The Stopover

This squirmy child and mother rest between flights with other

passenger, Muenich Flughafen (Munich Airport), Germany. Your ratings

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

very critically, please submit a helpful and constructive

comment/Please share your superior knowledge to help improve my

photography). Thanks! Enjoy! John

John,

 

I love it!!!!

 

Very, very nice.

Anthony, thanks so much for the comment. This is an unusually complex composition for such a 'little' photo.

 

One first notices that this is just a child lying on top of a fatigued mother's back in an airport waiting area; and that would be interesting in and or itself.

 

One thing that makes it more than an 'ordinary' capture might be if it had special composition.

 

Notice how, if one takes into account the shadow on the stone flooring, the darkness of the benches and the outlining or silhouetting of the rear windows (which are blown, but that matters little, and in fact probably helps), a more complex composition is revealed.

 

The result is that the mass of darker area essentially begins to form a more complex geometric structure. If one looks at it in terms of form, one will notice that the shadow and the occupied benches from foreground to background, form part of a 'triangle', if one connects the 'continuation' of that triangle, out of frame, at the photographer's feet. And then the beginning of a corollary 'triangle', right, but not complete. The form to the right suggests the base of a triangle or the beginning of a new triangle, which is incomplete.

 

Subscriber Wilson Tsoi, one of the more prominent photographers on this service, in many of his fine photographs has managed to frame the photo to include a strong diagonal (which suggests a triangle within a rectantular frame), as well as very bright colors, to create most dynamic compositions from largely 'static' subjects -- a real feat. I invite you to look at his portfolio and/or various folders.

 

So, the composition is not only about two fatigued traveling 'subjects' but it's about form and mass overall.

 

In 'street' or 'documentary' photographs, it sometimes is the addition of a geometric or other device that can transform something interesting into something a little more substantial, and I think that is why you may like it.

 

If I had zoomed in on mother and child as I might have, I think it would not only have taken away the contextual information, but it also would have taken away the opportunity for creating a 'composition' (however incomplete) from the photographed area, which often can be beneficial to a photograph. (Long explanation for something that just struck you as 'appealing').

 

It is the attempt to solidify, quantify, or otherwise describe how one makes the transition from 'it appeals to me in the viewfinder or in the frame' to actually describing 'why' it is so, that is transformative, I think, to me as a photographer.

 

I often could take 'interesting' photographs and still do, based on 'it's appealing in the viewfinder' without being able to put my finger on 'why'. Now I am devoting a substantial effort to understanding why and how incredibly many different photographic devices that I have employed based on 'it appears pretty good in the viewfinder'.

 

That is what ties so much of my more environmental photographs together, but still makes them hard to categorize. One must look to the method, not the particular device I use.

 

Ultimately, one looks for what appeal in the viewfinder, and if one can replicate that across views and substitute a variety of different photographic composition devices, then one will be able to create knowingly a photograph about almost anything, and ALSO be able to say why and teach HOW to do so.

 

That's what I'm after.

 

(or I'm just very full of myself. . . . ;-) )

 

John (Crosley)

john, never apologize for having the courage of your thoughts. you know, there's also geometry in the way te seats ome together that contributes to the geometry of the scene. a closeup would also have worked, but for different reasons. they really would have been two different photos, requiring entirely different considerations about composition. this is very compelling to me. the scene, with travelers around, but on different aisles than the mother and child, provides background and context, while the mother and child are still well isolated. the red pants of the child draws the eye perfectly, and the shoes parellel one of the diagonals you are talking about i think. no one else's face is as clearly visible as the child's, another great device to focus attention where it belongs.

 

so, good work john!

Nice, thorough comment. It adds considerably to my own analysis, above.

 

And it adds a point that to me is especially important -- that the child not only is clad in red, emphasizing him, but more importantly his face is the only one visible. How could I have overlooked that?

 

It just goes to show that my photography still is more inchoate than studied (at least formally), and even when I go to analyze my own photograph I miss one of the most important points.

 

In the end, it just looks good to me in the viewfinder and I might have a second or two to frame and press the shutter release, for this kind of photo in which remaining relatively inconspicious is an important element.

 

Thanks for your help on this one.

 

John

john, i used to write creatively more, poems often, and learned then that once done, i could not control what it evoked for others, could not possibly think of all ramifications. same i think for a good photograph. i'm a big believer in gut feeling, in part because of that.

I'm a big believer in that.

 

I took very good photos from the very beginning for reasons I could not explain.

 

(One, noted elsewhere, is from my first roll in my Early B & W folder, a scene of three men on the Staten Island Ferry, not altogether too much different from this, just better).

 

The difference now is that I take lots more photographs, a luxury allowed by digital cameras and the wealth of age, plus I now am engaged in a quest to try to explain (explicate) the many devices I use when I try to create interesting photographs by 'cramming all the interesting stuff into the viewfinder in an interesting way.'

 

;-)

 

John

Nice photo John, just the way life is.

Isn't that so . . . . (a declaration, not a question despite its sentence structure).

 

It's slice of life.

 

Glad you enjoyed.

 

John (Crosley)

This is one of those cases where shadows, this time from the benches and occupants, help 'make' the photo's composition. If one is unaware of shadows sometimes, that lack of awareness can come home to 'bite' in terms of detracting from an otherwise successful photo. Here the shadow helps complete the 'triangular' mass of the benches and adds to the composition, I think.

 

John

John,

 

You have a way, especially with this shot, to enable a viewer to be a part of a scene without them thinking that they looking at a photograph (if that makes any sense). This really seems to capture the moment, as if I had been there and I'm remembering the image some time later. The out-of-focus people in the far, with the white background, really helps with the "memory vision".

 

Good work.

Yes, Sherwin, I agree that somehow scenes such as this have a familiarity to them, eevn though one has not actually 'seen' the exact scene.

 

Maybe it's just because I stop at things you've rushed by in your hurry to get a plane, or didn't have a camera with you and if you did, you didn't want to 'impose' by taking it out.

 

I have boiled my craft down to this: I find interesting scenes and use my camera and lens to jam all the important things into the frame in the most interesting manner and in the process somehow I (most subconciously) use a variety of compositional devices, plus considerable interest in things around me and the lust to preserve it.

 

If that causes you to have almost a 'phantom memory' of a scene you did not already see in actuality, but might have seen, then I have touched a chord with my photo, for which I am very pleased.

 

Yours is a very heartening and intelligent comment. Thanks for putting it into well-chosen words.

 

John