The Spectator (California Rodeo-Salinas)**

This elderly woman obviously is enjoying herself a lot at the recent

California Rodeo, Salinas, Ca. Your ratings and critiques are

invited and most welcome. If you rate harshly or very negatively,

please submit a helpful and constructive comment/Please share your

superior photographic knowledge to help improve my photography.

Thanks! Enjoy! John

This is a nighttime photo -- just look for the arena lights in her glasses -- hence the use of a 'fast' lens. The Nikkor 70~200 goes down one stop in brightness with the use of a 1.4 power tele-extender, and is part of my standard 'street' apparatus for avoiding causing distrbance to people like this 'spectator' and preserving their natural expressions.

John (Crosley)

She's most appealing.

Everyone who saw this on the back of my camera said the same thing.

It's got a timeless quality to it, I think.

I tried taking a more 'straight on' photo of her, in which she was not in 'selective depth of field' and it came out dull, with spectators on each side of her also in focus and denigrating from her enjoyment. So, I sat down, down the spectator line from her and singled her out and chose a high aperture and BINGO! This is the result.

Thanks for the comment.

John (Crosley)

This photo has 'star quality' written all over it.

Great capture- focus is superb. (was photoshop blur used?)

Facial expression is a joy.

6/6

If you're new to my images, you probably haven't heard -- I use Photoshop exceedingly sparingly, and barely know how to use it at all, except to resize things, occasionally to sharpen something if it's not quite acceptably in focus and a few other functions. I'd rather 'take' images rather than 'create' them in some program or 'rescue' them. I'm a photographer, not a Photoshopper.

No, I didn't use Photoshop 'blur' or 'blur' from any other program; this is the result of using 'selective' focus by using the largest possible aperture on a 'fast', long lens.

This is an in-the-camera frame and shot -- untouched by Photoshop except for a very little sharpening which all Nikon photos require, according to Shutterbug Magazine and other magazines, as they all regard Nikons's 'native' sharpening as too little.

Thanks for the kind words -- 'star quality' is exactly what I look for with each photo, but usually fall far, far short of it.

I'd thank you for the rate, but ratings are something that deserve neither thanks nor hard feelings -- I regard all rates as honest assessments and feelings when they appear to have come from someone who actually has 'looked' at the photo.

My best to you.

John (Crosley)

Sometimes, when people are at 'events' in which they are expecting that people, including themselves, will be photographed, there is little point in hiding the fact of taking photographs.

Sometimes, however, the very act of photographing, especially with a conspicuous camera (and I'm a pretty big guy) causes the scene to change -- people sometimes 'ham it up' for the camera, others protest, or make 'hand signs' both good and obscene for the camera, etc., some turn away, and others try to 'hog' the camera.

Some of these things are OK with me as a photographer, if they help me get an interesting capture, but for the most part, I'm looking for something I have spied when nobody has seen me, and hoping it (or its cousin expression or occurrence) will recur when I have my lens ready, if I wasn't fast enough to raise a lens and shoot the first time.

Here, I saw this woman and her smile, as she was in a front row of spectators, reserved for the 'disabled' usually in wheelchairs and the 'infirm' -- including some from institutions -- but I am unsure of her infirmity if any, other than that she may have had trouble climbing stairs as she did not seem to have an 'attendant' as some of the more 'infirm' did. The Salinas Rodeo (California Rodeo, Salinas) did a first class job catering to the infirm -- disabled -- handicapped -- developmentally disabled and deserve applause for it.

While this woman was in the front row, and I was walking along, I spied her and her wonderful expression and tried to photograph it from the front walkway, but it just got lost -- there were empty seats next to her, and farther away on each side were pretty normal looking individuals -- not very good photographs, though she had a good expression.

So, I sat down (not to block anybody's view) in a vacant seat down the row from her and separated from her by several spectataors and tried to figure out how to photograph her (not for long). I pointed my camera at her as I leaned forward and she kept repeating her smile/laugh as rodeo clowns or somebody did something she considered apparently outlandish.

I took three photos of her in various variations of this/this was the one I found most interesting, though others were 'technically' better. I have learned that in posting photos, 'go for the expression' which I did here, rather than for the technically best photo, and the ratings are proving me right, I think. Although at this writing there are 16 ratings and the rate recent is 4.82/4.82, each rate that is not rate recent is 6.0 or above -- for about half the rates, which shows considerable appeal for this photo, since most of my photos do NOT attract rates outside the queue, and they never attract solely 6/6 or higher rates.

If you also notice, this photo is just another one in which the in-focus part is roughly one-eighth of the total area of the photo or one-sixth, maybe.

There's nothing wrong with presenting a large area of blur, as it accents what is in focus, so long as what is 'in focus' is worth being shown and hence, highlighted.

And it's easy to present a subject in 'selective focus' with a 'fast' lens, such as my f 2.8 70~200 with a 1.4 power tele-extender. Just open it up and shoot, and the depth of field will be extremely small. You can do that depth of field trick even in full daylight if you set the shutter speed high enough -- up to 1/8000th of a second in most modern cameras, though you might have to 'slow' the ISO a little so you remain within the camera's EV range if you are shooting in bright sunlight and trying to narrow your depth of field to a 'sliver'.

Often when shooting for narrow depth of field, as here, I actually will open up a stop, to avoid causing, say, only one eye (for instance) to be in focus and the remainder of the face to be out of focus -- which would be distracting, so most of my portraits on the street -- even at night with an f 2.8 lens are taken at f 4.0 or f 5.6 unless they're full-frontal images (or I'm shooting a sliver of the face in-focus only).

This is for those folks who have asked me several times, how I achieve 'selective depth of field' without using 'blur' tools (see above) and also those who several times who have asked me how I achieve capturing that 'natural' look in my subjects.

One point is certain: You have to be good at spotting subjects, and then if you don't catch them the first time they make an expression, they have to be expressive enough that they can be expected to repeat an expression or create a new, interesting one. So, the corollary is, I think, watch for interesting, expressive people for your subjects.

John (Crosley)

A good word from you means volumes.

John (Crosley)

I just walk around and keep my eyes open -- there are so many 'failures' for each one like this . . . '

But then again, so few women like this who show their joy so well.

John (Crosley)

when I'm older I hope a nice man will take a shot of me just like this.

Excellent that you were able to 'see' this and capture her so well.

Knicki

There wasn't any 'nice man' taking this phograph, just some rumpled guy with a couple of cameras sneaking around, (but I think this woman -- given her general nature -- would be 'pleased as punch' (words she might actually use herself) to see herself thus portrayed. I only wish I had her name and address so I could give her a print -- I think she'd be delighted.

If we wait long enough, I had a young wife (not so long ago) who was/and still is convinced I'll live long enough (and grow younger as I do so) to take your photo when you're this age, and you'll say 'who was that younger guy?' (Yes, it's true . . . .) People have the hardest time guessing my age and usually fall over backward when I tell them (always the truth).

I learned something from Whoopi Goldberg when she was asked if she ever experienced racial discrimination.

Her reply: 'No, I never did, because I never told any one I was black.'

The same applies here (except that when pressed, I admit to being over 150, and having my own paragraph in Genesis, somewhere just a little younger than Methuselah.

John (Crosley)

ah, but I forgot that I am eternally 27...of course with all the wisdom I have earned over the past 30 or so years. I think when I am older I will add on a few years so people will think how spry I am. If I'm ever in a crowd and there is a man with camera/s who seems to be growing younger than I as the moment flickers by I will hope to catch his eye enough to have a shot taken of me.

Knicki,

It would be a cosmic moment.

Maybe one of those moments when my body (like in those science fiction movies where the chronosymplastic infindibulum has been disturbed) will suddenly change to dust, and will suddenly leave this mortal coil.

(and don't chalk this up to a 'second childhood' -- I had that when I was 38 or 39) (and learned a lesson or two from that, probably all for the good.)

John (Crosley)