I think adding or creating geometrical figures satisfies the mathematician in me or the geometrician (if there is such a term) as I was very good at geometry and found it very pleasing -- and extremely easy -- so much so that in 9th grade I was tutoring high school kids the subject and raising their grades significantly.)

 

Did you notice the 'stress' of the bitten lip (or so it appears) of her mouth? Look carefully at her mouth and see what I mean. This is the sort of thing that shows well in a galley and does not show well at all on Photo.net.

 

I visited the Museum of photography by whatever name it has at San Diego over the weekend for one of my first gallery experiences in decades (as I recall) and was reminded well of the difference between Photo.net postings and gallery showings -- in galleries one looks for small details and imperfections or finds the small 'themes' amid the larger compositions, whereas in thumbnail compositions such as are seen on Photo.net such things are lost.

 

Tant Pis.

 

('So much the worse', in French, but I think it translates out more literally, don't you?)

 

John

I shall tell you privately what one of my French friends said to me today....a Gallicism of our "same old, same old" - only MUCH more graphic!

 

I think you're right about the theme of "three's" - it has to do with the way one "sees" things - and may have to do with why certain photographers are drawn to each other...Looking again at this image, I am reminded about something you said up at the beginning, that it brings to mind a "frieze" - quite right, John! It is almost like an Egyptian hieroglyph, as well - the almost flat presentation, yet with the implied movement of the legs. I think that idea works because the arm going behind the back brings her torso into a flatter plane of view, correct?

 

I think this shot is a classic, myself!

'A Classic' - those are tough words to keep up with . . . but I'm happy to try. I saw this on my digital camera display and I was overjoyed . . . and couldn't wait even to show it to the young woman and did something unusual . . . I called out to her in the morning stillness and asked her if she wanted to see how she looked in a photograph. She looked askance at first at that old man in the car calling to her (wouldn't you?), but she came over, I showed her the photograph, and she wanted (1) more photos taken and (2) my card (which I don't have -- it's too easy to have angry boyfriends, homeowners, etc., try to do bad things to you or send bad e-mails if one circulates one's card at 'street shooting' plus I actually don't have a card anyway just for that reason.

 

If all my shots were as successful as this, I'd be overjoyed. I did plan for something on the order of this . . . expected a frieze-type shot and prepared for just such a shot -- two dimensions and all -- see the man passing Woolworth's in my Early B&W folder for what I'm getting at -- and was not surprised to get something good.

 

But this exact composition . . . I'm thrilled with and couldn't have stage-managed a young woman and two dogs any better if I'd been given a job and a crew of several to make a commercial, could you?

 

(except to hire a professional model and put designer clothes on her, even disguised as 'street' clothes for 'youth'.)

 

(how're them bugs coming along . . . ?

 

John

I've been aware for some time that catching a moving subject in mid-stride is usually best to illustrate forward motion. And that's why I tried to capture this woman thusly, and am so happy I succeeded . . . it's almost second nature . . . something limbic . . . that I'm not even sure the process reaches the higher brain but just stops when the stride goes full, the image hits my brain and it goes straight to my shutter finger just bypassing any thought process at all.

 

I've a collection of such photos from my porfolio (and folders) and have been working on a presentation (shut down for now because of the poor software of Photo.net for arranging photos in extensive presentations -- we need thumbnails to do large presentations and numbering for ordering our presentations, all within the presentation-making software . . . please Brian, et al.)

 

So, 'Lee Park' and others, you'll generally see a subject I could plan a shot for, in mid-stride if I want fully to indicate forward motion.

 

(Now watch me go change my manner of 'shooting' such subjects.)

 

John

An excellent one, John. To me what makes the image is her expression and the position of her arms and legs. I don't think that the blue colour of the clothes is distracting.

Somehow, as simple as this is, I think I caught the moment. Nothing complicated, but just a little elegantly . . . .

 

John