The Three Neighbors** *

These three women engage in backyard gossip one late afternoon in

Buenos Aires's La Boca, brightly-painted Camanita section, home of

the widely-famed Boca Juniors football team. 'Girls will be Girls'

is a universal theme of this photo. 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

Very good. Congrats !

I see this didn't overwhelm the raters or commentators, but I just adore this shot -- it's so 'full of spirit and energy'. I practically had to 'camp out' to get this shot -- these 'girls' were engaged in spirited (and not so spirited) conversation, and it took a great while to 'get' this shot, and I didn't even know I had successfully 'got' it until I moved down the street and reviewed my 'captures' later in the day, knowing that I had other 'good stuff' from these women -- lots of it, they were so lively.

 

However, of the bunch, this is far and away absolutely the best -- quite worthy in my opinioin (of course I'm the photographer). Beats taking oversaturated beach sunsets (and there's a beach in front of my house -- some distance away, but walkable, and viewable as the sun goes down daily -- maybe I'm just inured to ocean sunsets as the 'way the day ends'.

 

Now this is genuine, lively, and I guarantee you there isn't another one of these photos anywhere on Photo.net or anywhere in the world. Bar none. (I was going to make a joke about being 'toothy' and 'long of tooth' but thought better of it . . . ;-))

 

John (Crosley)

In time this will be added to my already large Presentation on 'Threes' in which 'Three' subjects make up an important part of a photograph. It's growing larger with time.

 

John (Crosley)

This is quite a good picture, a very human moment. The woman in the lower right is wonderful in the tilt of her head and her joyful laughter.

Is there another neighbor to the right, John? I catch a bit of her shadow....

It's interesting (mildly) that you use the term 'very human moment' to describe this scene of great joy, which would seem to exclude from 'humanness' other scenes of suffering, grief, boredom, ennui, the doldrums, waiting, exertion, etc., and I include all those in the 'very human moments' I seek to capture. I suppose you probably did not mean that at all, and I just sprung a semantic trap on you.

 

Yes, I agree, it's a wonderful capture -- one of my happiest, and the woman, right, is particularly happy (the woman next to her is keeping up her part too), and that was about the only moment the woman, right, turned her attention rightward, (out of frame) which creates a 'tension' in this photograph.

 

Anything that 'pulls' the viewer out of frame creates such a 'tension' I believe, but you can prove me wrong, as I have no authority for that, being completely unschooled in photography as I've never even had a course in it (well I tried, but I got bored, and never finished an assignment -- it all seemed sooo . . . pedestrian and dry as toast . . . designed to kill interest in photography rather than foster it. I took a powder (kind of like the D76 Developer before it was mixed with water;-)) And That is becoming a 'historical' reference in these digital days, kind of like talking about your 'mules' hauling your 'glass plates for your 'Muybridge' Cameras (have I got it right or mixed up?)

 

Anyway, there also is a 'triangle' in this photo from connecting the 'dots' between the main parts (heads) of the three women, a thing that the mind does subsconsciously, and that yields a most dynamic figure, also which gives this photo additional dynamism as well as the facial gestures which are a 'capture' in and of themselves.

 

I regard 'triangles' as particularly dynamic, and the presence of 'threes' -- here 'subjects' gives rise to indicia of a triangle (and with one portion of a triangle creating that off-frame tension, how much better can it get?)

 

I like analyzing what makes photos good (or bad), for that helps me evaluate the next scene, likedy-split -- able to put words into what once were inchoate ideas about 'liking' or 'not liking an idea or a thought patern, or even a particular layout -- and able to say to myself, 'this worked in such and such a photo because critic XXX said that YYY factor was such and so.' and I actually do that as I compose, and in fractions of a second sometimes. It's all un or sub-conscious at times and othertimes there's a more conscious dialog.

 

Sometimes a photographer has what Henri Cartier-Bresson's critics termed his 'waiters' -- where everything's in place, but one has to wait for that special moment. This is one of those.

 

I appreciate your comment.

 

John (Crosley)

There is, I think, a vendor, for the La Boca, Caminita crowds, next to the rightmost woman, and part of the vending apparatus intrudes into the frame -- I desaturated it and made it neutral because it was far too distracting, and I think it worked because it was light -- almost blown, reflective sheet metal (a sure distraction).

 

Sometimes I will manipulate if it destroys an otherwise good photo. I could not have 'cropped' out the distraction without 'moving' the wonderful woman's face/body which I never would have done -- being far beyond both my ken and morals (re photography) and not being paid by the image publication.

 

Camanita is a special section of the La Boca slums of Buenos Argentina next to the Rio Plata River which have become touristy with multi-colored houses/buildings and is inundated by tourists -- but the locals don't get carried away with it/it's just safer than the rest of La Boca (home of Boca Juniors Football Team) where tourists perennially are warned to 'stay away' because of fears for 'personal safety' and there being no real touristic merit to the rest of the large slum neighborhood. Maybe it's just a happy thing living safely off the middle of large crowds of tourists, and restaurants in La Boca, Camaneta, Buenos Aires.

 

John (Crosley)

At a nearby restaurant where I had a Coke, the waiter showed me his photo with Bill Clinton. At another restaurant in town I saw a photo of Hillary with the restaurant staff.

 

A number of celebrities, including famous actor Robert Duvall, who's married to a famous Argentine actress, live in Buenos Aires or routinely rest or vacation there.

 

Most self-respecting waiters at top-notch Argentine restaurants where a HUGE steak can cost $8 to $12 or a huge piece of salmon also, can rattle off names like Faye Dunaway, etc., and various glitterati of Hollywood past and present who've eaten at their establishments.

 

Summer there is in the middle of the Northern Hemisphere winter, so it's time for tanning at Christmas, or also in nearby Uruguay, and housing is amazingly cheap for good digs in excellent neighborhoods with top-notch food at bargain basement prices making cooking entirely discretionary, perhaps even foolish.

 

John (Crosley)