Vendor in Chualar (Salinas Valley), CA

Hispanics (Almost exclusively Mexicans), are the fuel that drives

the economic engine of California's long, narrow and very fertile

and agricultural Salinas River Valley, where truck crops are

increasingly yielding to tens of miles of grape arbors for wine

production. This is a typical scene in the micro-town of Chualar,

just a spot on a map, outside a country store, one recent Saturday.

This man, left, sells steamed corn (maize) from his cart on the side

of the store building, right, for $1.50 an ear. Your ratings and

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

very negatively, please submit a helpful and constructive

comment/Please share your superior knowledge to help improve my

photography.) Thanks! Enjoy! John

What drew me to this shot -- and this composition was making his hat an extension of the roofline, and then, on viewing the photo, seeing that the line of the roof/hat was carried out through the line of his left (as we view him) shoulder, for a complex diagonal, making this 'static' pose rather 'active' -- that being the nature of diagonals.

I chose him because of his face and his hat -- loved the textures, and the seamy, low-rent setting, characteristic of the little stores off main streets of these little Salinas Valley towns.

Thanks for the comment.

John (Crosley)

Excellent street shot. Perfect DOF to give a detail of the background too. My only small nit pick is about the sky which is blown out ... well this hardly matters in these shots. They should portray the atmosphere. Here you have captured it very beautifully.

Kind regards.

Thanks for the kind remarks -- somehow this photo just struck me among many I've taken as being a 'portrait' for which many have said nice things, but also a 'street' photo, for which I feel I have done well, and which this particular photo is all about.

As you probably have guessed, this is a desaturated color photo, and although it had a greater range of values than shown here, it still had a 'blah' sky, all blue/gray as is typical of the near coastal skies in late, windy afternoons in the Salinas Valley more near the Pacific Ocean. Although it might have been possible to bring some 'grain' or pixellation to it -- e.g. 'texture' through pixel processing, it still would be literally 'white'.

But it's the contrast between the whiteness of the sky and the grays and darknesses of the subject which bisect this image diagonally which gives this image its power, I think. While almost every image can be improved, (and this one has some technical faults which I hope to 'cure' through further processing), I think this is representative of my better portraiture.

Thanks for stopping by.

John