Arts Fair -- Buenos Aires (San Telmo)**+

This woman artist at the famous street arts and antique fair in

Buenos Aires's San Telmo District on Sunday with her wrinkles and

sour expression stands in contrast to the soft lines and allure of

the female nude behind her (not hers, I believe). Image full frame

and unmanipulted. 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 have a feeling as the rates came in that raters are rating this on the looks of the woman, center right, rather than on the message of the photo, which is the contrast between her looks and the artistically perfect looks and the aesthetics and softness of the nude behind her -- a natural instinct if one is rating from 'gut' rather than from a place of intellectual honesty or introspection. It's perhaps a problem of 'thumbnail' viewing and rating -- it may breed laziness. 'Street photos' are made for people who 'think' I feel, and tend not to do well on Photo.net unless they are aesthetically pleasing, leading some to call it PPN (PrettyPhoto.net).

 

Maybe that is just the price one pays for giving each member, no regard to how long each has been a member of to what experience each one has, a vote of equal weight.

 

I stand by this photo despite low rates to date; it's one of the better photos I have produced in a while; it means something and it stands for something for those who care to really look at it; 'time passes by . . . and time has passed this woman by'; 'art idealizes and life does not, at least as age advances', and other messages that one can glean from this particular capture.

 

Of course, her spirit may be far more beautiful than the nude pictured behind her, it's just that one's pictorial and the other is not (I hope so for my sake -- not that I'm a nude -- outside of the bath -- but you get the idea).

 

John (Crosley)

I always start at the bottom & work up on the list. I was surprised to see this so far down the line. A diamond in the rough you might say.

You got me how it got 'so far down'; I think people were 'turned off' by her looks, rather than the point of the photo.

 

Yes, I stand by this photo; I'm very proud of it. If all my ratings were so low, I'd scratch my head and wonder if the world were upside down, kindof like 'Alice in Wonderland' in her 'looking glass world' where everything was stood on its head.

 

I note that Brian came down hard on a very good member the day you posted your remark for having posted for critique an old photo of Henri Cartier-Bresson (attributing it under details rightfully to Henri Cartier-Bresson -- one of the famous ones too -- a landscape with trees along a French country road -- in my book a 7/7 if every H C-B took a 7/7 landscape. Some members rated it -- I understand from the 'string' -- a 3/3.

 

And so it goes.

 

Anything's possible.

 

I just don't think people 'got' this photo, or they rated it based on the unfortunate 'looks' of this woman, not considering the juxtaposition with the naked woman and her lovely pudenda with the impressionist colors and rendering behind her.

 

Thanks for the kind remark about a 'diamond in the rough'

 

John (Crosley)

It is the looks that makes this image so powerful. There is an entire life and an entire gamut of feelings reflected in it. I truly like the way that you have captured it. I love the composition and the framing. I think that it truly a great image and that it speaks for itself without further belabour.

 

Great job.

Once again I took the liberty of changing to B & W and I thought you might like the results. I think it further reinforces what the image represents. Again, a very powerful photo.

How nice of you to 'come to the rescue'.

 

I labored very hard for this image, sure it was a winner.

 

I first took it; and later 'chimped it' only to find it was 'out of focus' and returned to the scene, with a tele-extender on my 70~200 telephoto zoom so as not to tip her off to my presence and waited for her to move into the same position again.

 

And sure enough after about 28 frames, she did. The other frames 'told a story' but this one was the only one worth it. I don't 'camp out' unless I think I've got something worthwhile, and I'm not so dumbheaded I don't think I've got something worthwhile when it's useless.

 

So, it was to my consternation when this photo was being rated as one of my worse; but you and fellow subscribers have been coming to my rescue. Thanks.

 

And, thanks also for the B&W rendering; I hadn't thought it would do so well with the additional crop and the B&W version (which you did so well by the way) but it did. I might even present it as B&W at some time in the future, thanks to your suggestion.

 

I am indebted to you (though you won't get any particular high ratings from me in return; but a goodhearted thanks).

 

John (Crosley)

I am glad that you liked the comment and suggestions. I wasn't really looking for an exchange of ratings. I respect your work and I continue to learn from it. If there should be an interest in your part to review my work and make some comments as to some of the images that strike your intrest, that will always be appreciated. However, your work continues to be a source of learning and I will continue to revisit it and share some of my views and comments, always with your permission.

Best regards. Marco.

I was surprised to see that you actually had rated this photo, and so highly. Actually, I had expected this photo to be highly-enough rated and when it came in at the low 3s I was somewhat surprised, though not too much.

 

As to your photos, I?ll be having a look at them, as time permits, as I am presently traveling and squeezed for time -- took 600 photos between 4:00 and 6:30 p.m. yesterday on a day I hadn?t planned to photograph at all, if you can imagine that -- but it turned out to be Argentina?s Independence Day complete with parades, banners with Eva and Juan Peron?s photos, etc., and all sorts of goodies including one choice photo of just eyes (of a disappeared one, I am sure, and as soon as I am assured of the identity of that ?disappeared one? I?ll post it, as the ?disappeared ones -- some 30,000 from 1976 to 1982 still haunt Argentine life.

 

And no, nobody who comes here ever expects a reciprocal rating if they have their head screwed on right. But a look at their portfolios is something I will always oblige -- even an e-mail request will put me into action without a comment or a rating. I actually get too few of those. Photo.net is a sharing site and I am happy to share.

 

I?ll be home soon and have more time.

 

I was surprised at your rating, but then I was surprised at the low ratings; who knows how actually to rate these days? I am happy to have the exposure I now have -- counted two days ago and could verify over 14,000,000 views, for just over 2 years on the site. Wow!

 

Thanks to guys like you and others.

 

Gracias as they say hereabouts.

 

John (Crosley)

John: I recently read a stockphotography's site of recommendations on images that they NOT prefer to see as submittals. Interestingly, that list reflected almost exactly what is dominant on photo.net. Folks that rate images here want to see what is not new, not interesting, because a change induces stress. Post something different or something that requires more than the usual reaction to tits or sucking flies and you're already on the downward spiral. Ya just gotta live with it.

Because I have some interest in doing 'stock photography' and many of my images are far from 'usual' or 'safe' -- not the usual 'calendar' stuff at all, and some are a little unsettling and most are 'unsafe' and cause the mind to 'think' (or at least I think so).

 

So, your post is good news to me, and I'd love if you'd post (or e-mail me the name of the stock photography agency(ies) that have such submission suggestions, as it certainly has my interest.

 

I very much appreciate the 'heads up'; you cannot know how great it makes me feel.

 

John (Crosley)

I hadn't noticed that you had 'rated' this photo; thank you for doing so; no matter what the rate. I am glad it pleased you, however.

 

I looked at other photos in this particular folder, and it seems to fit right in; in fact it may be superior to many, yet it started out in the low 3/3s with ratings; rates like yours have lifted it to the low 4/4s and another ate may make it to my highest-rated list. (I've had photos that couldn't get 11 rates that got 36,000 fiews promptly that couldn't get 11 rates and one in particularly that got 50,000 rates that neither could pull in more than low 4/4s and hadly got any rates at all -- in fact a couple of them but they keep pulling in viewers by the ton (or the extra click) -- they just are 'clickworthy' and outdraw my other more ratable photos by a two to one margin on a consistent basis.

 

No one has written about the 'clickworthy' but unrated or unrateable photo (or low rated photo) -- but maybe they should -- maybe this is the start of a thread.

 

Anybody else with such experiences where a photo couldn't buy a rating (or at least a decent rating, but it went to the sky with 'views' -- excluding nudes which are in a separate category as they draw a disproportionate number of both ratings and 'views'.

 

John (Crosley)

About 'edgy' and 'unsettling' photos, see my most recent upload -- a photo of 'eyes' of a photojournalist taken from his press card and displayed in a building lobby in Buenos Aires, Argentina -- a memorial to a free press in a country which has had a rocky road with democracy and free press (but currently has a democracy and a free press with many political demonstrations on a consistent basis).

 

That photojournlist (whose name I have) was photographing politicians on a routine basis in 1997, and one day his body was bound burned to death (or at least burned AND he was dead) in his car. He left a wife and two kids and a lot of outraged people who thought they were over the outrage of the Generals who ran the country and 'disappeared' 30,000 to 35,000 people they believed were opposition between 1976 and 1982 -- torturing them and dropping many from 30,000 feet from planes over the Atlantic -- they're called the 'disappeared', as they just 'disappeared' and every Thursday a group of 'mothers' of the disappeared meets to protest for more disclosure about their lost loved ones in front of the Legislatura here in Buenos Aires.

 

That's all edgy stuff -- not sunsets, though I see one from my porch over the Pacific every afternoon; I just choose not to photograph cliches too often.

 

I am most appreciative of what you may regard as a 'little' remark, above.

 

John (Crosley)