faces in time Something's Rotten in Barcelona!

'Something's Rotten in Barcelona' accidentally got posted yesterday

in the 'critique only' forum -- and is being reposted here. Your

comments and ratings 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. (For my 'faces' folder) Thanks! Enjoy! John

:)) Fun... intense gaze he has for sure! Love it.

Good work, regards from Croatia !

This is an interesting photo, isn't it?

 

This guy just 'looks corrupt' doesn't he, in the medievel sense -- corruption meaning the body falling apart and being eaten by worms, bacteria and bodily organisms, etc. In his case, it looks like corrosion, however (plus that cigarette).

 

(sorry, I think I previously misspelled your name -- In a short while I'll try to post a corrected first name if I can find the misspelling -- I hate to misspell names -- it smacks of disrespect for the person and/or his/her heritage, however unintentional).

 

John (Crosley)

Hello, from farther east than you, until the 'magic hour' when I head west, where the people are fatter, the girls less good looking, and everybody has a car and is spoiled I think by the standards of where I am now.

 

What do you think about the 'bokeh' effect (out of focus effect in the background)?

 

'Bokeh' is a Japanese word/slang for that effect, in case you just got off the boat/as I once did.

 

Thanks for the comment.

 

John (Crosley)

Great photo. The bokeh effect works well in this instance. The white parts ties in nicely with the white of the cigarette, forming a natural connection.

I am glad enough detail of the Roman colosseum like pillar in the background can be made out - it adds some "authencity" to the image. The steel gaze rounds it off perfectly. You have a winner here. - JH -

The thumb stands out in your page cause of two great points: one is obviously the look of this guy, the other one is the blend of *vibrant* colours.

As an amateur of science-fiction comics and especially Enki Bilal's one (even if I'm not at all a specialist), my eyes have been immediatly caught by this guy, looking like early Enki Bilal's characters. I only found a few examples of what I meant on the net but you can see some likeness with this character drawn in 1978 in "memories from outer space".
According to his clothes, if the guy you've photographed seems to come from some medieval time, the high level of rust on him and the anachronism made by the cigarette adds something really more futuristic. Moreover, cause Bilal have used - in his very personnal way - tales and medevial items too (early work yet), the comparison was more obvious for me.
BTW, great work on the costume of this guy! Rust looks real and his skin really looks *corrupted* as you wrote it. Of course, after the first feeling about how he looks (either interest or distaste), "what was he doing?" comes in mind. Your title adds some mystery even if the place is disclosed: what happened in Barcelona? germ warfare? medevial movie making? or *simply* street peformance?

In a second point, and on a more technical side, the blend of these colours is rather strong and interesting. I find the background quite overexposed but these burnt out white areas work very well in the limited colour range: only four colours (blue/green/grey/white). This adds something in the depth looking at the almost monochrome red foreground. The white cigarette recalls the white in the background.
The bokeh is very nice (I'm a bokeh lover) and this blurry background looks almost abstract, as strange as the character can be.
The composition is a bit centered for my taste, the deep look of this guy is almost at the diagonals cross. I'd really prefer to see more space on the left on the photo, in the way he's looking at. Looks like you've cropped it (not a 3/2 size), was there something distracting in the field?

To conclude, I'd say that I like to keep in mind the *almost sci-fi* look of this strange and rusty guy and that you've succeeded to make me wanting to know more about him!

Excellent photo John. Light, colors, composition and DOF are working for the final sense of feeling. Bravo. Regards Michael.

I'm traveling so more acknowledgement later. By the way, Yann, superlative job of critiquing. You've missed your calling; you should be knocking at academia's door or a photo book publisher's door with your critique ability after you've established yourself, say with doing published essays for periodicals, from time to time. (I didn't know it was you until after i read it and said 'wow' this critique is amazing.)

 

John (Crosley)

Hi John, one day 'when I am big' and know something about photography, I would want to take photo's such as this one. But then I have two sons way ahead of me on photo.net and in awe of their pictures of my grandchildren - so I will just live with the thougt that it is great to admire your work.

John, I don't mind any transformation of my name as long as I can make out it's meant for me :-) please don't mind correcting the spelling.

 

Yes, it's a study of contradictions... medieval headgear, attitude of a soldier returning from a battlefield, and then the cigarette... Very interesting.

 

Best regards.

EXCELLENT

The idea that somehow I am 'big' other than physical sizes somehow amuses me, as I posted my first photo (an old one from 30 years ago) just about two and a half years ago, and then started taking photos again for the first time in about so long, except for a few intervening periods of a week here or a few days there. I had vowed to see if I could still take photos or sell my many wonderful cameras that were sealed (not gathering dust thankfully).

 

Remarkably, photography is something that is like skiing or riding a bicycle -- once you learn how to do it, the basics don't leave you and they even grow on you as you mature -- and with much practice, my 'eye' has matured in certain areas and I have a much wider repertoire than when I was a youth before I 'gave up' photography.

 

Don't wait to take 'wonderful' photographs -- just point and shoot -- take a camera wherever and you'll find if you think like a photographer, you'll see wonderful stuff all around that you never thought of before -- just have the appropriate lens (a zoom preferably from wide angle to tele) and a camera with you at all times. That's how I get all those amazing images -- it just takes diligence, and sometimes just even having kids is enough; they make great photos -- train your camera on them and you may have wonderful captures.

 

Best.

 

John (Crosley)

Thank you for the nice comment -- the 'pillar' actually is an old lamp post, I think. The Bokeh effect came off rather nicely -- it's from a 70~200 Nikkor lens plus a 1.4 x teleconverter and I do like it very much.

 

Thanks for visiting and leaving a comment. Your are always appreciated.

 

John (Crosley)

Well, you got me again; this is just another of my many studies in 'contradictions' isn't it; but with another 'twist'.

 

I hadn't though of it that way, but then, of course it's so.

 

And that's why I took it this way; because it's interesting this way, not as a documentary of the guy and/or his outfit/costume/makeup, but the guy dressed as he is, authentically, but smoking and appearing somewhat derelict. And that I do love, which is why I snapped the shutter.

 

I love interesting stuff and like to share it.

 

I'm glad this has proved popular -- I sat on it for two months, unsure of it at all.

 

Live and learn.

 

John (Crosley)

Quite a praise John! : ) thank you so much.

I'd prefer to say that you're very inspiring ; )

You're modest beyond all means.

 

You should be like a beautiful Russian woman (or Ukrainian woman) who, when told of her beauty, says, 'thank you' (her beauty being an easily acknowledged fact -- no false modesty).

 

Western values consider modesty a great virtue, and I practice that too (but I have much to be modest about . . . . ;-), compared to those beauties who populate Eastern Europe's cities (with the possible exception of Kiev, where I saw little that was exceptional, and the people more Westernized, which may be why I keep passing it by . . . except to explore its outskirsts, say nearby Borispol (Borispil in Ukrainski) home of Kiev's airport, where the wheel of time goes back 30 to 45 years in a 30-minute drive. It's simply amazing!

 

Even the women who sell seeds from large bags of that at the end of Kiev's Moscow-inspired Metro (the train coaches are exactly the same, the tunnel design the same -- in fact everything's the same for a real Moscow feel), are definitely 'old country' though at the other end of the Metro line, the trains pass through some pretty modern territory in downtown Kiev, though the skyscrapers haven't yet been built. It is the center of Ukrainian commerce, and deservedly so; it's the only place in Ukraine where one can expect a Western experience (though the tourist guides advertise 'escorts' quite openly, which doesn't happen elsewhere in Ukraine -- Ukraine men apparently benefitting from liberal girlfriends or 'knowing where to go' for such things and no one having 'large money' for 'escorts' in other towns or even large cities (with a couple of exceptions).

 

Anyway, Yann, don't 'hide your light under a bushel' to use an old American saying (don't be too modest).

 

John (Crosley)

indeed the first time I appreciate to be compared to a woman... : ))

John, as others have allready told, this is really exceptional image! I must say that it is a great capture!

Thanks for the kind comment. I keep trying and I wish all were so. I wasn't even sure so much it was good enough, and delayed two months in posting it.

 

Sometimes I can be very myopic with my own images. They please me, but with the uncertain eye and judgment of critics, I often am unsure what will please them, but they do represent popular taste, and quite often they are correct.

 

Thanks again. I'm glad this pleased you. I hope others I have taken, across all genres, please also.

 

John (Crosley)

This is an instance, almost universal in my folders and portfolio, in which the color was NOT Photoshopped.

 

In fact, I seem to have forgotten where the 'saturate' slider (it is a slider isn't it?) is located in my edition of Photoshop, CS2, although I am sure I could find it. It is not located in my workflow, but I have to admit that in the course of adjusting brightness, sharpening (sharpening digital photos is a MUST according to all photo magazines when using a Nikon camera as they all agree its native sharpening is too little), that the 'contrast' adjustments involved in sharpening and adjusting images also affect the intensity of color represented and have an effect somewhat that some might liken to 'saturation' but it's far more 'natural' that just hitting the 'saturation' slider to 'force' color into scenes that had slight amounts of color and make them very colorful.

 

This is represented as I saw it, essentially, as are almost all my other color captures.

 

John (Crosley)

The 'bokeh effect', (the out-of-focus effect) here is a deliberate result of Nikon's work into producing more 'friendly' 'bokeh' by changing the number of blades in their 'irises' (apertures) in their lenses -- here the 70~200 f 2.8. I'd have to look up the newer, larger number of aperture lades, but it's definitely working to produce a more pleasing 'bokeh' effect, although here it's a rather pronounced effect, in part because the optics have been changed from the normal, expected optics by adding a 1.4 power tele-extender, which surely has changed what Nikon's designed the 'bokeh' effect to look like.

 

I reasonably expect that if you showed this photo to Nikon's optics engineers and photo experts and said this is produced with a 70~200 alone, they'd be scratching their heads, because of the unusual 'bokeh' effect, and they'd all accept that a 1.4 tele-extender might be a possible explanation for the unusual 'bokeh'.

 

And all my tele-extenders I use are designed for the lenses I uses -- S-wave lenses for the most part.

 

The 18~200 lens according to Nikon will not take an accessory lens of any sort probably because of the great range of the lens, from wide angle to telephoto.

 

In fact, you probably could attach and take a photo with it, but it would not look 'right' because of pincushion and barrel distortion difficulties, and what's the use of putting a tele-extender on a wide angle lens that will already 'zoom' out to twice the wide angle distance by itself anyway? The only 'tele-extender' use would be for the tele end of its range anyway.

 

Since buying the 18~200 'street shooter's delight', I've used my 70~200 f 2.8 E.D. and my 80~200 f 2.8 ED lenses largely with tele-extenders giving me a great range of available telephoto possibilities without changing lenses (a major hindrance on the street, where a lens is easily jostled and dropped -- same with a camera, especially with frozen and/or wet fingers in a crowd while very tired).

 

Changing lenses on the street is to be avoided, especially when carrying expensive, heavy and/or unwieldy lenses.

 

John (Crosley)

I regret that I didn't point out above that this fella is a 'street performer'. Maybe it was something I just assumed, having already posted three other 'street performers' from Barcelona. However, it was wrong to assume.

 

He might have been an 'extra' or a 'leading actor's understudy' left over from 'The Wizard of Oz', mightn't he?

 

John (Crosley)

Well John, took the challence to identify the four... well that is the second!interesting "knight" ! I like the coloring of his face compatible to his cloths... his gaze again and the cigarette....

It's been kind of a fun challenge, hasn't it, Pnina?

 

I took these four photos in the space of three or four hours -- pretty good work for an afternoon after being so jet-lagged and having only one day in Barcelona before heading off to Ukraine (it was a less than 24-hour stopover).

 

I really feel I captured some of the best photographs of a short period ever during my extremely short stay in Barcelona and consider it a street photographer's paradise (yes, that's right), with its huge pedestrian mall, people walking down Las Ramblas (is that right?) and its many buskers.

 

It certainly was a treat. Even the taxi drivers nearby cooperated by arguing, yelling and gesticulating at each other, so I could photograph them with a long lens (for safety, since they were pretty heated and almost to blows over blocking a narrow street).

 

John (Crosley)