'LOOK, MARILYN!'

'LOOK, MARILYN!' is a piece of life on a side street in Hollywood,

California, a couple of days ago. 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

I find the light on him a bit hard (yes, not easy to control the sun : )) but what makes me the more confused is the place you gave him in your frame. Maybe you wanted to get the whole wall? I'd crop from the right... what do you think about? Apart that, well seen! Interesting background.

I might darken him a little. This is not the 'final' copy and is essentially unmanipulated -- I think I will take your suggestion.

 

As far as placement, this is a full-frame capture -- and I dislike cropping.

 

I was photographing this mural and passersby, looking for likely captures, and had it centered, full-frame when this guy scooted by. I hit Continuous (high-speed -- five frames per second), for a burst and this was the most interesting frame, right in Marilyn's lap, almost.

 

There are one or two others from this mural, and one or more are not centered, especially one from the right-most part, which goes off the mural entirely.

 

I'm disappointed with the ratings so far, but them's the results, and no arguing. I thought it would score very high for 'originality' if nothing else. How many other such captures have you seen?

 

I always appreciate when you have suggestions.

 

John (Crosley)

Picture of the week. Great sense of opportunity. Congratulations

Thanks for your fast feedback. [...] this is a full-frame capture -- and I dislike cropping [...] I like to read this.

I understand that you expected more for the originality rating, but you know that the PN crowd doesn't always take the time to look at such photos in details: how many oversaturated sunsets receive 7 in originality? ; )

Once again, thank you for the time you take to write as well complete than interesting responses.

I long ago gave up any hope of POW (and maybe just dismissed the idea out of hand.) It's a high honor you feel so highly about this photo.

 

The 'elves' are not too interested in spontaneous 'street' captures, although they have chosen one (or two) from time to time.

 

The very first photo I uploaded probably had the best chance at POW, as it is the best photo I ever took - and my highest rated -- with over 60,000 views and never submitted for critique.

 

But I really like this photo; it's one of my recent 'best', although I keep taking different photos from frame to frame (look at today's other upload, a photo of a photographer on the edge of Bryce Canyon, Utah, taken with a fisheye -- entirely different.)

 

I just keep taking different (and I hope interesting) photos.

 

Maybe a 'photographer for all seasons'.

 

John (Crosley)

It seems that writing something incomplete or a hanging thought which someone must try to decipher instead of clearly explaining an idea runs the risk that the idea never was there in the first place (or that people will THINK that you never had the idea in the first place and got lost in your thoughts).

 

I once wrote professionally and my training, as a wire service reporter, was to write for 'ordinary people' -- the 'Kansas City Milkman' was the person my first boss told me to write for. If he couldn't understand what I wrote, then I didn't understand my own thoughts well enough, as even the most complex thoughts could be boiled down to simple declarative sentences.

 

He was right, of course.

 

It served me well in the practice of journalism, then of law, where I had a reputation for being an expressive writer, and few mistook my meaning(s) -- and my letters and legal pleadings often brought results.

 

I think I have a reputation on Photo.net as being clear and expressive (although sometimes being wordy, but that's a price one can pay for expressing one's self clearly).

 

Keep on commenting; yours are always welcome here.

 

John (Crosley)

A small edit was made to the boy's image (his shirt only to add contrast, reduce some brightness) per a suggestion made by Yann R. above.

 

It is only a very subtle change. If you have previously seen this image, please refresh your browser to view the change (if you can spot it at all).

 

Thanks.

 

John

Hi John - I like your color treatment. LA has lots of murals but this has to be one of the best. Here it is B&W.
http://gallery.photo.net/photo/2655866-lg.jpg
What you said about writing for the milkman was interesting. I didn't know your career was as a newspaperman. What you said reminded me of Franny and Zooey where he's explaining to his younger sister that when he acts he directs his performance to one person in the audience which is the fat lady sitting in the first few rows.

Your comment didn't show up (or I missed it) on my list of recent comments.

 

What a wonderful contribution and a very nice photo.

 

I was a newspaperman (Wire Service Guild -- Associated Press, San Francisco, Reno and New York World Headquarters for all of a little over two years going onto three before moving on to a business publication where I spent another year (quadrupling my salary) then on to three years of law school where I simultanteously -- as a student -- for two years practiced law making my boss very rich and happy, as he left me quite unsupervised with 100 cases at a time and I just showed up and worked his cases to settlement or into court without anybody's help. An invaluable lesson as I had little to learn when I passed the bar about the mechanics of the practice of law, which was all-consuming.

 

Now photography is all-consuming and much more happily so, and it's outdoors as well and without a schedule -- something to which my every waking hour was tied, and if I broke away then it was somethin to feel 'guilty' about. Now, no guilt, so photography has been a boon to me (but not remunerative of course).

 

And a mural such as this, must have attracted thousands of photographers and there must be an entire gallery's worth of worthy photographs just of individual 'takes' on passersby and this mural.

 

Thanks for your wonderful contribution (how'd you get your huge photo into the comments without showing as a link?)

 

Thanks again.

 

John

Perfect, very artistic work!

 

Regards, Dushan

 

d.

John - You've always stood out for me because you're a San Franciscan. I am also, going back 4 generations. I remember a picture of yours of a 2nd hand clothing store in SF that I could almost smell the interior. My great grandmother had a 2nd hand junk store at ~Washington & Polk and over the years I've lived all over the city. Went to SF State in 60's; lived across from Buena Vista park when Haight St flowered. I wanted to say hello.Regarding HTML, put your picture's addy in the following between the dbl quotes and select HTML (vs Plain Text) in the little box below this entry box. http://gallery.photo.net/photo/2655866-lg.jpg

Actually Kent, I'm not a San Franciscan, but an Oregonian who ended up in San Francisco just after the 'Summer of Love' and who was too stupid to hook up with its remnants (having spent the 'Summer of Love' in Viet Nam with a camera) . . . as I opted for a 'career' with the Associated Press, giving up a promising 'career' with a Montgomery Street stock brokerage house, and a 'silk stocking' one at that which would have assured a huge income for the rest of my life . . . and entree into San Francisco society.

 

But when a house broker came into the backroom and from the firm's inventory of a junk stock named HyLond Nursing homes which soon went bankrupt, proudly announced 'You'll never guess what schlub I dumped HyLond onto' -- that was it for me.

 

He wasn't looking out for his clients and getting them richer; he was making himself and the firm richer from commissions; the client be damned.

 

That was a horrible attitude to have and quite apart from the fiduciary (trust) duty he and the firm had to the client -- and it's also a duty that uniformly is disobeyed by brokers everywhere, I later learned as I later worked at two more brokerage firms as a securities analyst after I became an expert in the retail professions.

 

'Just recommend something I can sell them and ignore the rest' was a mantra I later would hear. Nobody cared for unbiased research, only what they could sell off of, and that was the end of that.

 

At least in law, one could pick one's cases and believe in the client (in my area of law at least -- not criminal law) and partner up with the client and feel at one with the client and the client's cases.

 

In Oregon, where I come from, if you have a problem, somebody stops and offers to help.

 

It's different in many other places, more-so in California where there are so many people, but it's a trait that I carried mostly to success as I practiced law until my career ended almost two decades ago. I identified with my clients and/or my clients' cases, and/or their situations and winning for them was a matter of pride, and well-remunerated.

 

So, Kent, not a San Franciscan, but definitely a Bay Area guy for most of my working life with some time out spent in Vancouver, B.C., Washington State, Russia, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Ukraine, Thailand, etc.

 

I do get around, and then some.

 

But I was at S.F. State when S.I. Hayakawa was there, and even was almost injured by one of those student-planted pipe bombs that went off on campus; attended the riots (as a photographer) down by the streetcars, and used that as a springboard to photograph the People's Park demonstrations and ultimately riots at Berkeley (as well as get photographer job offers from Associated Press and United Press International).

 

(And one of those rioters at S.F. State, a non-student, I am sure, was the guy who stuck the shiv in the bystander at Altamont, the unsolved murder in the movie 'Gimme Shelter' featuring the Rolling Stones; or so I believe).

 

I'd make book on it.

 

John (Crosley)

 

(Ed: And I see you've changed your screen name: JC)

I like to hear your stories. I know, from the customer's point of view and personal experience, the practices of less-than-ethical brokers. Luckily I recognized the ways you describe and found someone ethical who manages my funds now.

I was also at SF State during Hayakawa and the strike and ended up dropping out of school having missed so many classes that semester. And I remember Altemont which came right after 2 assassinations in 68, the on-going war, the student demonstrations and some very dark times. Altemont was yet another blow to our youthful idealism and I'm not surprised many of my generation dropped out and were permanently lost to drugs. I was not much of a Stones fan and didn't go. The Beatles sang what I wanted to hear about and naturally Dylan. But at that time the local bands of San Francisco were everywhere we went: Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Jefferson Airplane, Janis and Big Brother, Country Joe and the Fish, the Grateful Dead, Santana, It's a Beautiful Day... The Fillmore auditorium was a magic theater and always had great great show. You could hear certain hits playing everywhere you went in the city. Van Morrison's first album with Moondance and Into the Mystic, Eric Burdon's San Francisco Nights, Elton John's first album, Simon & Garfunkel's Bookends and Bridge Over Troubled Waters, The Doors' Strange Days... The list is endless. It was a golden age of music. Everywhere you went great music filled the night.

I had wonderful teachers at San Francisco State and it became my education in the liberal arts. We would meet at the house of Anne Rice, in Berkeley for off-campus classes during the strike. She was unknown at the time but her husband ran the Creative Writing department and was my teacher. There was so little distinction between faculty and the serious writing students and I remember many parties with SF artists, poets and mad-men of the times. During that strike, Dalton Trumbo told us stories of serious labor conflicts in the 30's when they would lay a scab on the sidewalk with his legs dangling over the curb and break his knees with a baseball bat. One night, at a writers conference in the Santa Cruz mountains, Richard Brautigan marched into all the cabins at 3 AM, with a band of followers, all of them drunk and woke up the entire conference. I remember Floyd Salas, Tillie Olsen, Kay Boyle, Robert Bly, Charles Olson, John Logon, Herbert Huncke, Gavin Arthur, Robert Duncan. My girlfriend and I used to go listen to Steve Gaskin out on the Great Highway in a room full of hippies all sitting on the floor as Steve taught us about living with integrity and how to be on acid. Nowhere else could I have gotten such an education and partied with such wonderful people.

I also have family from Oregon. My great-grandfather was involved in politics as State Treasurer and later Republican party chairman and Post Master in the last century. But about Oregon another time.

Our lives, yours and mine, have approached each other and almost touched. We were probably in the same demonstrations on campus and in the park. And after all this time we find ourselves here on the same site reviewing similar experiences and common locations.

And Country Joe (minus the Fish) is practicing law (on behalf of tenants) in San Francisco . . . . one of the world's most tenant favorable cities, which accounts for why it doesn't have huge apartment buildings everywhere. Controlled or stabilized rents take much of the profit out of building and speculation, so the building money goes downtown which has grown like 'Topsy' while the neighborhoods have remained their 'traditional' touch, and San Francisco remains a city dominated by tenants (and tenants 'rights') (I've been on both sides of that one in my lifetime).

 

Best wishes to you 'fellow traveler'.

 

(excuse the slight 'pink' joke.)

 

John (Crosley)

 

 

I really like this photo but think I enjoyed reading your conversations with Kent even more and learned a lot about you. What an interesting life you are having!

I can take photos AND write.

 

AP saw that and said goons can take photos, but few can write, and soon I was writing news stories at 80 words per minute. Whew!

 

I've lived a full life since then, and this is a place to expound - and you can 'listen in'.

 

I'm glad you like the stories and 'conversation'.

 

John (Crosley)

It has been pointed out by an astute observer, that this boy, as he scoots by, appears to be reaching down Marilyn's bodice; an act that literally tens of millions of men dreamed of doing during her heyday as a film actress who seduced the camera and those who came to see her on the big screen.

 

Does this young boy have any idea who Marilyn Monroe is, do you think?

 

John (Crosley)