A Face of 'Wisdom'

This grandmotherly face is the face of 'wisdom' or so it seems, as

this 'babushka'-like woman (grandmotherly-like woman) talks with a

friend on a street, after sunset, in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine. A

hard life in Ukraine, brings out facial features that often are

hidden elsewhere in the 'Western' world, and in this city among

large cities (Dnepropetrovsk is between 1~2 million) there are a

large number of unusual faces for such a metropolis. 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

What a perfect Title !

 

How lucky you were to capture that beautiful face ! This is one of those photos that makes you gasp when it opens.....

 

Oh, How I would love to chat with that women.

 

Well done ! and Thanks for Sharing

An excellent example of the impact created by selective focus, John. The blurry figure at right really sucks us into the aged look on the woman's face at left.

If you gasped when this photo opened, I grasped for a caption, knowing nothing about this woman other than that she looked old and 'full of wisdom'; hence the title.

 

I'm glad that this was somewhat overpowering to you, as I stood nearby with my 80~200 behind her and her friend (a woman by the way) as they talked intently, never once noticing me and my long lens aimed at them in the very dim evening light.

 

Many of my shots of this woman were blurry because her mouth was busy talking, but she has a range of expression that I felt was priceless and I have many captures of her, choosing this one in particular because it showed her eyes so expressively.

 

Sometimes I'm blown away by comments such as yours, as I just post and sometimes even forget what I've posted, since I have a long line of photos waiting to post and simply 'browse' and choose 'something' -- 'whatever I feel like at the moment' when the moment to post comes. This time it was this woman (and the backside of her friend's shoulders and head/hat.

 

Thanks for the nice comment.

 

John

No kidding, Matt, when it's after sunset and the light's the afterglow through clouds and dim streetlights, and all you have is a massive 80~200 mm telephoto on one of two cameras, you feel like some sort of monster pointing it on a sidewalk at a stranger, since all sorts of people are looking at you (the barrel diameter is huge on an 80~200 with a huge front lens).

 

But this woman never once realized she was being photographed, so intent was she on talking with her friend/acquaintance at what must have been a bus stop or meeting place at curbside in downtown Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine.

 

I spied this woman and felt the photo Gods had once again smiled on me, and just had to photograph her.

 

But in the process, I felt that just framing her face (which would have involved getting in really close) would not only have been intrusive, but would have robbed not only the moment but the circumstance.

 

So, as she talked with her female (that's a woman's hat) friend/acquaintance, I just snapped away, deleting those shots that were so obviously out of focus due to my blur or her mouth blur that they were forever unusable, and keeping those that might have future use, with this being my choice of litter.

 

And just a short time after posting, it's already got the 11 ratings necessary for my my gallery of highest-rated photos, though the rates are hardly high (which is in keeping with criticism Brian's changes have received).

 

But so what? I'm happy to have an audience at all, and such an enthusiastic one at that.

 

Thanks for stopping by, Matt, I often think of you.

 

(your words about how 'strange' my images seem to 'hold together' often appear in my comments when I'm trying to explain what it is I do when I photograph.)

 

Best to you as you zoom to the stars.

 

John

Walter, was I lucky (?) to capture that face or is is something that is a function of worn shoe leather and aching knees, feet, back and overloaded luggage from just one more trip, apartments in the middle of nowhere with people who speak strange languages, all in search of HER (or someone like her or anyone who is as beautiful in their own way as HER)???

 

In other words, is it luck, or perseverance.

 

I think the question answers itself.

 

John ;-))

 

 

I seldom repeat myself, and I note that this photo, like two others I posted a year ago, is one in which the central subject is two-third obscured (or more) by a totally out of focus (OOF) central figure, which only succeeds in 'focusing' (if you'll excuse the expression) the viewers' eyes on the central subject of the photograph, framed far to the corner of the photograph.

 

This is a photograph for which the eye must work, but when the eye does work, it is well rewarded, with one of the most interesting faces one might ever see in a lifetime -- the prototypical grandmother -- a woman who might have visited any of us as children and smeared us with her lipstick and hugged us so tightly it scared us, all the time calling us by our nicknames and knowing our intimate secrets that we thought only our mothers and fathers knew.

 

In other words, a grandmother.

 

John

Once again, I have done just what I always do; I have taken the subject (a conversation) and portrayed it, even though one of the figures has her back to the camera, and tried to make it interesting.

 

I might have made this simply a 'street portrait' of the old woman, left, but I wanted to show that she was 'engaged' with another woman in earnest conversation, as she was, and somehow I don't think that the frame is almost entirely occupied with the back of the other woman detracts overmuch from its impact; in fact it may add to the impact.

 

And the main subject of this 'conversation' was this babushka, left, who had one of the most interesting faces, and I took multiple frames, rejecting blurry ones caused by slow shutter speeds of 1/8th second, 1/6th second or so, and her mouth moving (this particular lens is a non V.R. lens, but one of my 'street favorites', a push-pull design zoom, an 80~200 Nikkor f 2.8, which allows for speedy framing).

 

While it's 'huge', it's also completely black and not so conspicuous as its size would indicate, and there in the dim light on a busy sidewalk, tucked against a wall I hardly was noticed except by passersby who could only note that I had chosen a worthy subject.

 

Some might say I 'break the rules' but I see it that I just take 'all the interesting stuff' and 'cram it into the frame' and try to exclude all the uninteresting and unnecessary stuff and exclude it from the photo', which is that 'strange' element you once remarked which seemed to hold or tie all my photography together, across its many genres and styles.

 

It all just seems to natural to me, that if this woman is in conversation, I should try to capture that she is in conversation, and if that involves photographing the back of the woman she is talking with, then that's what's going to be in the photograph, and if I do it successfully, people will look at it. (I do take a lot of unsuccessful photographs, although increasingly fewer of them).

 

John (for the third time)