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Compare and Contrast**+@j-c-n


johncrosley

Nikon D2X, Nikkor 70~200 V.R. E.D.


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Street

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'Compare and Contrast' is one of a number of photos shot on the Paris

Metro in about three days' time. 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

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I think this would be more powerful if the older lady didn't fit into the picture as well. The color and lighting are so similar; she tends to blend into the background picture too much IMHO.
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The point of this photo is that the little old lady DOES fit into this photo so well. She has so many attributes of the woman to the top right that it looks like she's an older clone and part of a larger canvas. That's the point of the photo.

 

The question is, in view of your comment, how would you compose the photo, given that the older woman is sitting there as she is, to make a better and different photo as you are suggesting?

 

Feel free to copy this and rework it and submit it as a comment with an attachment. I'm interested, as I feel this photo is one of the best of my recent shots, but only in a particular genre, as I shoot in my 'styles' and I'm anxious to see how you would have rendered it.

 

(I respect other viewpoints and I'm curious about yours . . . but kind of 'wondering' just what you mean . . . .)

 

With respect,

 

John (Crosley)

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John, I really like the powerful effect you have created - don't get me wrong. I think the old lady blends in too much though. When I first looked at it, I wasn't sure if the old lady was in the picture. She seems too 2-dimensional. I think a little more contrast between the two ladies might make the point more obvious, counter-intuitive as it is.
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That's exactly the point of my question. It wasn't a put-down at all, but a request for further comment.

 

I'm far from all-knowing and all-seeing and in fact rather myopic about my own images. In fact, another image posted just previously already has 7 ratings, fairly high, and I regard it as a lesser or equal image, but this has just two and I have difficulties, since this in my mind is one of my 'more subtle' but more powerful photos.

 

I think it would do well in a gallery -- it has colors more like a Rembrandt or another painter of the old Dutch school -- muted tones toward the browns of the old Dutch school where figures such as the older woman fade into the background and are not so easily noticed, than a more modern portrait/painting might.

 

And that was the 'look' I was looking for, but I might have overdone it. And there also is a problem presenting photos in thumbnail as opposed to 20 x 24 or 28 prints, where I think this might do nicely with people walking by and the older woman's head being very large in physical size.

 

I may 'rework' this, but I'm in an internet 'cafe' -- no food or drink unless you bring it yourself -- and I can't rework it for some time, and I have a bad monitor here, so it doesn't show the contrast my laptop shows, which outlines the older woman's head very well and shows her read hair (red hair on both . . . imagine the coincidence . . . )

 

Thanks for taking this in the spirit it was taken -- there's no ill will in my comments, ever.

 

;~))

 

John

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Your animations are always something I look forward to, and since you are one of Photo.net's premier photographers, a rating and/or comment from you always is a high accolade.

 

(Thank you again for showing me how to use the Marquee HTML tag which apparently has been banned from the biography pages -- I think we should campaign to get it back as it made for interesting pages.)

 

My very best for the holidays.

 

John (Crosley)

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About the caption, which I didn't address above, there were so many things about this photo that seemed a pro pos to a photo composition and analysis class (or just a general - 'can you spot the differences and the samenesses test?') that it seemed natural instead of naming it 'Two Women' or something more 'trite' or 'natural' just to give it a title that fulfilled its implications.

 

I imagined that a photo or composition professor/instructor might give this photo to a beginning class in composition to ask 'Can you spot the areas in which this photographer has used the idea of 'sameness' and 'contrast' to create an effective photograph?'

 

In fact, that's where much of my photography has been since I started taking photographs over 30 years ago (with a long, 30-year hiatus), and in my eyes, this is a reflection of the high point of what I can achieve -- I think this works especially well in color because of the muted colors, but it also will work very well in Black & White, I think.

 

The idea of a giant beautiful model peddling whatever (is it perfumes?/ I forgot, but I can review other photos to find out), posed next to an aged woman, and each taking up a portion of a parallelogram (rectangle) but in this case, the rectangle's portion devoted to each 'model' is in proportion to each of their relative 'importance' as attached or associated in the 'world of beauty' and as attached by an agist and consumer-related society.

 

So, while in real life the woman, left, might have been a writer/author or great import, one would never know it by the relative importance placed on such persons by 'images' in an image-dominated world.

 

The French, loving beauty (in women) as they do, would rather look at a lovely young woman than an aging older woman, and that is simply a reflection of how the sexual orientation of man (and woman) works, and they're just honest about it.

 

(In regard to men, however, see my other recent photo featuring the advertisement for the movie 'Ole' which features the 'sometimes whale of an actor' 'Gerard Depardieu', and in that photo try to imagine his 'girth' by looking at that photo imaginatively, and understand that he's still a 'sex symbol' of sorts in France and a huge movie star and box office draw despite that he's as large as Marlon Brando's physical size when Marlon Brando was larger than a Sperm Whale. . . . .

 

The French have different standards for some things . . . and it's a interesting contrast . . . to American values.

 

It's also interesting that French women, Russian women, and American women all are about equally sexually active, yet the American culture is supposedly so sexually 'bound up' by a certain portion of the political spectrum and society that it obscures the 'real majority' of America and its broad range of values, from sexual restrictiveness to permissiveness -- with one thing in common -- young persons of growing age are all attracted to sex and sexuality, no matter what they tell their parents, (or their parents tell them), because they are hormonally driven . . . it's just that the French (and the Dutch especially) prepare their kids for the onslaught of those hormones better than the Americans.

 

Americans are overwhelmed with sexual images in every medium, yet the children are told 'just say no' while being 'sold sex' on television, the movies, recordings, etc., and it isn't some faceless devil selling it to them, they buy it because they demand it because it greatly interests them . . . almost obsessively in some cases. Their hormones tell them to procreate and to deny those hormones is to deny the essence of their existence . . . to put it very plainly. 'Sublimation' or diversion of sexual energy has worked well for a society in which maturation occurs from 12 to 16 in general, but the society is not ready for procreation until a much older age . . . . and although those potential 'parents' can 'create' children, they can't economically afford to care for themselves AND children in a technological society which values and rewards high education and 'starting a family late.'

 

For those who thing this is a bunch of bull, remember the Puritan Ideal: It's the idea that somewhere, somebody, somehow might be having fun, and the Puritans frowned on that because somehow having fun was seen as unGodly.

 

And America is partly descended from that Puritan culture (my ancestors probably were in part from that culture, as they in part predated the Revolutionary War -- they fought on the correct side against King George -- while others were born in Russia, France, Scandinavia, England and a variety of Northern European Countries (and I'm told they weren't completely Christian, either, and my relations now include a Muslim or two as well, and have since I've been a teenager, which was 'no problem' for my open-minded parents.

 

This is an age of multi-culturalism, and the idea that one can keep 'boundaries' around ideas in this idea of television, radio and most of all the Internet 'just won't wash', it seems.

 

Back to this photo: This is an image -- the woman, left, is diminished only in the image, and that is representational of what an image-driven society does to older women in particular (the point of all this and indeed the photo itself).

 

I hope in the end this photo is graphically appealing and somehow compelling.

 

I regard it as the epitome of my art, whether the ratings are high or low. In fact, many of my recent Paris photos, taken when I was there for medical reasons, during a scant three or four days of shooting (more to come) are as good as I can shoot 'street' -- probably ever.

 

John (Crosley)

Christmas 2005

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John,

 

Great shot, excellent use of color and well seen. Please consider losing the title, it is completely unnecessary. People who look at this image will already be comparing and contrasting. Let them feel they are doing it on their own and they will have a greater emotional response. Imply, infer, leave gaps, don't dictate. Great shot!

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