The Freeway Rest Stop**

'The Freeway Rest Stop' is a familiar scene to almost all American

motorists, but seldom photographed, especially with an eye toward

aesthetics (look for 'balance', 'color', and 'starkness' in this

night photograph). 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

This may not be a Photo.net sort of photograph, but to me it's still 'art' and it'll continue to be displayed.

John (Crosley)

Thanks.

Kind of minimalist, isn't it? (And more than a bit familiar, but who's to say there can't be art all around us, even in the most crass commercialism, if you look at it 'just right'.

John (Crosley)

Let's say for a moment that I am worse fotographer than you. Then my critique will not be constructive to you and you will hear praises.

If I see this I will say WOW that is very good I like the light and oclours...

MAYBE I'll start telling a story of me having an intimate moment of the second garbage can on the left before I had left for Milwakee one Wednesday night some time ago from a place far far away...

I am not saying that you are a worse photographer than me or I am better than you but I'm trying to understand the ulterior motive someone had in his mind before giving a photo for critique. SO as many have put around the planet "what were you thinking" when you put this photo for critique ?

Of course nothing peculiar this photo has to show. Different angle ? Nope.

Not even like the test shots wide angle lenses show for their simple reviews and comparison brackets. A UFO on a corner of the picture ? Nope. An alluring smoke that looks like a ghost ? Nope again. Is it the trashcans ? Do we make ourselves informed of the worldwide trash problem ? Hmm they seem a little empty and clean.

Is it the full of advertising signs ? (as you mentioned) INDEED. It must me the most frequently advertised spot in the US. No comparison with the big apples. This one is full of light advertisers around. Not even in Nevada or L.A. had so much advertising signs with all those lamps and all...

So no big lamps ,no ghosts,no ufos, no sunsets, no nudes, no birds, no planes, no supermans, its the scenery of the freeway rest stop.

Technically so to speak I will analyze it with all my amateur knowledge.

Insufficient DOF, corner of shot (dead angles), big black empty spots, unstabilized shot, lack of a clear subject and to add my final thought I think this must be a test photo for bad critiques.

Anyway know that I was the one that gave you a 2/2 some days ago and while re-viewing my ratings I saw that my rating went anonymous. I want to be sincere although it's not of my benefit. I will enter your portfolio though and I will rate the best photo of it so not to have any guilts that I had something personal with your photo or you :-))

Best regards!

You have the eye of the tiger ;-) in photographs but yet this photo is not one of your "givesomething" (to me). Maybe all of your photos are puzzle pieces and this is just one of them. One friend of mine (photographer) was obssesed with some Engleston guy yet I was telling him about Rene Asmussen. Two totally different worlds. If you see my highest ratings you will see him in the 7/7's but I see him as a phenomenon. Now with Engleston my friend had a feeling of a "60's - 70's" when all the photo's came a little purple or orange. Dont know why (I'm sure you know you have double of my years) but he was craving for that result. Engleston photo's were not aesthetically good (TO ME) but to him they were awesome. I couldnt understand why (still can't), but I figure out that there is a feeling inside of us all that drives us to a specific result. Even thats some photo even thats a woman, a thief an accident.

I stiil hope I havent made you sad, cause you seem to know what you are doing.

Thank you for hearing my point of view...

I take whole different categories of photographs, and if I were to do 'sterile America' this would be one of the main photographs. It is the epititome of how much of America looks to the freeway traveler, all gussied up after midnight with the trash cleaned and parking lots emptied, but the lights still on, because we're turning into a 24-hour nation to accommodate our 24-hour Internet and our jobs that don't let us off during work hours (which stretch from before dawn to well after dark) so we can shop whenever we want.

This is the changing face of America and it is peculiarly American.

See my car wash photo from Los Angeles of the Mercedes being wiped (in the rear by a Mexican, the owner nowhere to be seen, the same Sunday morning this was taken, or another Mercedes *in my Early B&W folder* with a wall graphic of lettuce or cabbage on it. They're all part of the same theme and would fit into a folder, it I were making one, and someday I'll probably make a presentation.

The point is, Billy, no one photo has to ring your chimes, just as I take and post some that don't even ring my own chimes, but just take them because I think they're technically good or just plain old interesting.

I happen to like the aesthetic of this; there's something in the starkness of this, together with the balance, and it only works with the ARCO sign there in the upper right corner (I took a number of exposures to get it right, hampered by pumps at the right side and cars coming and going which disturbed the starkness, there in San Luis Obispo -- called SLO by the residents and Central Coasters of California.

It's OK if this doesn't ring your chimes; it rings mine in one way, and not in another.

Maybe the man atop the bucking bronco doesn't ring mine, but it was a sure-fire hit, with almost 16,000 views as of this writing, and technically quite proficient -- almost a perfect shot (of the genre).

Or maybe the bull chasing the rodeo clown, another quite different shot, with the bull's hooves in the air as he brakes with his rear hooves and seeks to change direction mid-skid, to get the evading clown (solo bull fighter in a clown's dress).

Or maybe you might like the old woman spectator, singled out among the crowd with the unusually smiling face, isolated by depth of field.

I happen to be crazy over my photo (which did not get high ratings at all) from Roissy--Charles De Gaulle airport, showing a ramp at the terminal and four passengers exiting -- just for its graphics (and the fact I nailed it).

Others were happy with the old woman beggar in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, taken two days later, with a poster photomodel's hands extending down over the beggar's shoulder seeming to lend sympathy to the crying beggar's plight.

Think about the diversity of all of the above and then look to see what I might post tonight or tomorrow . . . and imagine how fertile my mind myst be and how much I must see that I don't photograph. (But I do carry one or two cameras wherever I go). Then imagine how I spent more than 25 of my adult years doing much of the same activities as now without a camera at all and how many superb captures I've just walked by, not even realizing it (or realizing it, but not caring especially because I (1) had no camera and (2) had no audience for my work until Photo.net came along (and) finally (3) didn't really have an idea of my true worth as a photographer until I started getting the views on Photo.net (not the scores, but the views -- they're different things entirely. People like to see my photos, not because they're so well-excuted but because they're sometimes 'brain teasers'.

I had dinner tonight with a brilliant young woman, who earlier went through my entire portfolio (at least the good stuff) and she (without prodding) picked out the compositional elemnts of each photo and didn't miss a beat and ended up laughing and snickering . . . before she had known me, she didn't necessarily think much of me . . . just a guy she had seen come and go and joked with . . . this time she went to dinner with me and we talked about very personal things because she recognized in my photographs someting she hadn't see in me as a casual acquaintance, and in her I saw the brilliance of an excellent photo critic. (I wish all photo.netters were so wonderful on their analytic ability as she, and she left school at 16, although she's a computer whiz -- and a female one, of course, which makes her a rarum avis.

I used to bring out my ancient box of old photographs whenever I met a woman and was trying to see if I might get along with her; some looked at the photographs and got up and went to the kitchen or excused themselves to do something else (leaving me there staring at my own photos -- see early B&W photos). The first one who started laughing at some of them, especially the men carrying air conditioners on the escalator, I tried to marry (and would have except her home country's currency crashed, throwing her elegant central capital city apartment into jeopardy of being lost unless she continued to live there, which saddned me greatly. I actually had two tests of a prospective 'girlfriend' (1) go on a long trip together to see if we could get along and (2) see if they liked my photos and if both were present, that was an extremely good sign.

About the years, I don't have a read on your age unless you tell me, but I've made allusions to my age throughout, but where I am now, the older ladies all look like grandmothers, and the younger women aren't interested in me, unless they've got a very high education and then they are (and this city has a huge population of highly educated beautiful young women).

I've dated far below my age and far above my age -- I just look for good people; regardless of age, but I'm approaching the age, where there's only one way I can look (sounds more ominous than it looks; I'm doing very well).

I'm kind of branded by the large cameras I carry, but where I am, people often call me by name across some distance, wanting to see previews of photos I've taken recently. I fit in with the landscape though I'm not here THAT often, and am often in other cities around the world where they think I live, also, or think I own a vacation home. (I figured out how to travel literally 'on a shoestring' long ago -- no major expenditure of money involved).

I enjoy your analyses; they're always welcome.

John (Crosley)