A Chilly Walk in the Park

I was struck by the fluid lines and interspersal of figures/trees in

this recent capture. I am interested in your opinion. 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 upper part of the photo a bit distracting. Even though it offers perspective I would crop it in order to focus the attention on the people, trees and other lines that make the composition interesting.

I thank you very much for your thoughtful cropping suggestion.

 

However, in this instance, I like this photo very much, exactly as I framed it, and I wouldn't touch it one bit.

 

I tried framing it as you suggested it and it wasn't true to my vision or why I took the photo in the first place.

 

Some photos may be idiosyncratic to the 'artist' or photographer and others may never see why they ever took the photo or posted them, and this may be one of those, but this one is a 'composition', for better or for worse.

 

But your efforts to help are never unsatisfactory and helpfulness is always taken well here, and I thank you very much for your feedback. Maybe the next time you'll help me rescue a photo that you can see magic in, that I can't 'see' at all.

 

Thanks again,

 

John (Crosley)

I guess what I was trying to say, more than anything, is that unless I really blow it, (in which case I may just not post at all), is that I really am loathe to crop any shot like this where it pleased me when I took it.

 

It may be that in the future if I were to take a similar shot, I might give some thought to cropping out the 'horizon', but I made a split-second decision (in both frames I took) to leave it in as much for context as for anything else, and to complete the frame.

 

It's not so much that I'm full of myself when I wrote above, but maybe I didn't express myself so politely or clearly. When a photo is nearly successful and does not have the shadow of a finger sticking into the frame or a telephone pole popping out of nowhere unrelated to the subject of the photo's subject or a stray tree branch hanging (similarly unrelated), then I am more than loathe to crop.

 

Cropping for me is for eliminating mistakes, or for zooming in when I could not do so quickly enough, my lens was not powerful enough, or I simply missed proper framing -- even where something interesting occurred within a frame that I did not recognize when I pressed the shutter.

 

Cropping is NOT (for me) for enhancing a frame that I analyzed and pressed the shutter to capture (however briefly, as here) and it pleased me as being somewhat successful (as here). Cropping is something I consider when I am dissatisfied with an image, or (in rare circumstances, where it vastly improves an image, especially in ways I could not readily see).

 

That's my general approach to cropping -- followed by me, with some exceptions.

 

In other words, I'm a reluctant cropper -- but no Cartier-Bresson who even forbade his images in which badly-loaded film which showed sprocket marks on the frames were forbidden to be cropped to eliminate the area where the image overlay the sprocket holes -- a decided problem for any magazine or advertising agent who wanted to use such an image, kind of a crotchety, idiosyncratic, and iconoclastic approach to cropping which I definitely decline to follow ;-)

 

(Nevertheless, I am influenced by his insistence on composing in the viewfinder, not in the darkroom. Anybody can make up compositions with an enlarger, or a copy of Photoshop and an overlarge image).

 

I was influenced early on by an abysmal 'staff photographer' for a Reno newspaper, who didn't know how to take a photograph if her life depended on it -- she shot with a 2-1/4 square camera at things like sporting events with a flash.

 

She shot 'large' and simply cropped out the parts she liked for enlargement and publication. She was essentially a photocropper, not a photographer. I felt that was a step below being a photographer, and still do, as she had little idea of how to compose in the viewfinder (and it's hard to compose 'on the fly' with a 2-1/4 square camera anyway, but you do get large negatives, which are easy to make large crops from, they're pretty high quality, and with Compur shutters, you didn't have to worry about flash sync speed problems.

 

That's what I'm telling people.

 

And I'm sticking to it.

 

John (Crosley)

I can imagine that H C-B might have taken such a photo in passing, and thrown it away or buried it, thinking it (as he sometimes did) a 'mere snapshot'.

 

I've been through many of his less well-known images, and there are a number of not very good images among them, although many have a recognizable spark or some common element among them, especially that they draw the viewer from foreground to background and have identifiable 'elements'.

 

One has only to look through his winter photos of Moscow and other Soviet cities, devoid of people for the most part -- sterile reminders that the famous Communist sympathizer, he, was probably being followed by KGB spies, and the people he ordinarily would photograph probably were scared to death of getting the 'midnight knock on the door' that meant a trip to somewhere frightening (the Gulags it late turned out) and a not so hasty departure not only from life as they knew it, but life itself.

 

It must have hurt him not to be able to take his 'people photographs there in the Soviet Union, and the people must have cringed if they saw him with his famous Leicas.

 

I've tried to draw on my study of H-C B's work in composing this photo (though it only took a second or two to compose).

 

If only some famous artist, say Giacometti, had been walking 'up' the pathway, instead of its showing 'backs' going 'down, and Giacometti's face were flushed and strained with exertion. . . .

 

Which gives me some ideas for when I go back (as I assume I will)

 

I have lots of ideas for such places for when I return.

 

It's just that I keep getting subverted by new and more interesting things when I carry my cameras and large zoom range lenses.

 

I am continually astonished at how many new and different shots present themselves if I carry a camera(s) everywhere. Carrying a second camera is NOT an affectation.

 

I use it to avoid changing lenses and to be able to pick up a camera body and instantly be able to focus and shoot, maybe at a different ISO (if I'm continually in and out of buildings, I might set one for inside and outside buildings, for instance rather than adjust ISO each time light level changes. (this assumes I'm not using another ploy, which is to shoot wide angle on one lens and an 80~200 or a 70~200 VR on the other for ultimate versatility.

 

John (Crosley)

I have two points to mention: first, this is a beautiful shot and your concerns about the frame are very well founded. Nor would I touch the upper part one bit, and if I had the opportunity to compose, perhaps even include a little more of the foreground path if that was possible, and in retrospect, shot it a tad earlier so that the head of the person on the right would not interfere with the fence.

 

Second, I enjoyed reading your sequence of comments; for me as a guy who's trying to learn the intricacies of this genre, they're invaluable. Thanks for sharing your views eloquently.

 

Best regards.