Mirroring

'Mirroring' is the name I give to the photographic device used in

composing this photograph (it may not be apparent on first glance).

This photo was taken in a restaurant area at Chicago's O'Hare

International Airport, United Airlines Concourse. Your ratings and

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

very critically, please submit a helpful and constructive

comment/Please share your superior photographic knowlege to help

improve my craft). Thanks! John!

Actually, I saw this one in advance, and although I took about four or five frames, each was almost identical, with only the tilt of his bottle having a different angle.

It was kind of difficult getting the angle of the bottle to match that of the trombone, and that is the only reason I took several shots.

I would have liked to have placed the man, foreground, more in focus, but there's great distance between him and the very large and distant statue, with not much available light, limiting my aperture choices to larger apertures (hence his being out of focus somewhat, despite attempts at 'selective sharpening'.

I think the raters, however, Ben, just didn't 'get it'.

I did, and I smile at this one.

I think Elliott Erwitt would have understood this one instantly (you seem to have also.)

P.S. Ben: Sometimes, I just get in one of those moods where I wonder WHAT I'm gonne shoot next, but eveywhere around me there are things such as this occurring, and it's almost hard to filter them out. I see them, but nobody else around me sees them. It's almost like the singularity of having x-ray vision . . . I feel so singular sometimes with the 'oddball' ways in which I see things.

John

I'm getting to the point where I no longer cringe at being the 'oddball' and somehow I think it's infectious . . . as people seem to be picking up something from me, and I'm making all sorts of new friends.

It really is sort of on a par with having x-ray vision or some special 'gift' I think.

I think I am getting a faint glow of what it was that Henri Cartier-Bresson carried around, although in a somewhat different fashion, as he composed his 'plastic art' in his head, framing it eventually with his viewfinder, then, like the former big game hunter that he was, moving on to 'bag another one', never printing his own work -- leaving that to his personal printer from the '50s on -- a man on a quest -- a man with a unique vision.

I regrettably don't have his vision (would that I did, but then I'd be an imitator), but I am beginning to feel something - something that I had when I was 22 through 24 when I first picked up a camera, and now a lot more capable of picking up a camera and confidently knowing I'll get 'something' though God Knows What . . . .'

Thanks Ben.

John

With my bags, my packet of 5 newspapers for my 12-hour flight ahead, my two cameras around my neck and my very heavy backpack camerabag with four cameras and 11 lenses on a trolley, I entered this huge room, took a look around, spotted this guy taking a drink, and made up my mind that this was the photo I was going to take.

The seat I took was half-way again as far away from him and the statues, so I could place the two in juxtaposition with my telephoto, and then I ate my sandwich and waited for him to upend his water bottle, which he did about five times -- all five of which I recorded.

As noted above, I chose this particular frame because the angle of the water bottle matched most closely that of the statute's trombone.

Sometimes 'street' shooting can be very 'purposeful' as here; othertimes it all happens in an instant with maybe a second to comprehend a scene, raise camera to eye, focus (autofocus), frame and shoot.

It all depends.

John