faces in time Bessie's Husband

This candid or very nearly 'street' portrait, is of an 83-year-old

man. Your comments 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

This is the first photo for a new folder -- 'Faces' to which I will add from time to time.

 

Technical details: 1/15th of a sec., handheld, at f 2.8, natural lighting, indoors, converted to B&W through channel mixer in Photoshop CS.

 

Addendum Aug 29. Focal length 70 mm on a 35-70 mm zoom.

 

John

A very decent and candid photo with nice lines. Worthy of only constructive critique. Thanks for sharing.

Oversharpened--yet somehow blurry at the same time.

Thank you for the nice comment; I welcome all coments that are constructive -- regardless of the rating that might be attached. (see below)

 

This was taken in a 'candid' manner, inside a converted garage with a bare light bulb and sidelight from an uncurtained window in late afternoon, and converted from color. The color photo was unhelpful because 'mixed lighting' sources resulted in bluishness from source' and yellowish toward reddishness from the other source and side -- so it HAD to be converted to B&W.

 

John (Crosley)

Please note the image details in the first or second comment above -- 1/15th of a second at f 2.8. This was NOT a vibration reduction lens which I ordinarily carry on my camera.

 

Focus was on his eyes, and it's at 70 mm handheld at 1/15th of a second, which violates every 'rule' of setting the aperture/shutter speed combination, so there was some 'sharpening', but amazingly, the sharpening restored this aged (and cancer stricken) man to his true appearance -- he truly was so wrinkly.

 

And, yes, it may be a trifle 'blurry' -- in fact most portrait artists use 'blurry' lenses or 'soft' lenses for portraits. This certainly was not taken with a 'Leica' lens outdoors in sunlight and was taken under possibly the harshest circumstances possible -- it's a miracle it could be posted at all. I only 'sharpen' images to rescue them and save an extraordinary expression or image or otherwise 'ditch' them.

 

What may appear to be 'blurriness', however, may partly be because of the very shallow depth of field. At 70 mm focal length multiplied by 1.5 x to account for the reduced CCD, the effective focal length is 105 mm, leaving the plane of maximum sharpness, extremely shallow (I once used an 85 mm lens on film at night with 'fast' film to isolate the embers of a man's cigarette tip, leaving the man intentionally out of focus, and it's one of my most viewed photos (Wife killer-author, single photo folder).

 

But what about this 'capture' -- was it worth 'saving'?

 

John

I'm gonna take typing lessons -- and I do know how to spell 'huband' with an 's'. (If Administration fixes that, I'll remove this comment).

 

John the unnimble fingered.

John, I love the expression you've captured here. That mischievous twinkle in his eyes shows he's sticking his tongue out at whatever life throws at him. I don't think it matters at all that his ears are out of focus (at that age they're probably not working so well anyway)

I may indeed be a better photo editor than photographer, as I took a number of photos of this guy, but with the slow shutter speed and not having a Vibration Reduction lens on my camera, some came out with some significant fuzziness.

 

I went through my photos, of which there were quite a number, and showed them to others, and found myself always stopping at this one to say 'see his tongue', as I've never seen a photo with a tongue wetting lips or stuck out while pondering.

 

I like to press the shutter at unexpected times, and you get results like this sometimes.

 

I agree, he was pretty 'twinkley' not to be confused with all those e-mails in my bulk mail folder advertising 'twinkeys' doing such and so.

 

;~)

 

John

John: I think it is a great capture but the post process work could be better, especially because it is a great capture. The "hot" highlights may be the result of trying to use sharpening techniques to cure blurriness. His eyes look as though they have the potential to be compelling but come across here as washed out. Those wrinkles are magnificent, though.

 

If you are game, post the original and we'll have a go at some alternative post work.

I accept with gusto, but it may be a week or more.

 

Please watch this space.

 

Anything that improves a capture of mine, I welcome greatly.

 

Thank you.

 

John

Here is the original file, as downloaded from my camera. I am interested to see what wonders you can do with it. By the way, there is another crop of this particular photo -- head to the right, more left shoulder -- that I might have chosen.

 

Anything anybody does that can improve my work, I welcome. I learned that from being a fledgling writer of a week, and after getting all defensive about being 'edited' and thus my work being 'changed' because I projected that it was 'inadequate' and didn't like that others could see it so readily.

 

Well, a fellow reporter took me for a beer and said 'listen, kid, wise up, an editor only is trying to make your stuff look better.'

 

Good editing only brings out the best; the rest can be overlooked, and that applies for Photoshopping or other image editing.

 

Go for it. (and I'd be interested in a full-size 'attachment' as well as a 510-pixel in-line attachment together with your explanation of what you have done.

 

Note: I looked for the original, unbacked up on another computer, and got this message: 'Your computer crashed or was shut down while (program name) was in the middle of a recovery ondisk #1, then it prompted me to press 'y'es for a continuation of recovery, but it's unresponsive. Oh ells bells, did I lose a substantial number of my photographs from recently stored on that computer awaiting backup?)

 

This was saved on another disk, for images I have worked on a little bit, but still color. See what you can do, and if I can recover the JPEG fine unedited version, I will also post it.

 

John (Crosley)

Arghhhh ... I'm not much help here. The attached does bring some life back to the eyes but the tonal values are still too hot (or too obviously repressed, which might be worse) to say that this is much of an improvement.

 

I can certainly post the work file, but I doubt that you'd want it. It is big because I switched to 16 bit for editing and you have to flatten it to keep any incremental benefit before shifting back to 8 bit.

 

This was a JPG shot, not raw, right? (Hope you recovered your files.)

This is a JPEG (JPG), shot, as when I made the decision to shoot digital and shoot in JPEG and Normal on my D70, it only allowed JPEG normal, not fine, and there was no good software capable of opening a 'raw' file for editing, as there is now. Soon I'll be shooting raw and JPEG Fine with a D2X, and eating up those memory cards, but they're only $99.99 for two gigabytes, high speed, on sale at a large local chain based in nearby Silicon Valley (Fry's) -- Not Sandisk or Lexar, but they won't be far behind.

 

I never had a failure with any, even 'off' brands. They all behaved normally, even in bitter, Russian cold, and in Thailand's high humidity (even when a 32-ounce soft drink was being poured over my camera, truth be told -- an incident I recorded with the camera firing away, including the pouring and pourer in the frame -- never to be posted.

 

Photo techs say the D70, which underwent such torture, was not made with 'seals' and protection for such treatment, but mine just fired away and never has had a glitch -- a tribute to good luck or Nikon's sturdy camera-making.

 

I haven't yet hooked up a new keyboard to the laptop on which the original is stored, and I have reason to believe it was a spill on the laptop keyboard (otherwise sealed) which prohibits my access to the original of this file.

 

I'll try to post the original in a day or so; meanwhile, you DID improve it, and your efforts are very much appreciated. I'll give you another chance if you want to take it and the file's not wiped out with many others.

 

John

this seems to show a clear hint of the humour of this man, softness. blurriness, whatever, it is a clear portrait of an individual and tells me lots about him....what more could I ask of a portrait?

I think you're right -- I got the essence of this man, aged and suffering from cancer, but, in the end, happy with his life and few or no regrets.

 

It shows, doesn't it?

 

I kept pushing that shutter button, much to the amazement of him and his wife, Bessie, and caught this moment, as he licked his lips, and it felt emblematic of his 'impish' spirit, however quiet spoken he was.

 

;-)

 

John

I met Bessie briefly last night to pick something up, but she was in the middle of preparing dinner for her husband who was working full scale, despite his cancer of three years (he's 83).

 

She had been in the hospital twice since I posted this photo, and out again, but has a 'happy' face, and looks to the bright side, with a full schedule. After all, when you get older, you have two choices -- sit and wait for time to catch you, or fill your schedule and make the most of it while you can.

 

(I learned something from Bessie, although I think I already knew it.)

 

John

As usual, I don't have anything more to add to what been said already, or even something interesting to say, I just wanted you to know I very much enjoyed this photo and the surrounding discussion (as always!).

 

Although not technically 100% the best (are the greatest photos ever?), this just shows once again that the true spirit of photography is not in technical brilliance alone. My grandfather passed away earlier this year, and this photo made me think of him a lot. Especially the thin layer of laughing tears in this wonderful man's left eye - my granfather always had them as well....

 

Take care.

JH

This man, (whose name may be Floyd, as I seem to recall) may now be passed on -- he had cancer at the time, but was irrepressable).

 

And I think that is what I captured, -- his love for his life and his wife, all at the same time -- his zest for what was left of his life and the attention he was getting being photographed as well.

 

In any case, and whatever the case, I'm glad it has touched you; that is part of what drives me. (I didn't start out that way, but it is a tremendous accolade.) And I know losses can be hard to deal with, even from those who have lived what others call 'full lives' -- all death can be premature to those of us who survive and feel loss.

 

Respectfully,

 

John (Crosley)