Anti-freeze Russian Style For Frozen Artist

This is how one chilly Russian artist kept warm around the Russian

Christmas Holidays (they observe a different Christmas date than

Westerners), earlier this year -- with a generous cup of vodka from

a bottle concealed up his sleeve. 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 photographic knowledge to help improve my photography.

Thanks! Enjoy! ;-)) John

Tasteful solution to stay warm! Funny I was reading an article on how many dead there is in Russia each years directly caused by heavy drinking habits. They were stating 25 to 30 thousands a year. They were not saying if it was only people drinking or also 'related' dead because of car accident.

 

On the photo itself, I like the fact that you framed it tightly. I find it makes the viewer more in 'contact' with your subject, like we are entering in his life.

 

 

The Russians long have had a separate count for deaths on account of alcohol -- and, get this, an entirely separate count of deaths (and blindness) on account of criminals selling methyl (wood) alcohol under the guise of its being ordinary (ethyl) alcohol and poisoning people to death. Yes, criminals, to make a ruble, will actually poison people and not care if they die and there are relatively large statistics on that.

 

Although I was a relatively long distance away from Nikolai, above, I had entered his life, we had talked, and I stepped away before he poured. I was actually a 'part of his life' and this photo's cropping shows it.

 

My rule in cropping: Show the interesting stuff and leave out the rest -- it's that simple and it compelled a crop such as this.

 

Thanks for the astute comments.

 

John (Crosley)

John, it everywhere the same. Where there is a dollar (or ruble) to make, whatever it implies, there will be people to try and make this dollar. Sometimes, I feel capitalism is the worst disease of all. But again, how much of a disease it is? Maybe is it in the very nature of the human being.

Capitalism, like Democracy is full of evils, but both are our evils.

 

And if you consider the alternatives, they are the best that society has to offer.

 

I would not want to live without either, though I feel both should be subservient to greater principles -- some overarching laws, just as the US laws are subject to the US Constitution, (until the Bush court has its way) and the way US Capitalism once was regulated by trust busters (who seem to have disappeared from U.S. governance.

 

Astute observation -- I hope mine is equally as astute.

 

John (Crosley)

Very astute as well. It is so true the capitalism & democracy are probably the best model, but as long as it stays in balance on a very small line. Sadly, this balance is not so well maintained these days. In Canada, in the USA, & in most of other big democracies around the world, democracy is is heavily trending to the right of that line, sometimes to the far right.

 

On the count of protecting our freedom, they reduce our freedom. On the count of serving us, it is fraud after fraud after fraud.

 

But still, I find it is the most interesting form of government. In fact, the only problem democracy really have is that the voters do not care most of the time.

Not everything is fraud, but I agree generally, the voters are too apathetic.

 

Maybe it's because they indeed think of themselves as 'laundry soap', just as they are being marketed to.

 

John (Crosley)

I agree, not everything is fraud. But I find that there is a lot of fraud in our government. The base of democracy is a fraud by itself. When you think about it, the way the voting process works, only the rich and powerful can access to the higher position in the government. I find it is more of a popularity contest than a real election of the person that can do the better job. It's the same thing as any popularity contest; if you are able to 'sell' yourself, people will vote for you. And in politic, the people than have the more money are able to have the best marketing campaign.

 

All is about the image. Everything is about the image. We live in a world where we are sold image. Take the 'stars' world. How come people get so much attracted by all those 'stars'? Image. Your are told that this star is good and everybody thinks the star is good and adulate that person. And then, all the young people stars to dress and act like their favorite star. No wonder why they now all create their own clothing and perfume lines! Everything to make money...

 

This relate to photography as well. All is about conformism. Someone told that cheesy sunsets, bright vivid colored landscapes, artsy nude, etc. are great and are real photo. Then everybody try to makes similar photo to be admired at their turn. Just look at the TRP... Beside a couple of exception, it's all the same over and over. No new emotions I find. No new ways of looking at things. And your work is not of this trend, which is why I admire it so much. But I can complain as much as I want, myself I get into that trend sometimes. I do make that cheesy photo of a flower or of a bird from time to time. No way I try to win a popularity contest however. I do not have time nor the desire to 'lick all the stuff that needs to be licked' to get on the top page with every photo I put here!

 

Anyways, I like your work (photographic and writing) for all this. Always thought provoking.

 

And sorry for writing all that here... I always find it's a good place to vent!

Try as I might, my wide-ranging interests tend to keep me from taking cliche photographs (though I offfend occasionally, or just indulge in a guilty pleasure).

 

Take this photo above, for example. It is a 'feature' photograph which might be appropriate for a newspaper, or an illustration for an article about alcoholism -- it's interesting and unusual, but not a particularly great photograph and not deserving of great aesthetic merit -- perhaps good scores on originality and for technicality for my cropping and exposure, not more.

 

I posted it for fun.

 

Photo.net is far too serious a place; it should be a place for some fun, too.

 

There are far too many serious people (myself included sometimes) who gripe about their rates, especially since Brian said the rates were too generous and they have moved down, I think -- and as at least one member has noted, and also as I note on the 'Rate Recent' postings. No longer is there an excess of 6s and 7s, I think.

 

Those who abhorred *Z* -- Bailey Seals, may be wishing he'd make himself known and start rating their photographs again (my guess is he's rating them still and that he's still rating them from the same place of honesty he always was and according to the same scale -- tough but fair -- but his own fairness, which he has explained long ago in my portfolio comments. Those who griped about him, probably would rethink their gripes and might lust after his ratings for now they seem more 'generous' and Bailey Seals seems more perspicacious (which I think I always knew).

 

This site got off track because of its reliance on numbers in the TRP engine because in school marks were reduced to numbers, and that invites competition no matter how much Brian insists the TRP engine is to choosse the Photo of the Week only. To the membership/subscribership that's total hogwash as far as they're concerned/not so much me, and especially now that I've got a new hold on the new ratings that are coming out -- they're just lower and so I'm not worrying that I'm producing suddenly inferior work, because of inferior ratings -- it's a general trend and I think others who don't produce 'pretty photos' would be well inclined to be informed of that fact.

 

Pretty Photos will always do well, but try as I might, I simply have a hard time producing pretty photos. Something about me just does not motivate me to take that pretty sunset, and I live above the beach and a walk to it - one of the world's beautiful, sandy beaches and along a beautiful shoreline.

 

I think I should be using an 8 x 10 or a Hasselblad with a 32 mb back or something with a great 'range' of Exposure Values (EVs) to take such lovely shots, then sell them for calendars or at the shoppes along where I live, or greatly enlarged at galleries that sell to touristes. (note spelling, as things are expensive at shoppes a little villages nearby).

 

And this is a community of artists, being overtaken by Silicon Valley giants and Venture Capital sorts looking for their dream estates, so I may have to move on.

 

Though I once was allied more to the latter than the former (but I identify with photographer more than lawyer now).

 

Stardom may be 'fraudulent' and you may want to pull up for viewing my commentary on that -- a photo, one-third in blur, of a young woman in a supermarket checkout line, who is dressed exactly like one of the famous twins who are billionaires who just turned 18 -- Mary Kate and Ashley Olson (Olsen?) The supermarket tabloid ponders the question of whether Mark Kate has a mystery scar, if one views the paper the young woman is holding and has a photo of the scar in inset and also a photo of Mary Kate, looking beautiful, as always.

 

Then one realizes that the young woman, on Thanksgiving, is dressed exactly like Mary Kate with the same earrings, same hair style, etc. It's a 'grab shot' taken backwards in a supermarket line, not especially intended to be so trenchant, but it is a trenchant observation on the star culture and its imitators.

 

But the imitators were around at the start of Hollywood, it cooled off when the big studiios broke up somewhat in the late 60s and early 70s, and now has started to 'take off' again. It will always be with us; imitation is the sinceist form of flattery.

 

There was a series in the local hih-class newspaper, the San Jose Mercury News, however, about people who work in shops in Silicon Valley who collect designer everything, but who have no money and mooch into their '30s off their parents and with high prices here can never afford to pay for a house or a family and happily live their lives insisting on designer this and designer that, living desperate live of ostentatious snobbery, dooming their futures to a vanishing Social Security and what's left after their parents spend all their money, especially if the pension the parents were counting on gets raided like the employes of United Airlines (and various other airlines, past and soon in the future) have and will encounter, with their once generous retirement plans that simply disappeared. Those snobbish, effete, uneducated brand-name conscious shop men and women are gonna be stranded up you know what creek without any paddle at all, wondering how (in their older age) how they got there and blaming anybody but themselves.

 

I post what I want because partly I can't produce the highly photoshopped wonders that others post, but part of that is because I resist learning the intricacies of Photoshopping -- I haven't the patience -- I'd rather shoot 'street' as it suits my attention span AND my intellect. I'd rather not composite in the studio or the digital darkroom, worrying over how to make just one print into an earth-shatteringly beautiful print for a month or so a as a showcase for my Photoshop talents -- it's doable with many of my images, but I choose not to.

 

I'd rather go take 200 or 600 fresh (and I hope refreshing) images.

 

I have a gift, I think, in retrospect, of seeing things in a differnt manner or just being bold enough to take out my camera to take and record interesting and unusual scenes. Some win and some lose, and I only post a small percentage because I take a lot of failures.

 

And I mix them up -- who wants to go through a portfolio where all the photos look like the first one?

 

It gets boring.

 

It's nice to see a style.

 

I still like what Matt Vardy had to say about my style as he groped for nice things to say about mine -- that somehow my overweening vision held it all together. In that I think he meant I had a sense of composition in almost all my photographs (above is an exception) which pervades my photography, and through the diversity of my now numerous images, one can get a sense that it's a 'Crosley' because of a sense of 'composition' generally couled together with a sense that it's 'interesting'.

 

And, finally, these comments are a place to rant and rave.

 

You've become a cyberfriend through the strength of your intellect and your photographic output -- a man whom I respect.

 

And a friend.

 

Friends are given great leeweay in my world.

 

You have not availed yourself of leeway at all, because friends seldom need that.

 

We're just kindred souls.

 

You compose tightly, almost rigidly and anally -- everything in its place and spare, sparse and minimalistic.

 

I admire that, as much as I cannot do that (or so much because I cannot do that or replicate that in my work despite my many styles).

 

You have an excellent eye, which Seven Stuartson remarked long ago.

 

He saw the unity that binds us as well as others. (good eye Seven).

 

Maybe it's because in a sense we're part of that critic's group who all were '

conformists but who in our confirmity were highly nonconformist and not swayed so easily by the winds of public sentiment here on Photo.net and the group we were in catered to those like us. (and since critics circles may be resurrected, maybe our group will be resurrected, I'm thinking.)

 

(I miss its comraderie; its jovialness and the witticisms and snappy writing -- right now I'm condemned to writing pretty much in a vacuum.)

 

(but you're no vacuum of course, and I note I have followers on their steeds -- John Peri noted a while back that he's one of them from time to time on a photo comment that I thought no one in their right mind ever would read, and he left a most astute comment, which made my day.)

 

We lost much of our community when ratings became anonymous.

 

Critics' circles may bring that back (as Brian has noted he may resurrect them). I long for the day.

 

Maybe we ought to have a go again at our old experiment?

 

It was fun, and maybe old Alexander Chubb is out there, and still hasn't found a spell checker.

 

John (Crosley)

 

(absurdly long-windedly)

 

 

 

 

You are making me learn a lot of new words today! I'm grateful for this.

 

I missed the critique circles, but from what I heard, it was really a good idea. Why did it disappear?

 

Anyways, I will wait impatiently your next piece of work. Commenter's are right that your photo are not only photos, they are "Crosley". I really enjoy your vision of the world we live in.

 

Maybe one day I will overcome my shyness and be able to take some street photography. I do sometimes, and like it, but I'm a little "shy" of posting them on the internet. Do you ask permission to everybody you have in your photo?

 

Oh, and yes, maybe we should revive the Controversial Image Alerts. But in a form that does not ask for too much involvement either. I'm already working hard on Picture This, and I sometimes enjoy simply commenting here and there on photo. And then, there is the more thoughtful comments I read and try to write by following your traces on PN!

And if you find too much mistakes in my writing, let me know, I try to get better and better, but sometimes the spell checkers have their limits! They don't know too much grammar, and I don't always feel like resorting to Uncle Bill tools to check my writing.

Your writing is fine (although I am in a quandry about what an 'Uncle Bill tool' is).

 

I am glad this forum gives you the linguistic exercise that helps you; I wish there were a similar Francophone site (but in France) where I could post and get similar help with my French. (Sorry about being slanted toward the French for my French linguistic proclivities. Excusez-moi, mon ami.)

 

John (Crosley)

Hey why France?! But if you want to learn real French, I guess it's the place! Here in Quebec, it is becoming more and more an hybrid dialect. Heave use of slang and more and more use of English expression. I guess its a natural thing since we are surrounded by English speaking people.

 

Uncle Bill tools...Uncle Bill is Gill Gate and his tool is MS Words which is the only grammatical corrector I have access to when it comes to English writing. But as I told you, I don't use it too often, its too long and 'complicated', as a process.

 

OK, see you on the next photo my friend!

I hope i dont disturb your conversation :)

Very interesting photo, or maybe i must say " action-photo". I always like it when something is happening in a picture. Also nice that you told a bit about the photo. Well done and greetings from Holland.

When I saw the first 'pour' I stood back and resolved that the next time he 'poured' I would take a photo, and so I did.

 

Sometimes you have to 'anticipate' a photograph, which is exactly what I did here.

 

Stories of Russians and vodka are almost all true; I've lived there for a while.

 

If you tell a Russian you don't drink vodka, they think you're crazy, and will never trust you; it's the poor man's tranquilizer.

 

it's no wonder the Russians, according to the World Health Organization are losing 770,000 citizens every year (for various causes, but poor health care, lack of new children and alcoholism and alcohol - related deaths are high among the causes).

 

That being said, I could use a stiff drink.

 

;-))

 

John (Crosley)

This photo's value is in only one thing -- to show the inventiveness of a Russian in getting his vodka.

 

So, to make it a good capture, it was essential to show basically two things, the concealing of the vodka and the man using it -- given the other constraints -- e.g., it was taken out in the cold in a giant exhibition fair grounds with many distractions, under an uninteresting sky, with many people around, none of which would add to a capture.

 

So, it was necessary to focus and frame tightly on the individual and the bottle. In this case, I pulled back, used a telephoto (not necessary -- I could instead have used a very wide angle for another view entirely -- and then framed tightly. I cropped the resulting frame (top and bottom are original, one side is camera crop and the other side is cropped because the camera's aspect ratio (frame shape) didn't match the capture.

 

This is a case where the photo's potential is made by the cropping (or rescued, as the case may be).

 

In addition, because it was a day with much diffuse light behind the man, the metering would have been thrown off by the backlight and halo around the man, if I had not cropped so tightly 'in the camera', unless I had made a metering adjustment (which is easily made for modern Nikon cameras by EZ aperture adjustment, which I use extensively, or whatever name it goes by).

 

So, it not only was helpful to crop this tightly for presentation, but also helpful for metering to crop tightly in the camera, to prevent excess light from throwing off the metering and causing the man to be under-exposed, which would have made for a very poor capture.

 

In other words, this is the best photo that could have been produced under the circumstances -- coming across a man out in the open, surrounded by people, without getting a 'reaction shot' from somone passing by, say. (See my recent post of a tattooed man in Buenos Aires with passersby staring at the unclad tattooed man, which is what I call a reaction shot . . . )

 

There are various ways to 'focus' and bring attention to the subject, and those include wide aperture to minimize background and foreground objects, lighting manipulation, framing through passersby or other objects, etc., and a variety of other devices.

 

Tight cropping is just one of the photographer's grap bag of devices for 'focusing' on the subject; and it's one of the simplest and most versatile, in part because it can be used both in the camera and after the exposure -- in effect, one of the most versatile devices available to the photographer.

 

John (Crosley)