black and white: then to now Through The Looking Glass (B & W Ed.)

'Through the Looking Glass' is a more complex photo than may appear

at first glance and is one of my most successful 'street photos'

ever. A color version has been posted previously. This B&W version

has been obtained through using channel mixer. 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

Hey, John,

 

It's nice to see someone I know still posting here. Most folks I chatted with have left the site.

 

A really good image, but of course you know that. I think the B&W works well, and the disinterest of the dog helps. Cheers.

It has all the ingredients of a good street photo. The legs, the dog, the girl's look a you (and at us, the viewers). B&w is ok, I must check out your other photos to see the colour version, but I think that works too, no? Lately I'm more inclined towards colour. I just get a bit frustrated about digital b&w conversions. Have been looking at too many analog b&w photos I guess :)

I can't comment about the first statement. (My e-mail address is in my bio.)

 

Yes, this is one of my finest photos, ever, but when I posted it the first time as a color photo, it got mediocre ratings and views, but then I post what I want, and don't expect raters to be too sophisticated -- but just to get a measure of 'popularity', and for that, PN is a good indicator among the semi or partial cognoscenti.

 

(I'd hate to throw away 2-1/2 years of some of the best comments a photographer ever was blessed to receive . . . . I've posted some wonderful photos and a few stinkers, and sometimes I've needed ratings and commentators to tell me so, and a few commentators have told me amazing things about my own photos (and revealed some things I should have seen but didn't) -- it's been an amazing learning experience, which I hope to share.)

 

I looked at this photo anew, and was amazed that I was able to get the window frame smack in the left corner of the photo frame -- no cropping needed for that, and that it worked out for an excellent 'vanishing point' example.

 

In fact, that photo is all about lines and masses. Look at her leg and the complementary legs of the 'football' player, plus how her lower leg completes the field stripe, and how the dog's mass complements the fallen player's mass (both dark), and finally, how one part of the photo is 'active' and the other more 'passive'.

 

Moreover, I saw this from a near distance and walked right up to this, lifting my camera and shooting as I approached her (hence her look).

 

All in all a most propitious photo -- I'll put it up among the best of the best of anyone else (and I didn't clone out the woman in the rear).

 

Best to you, Barry.

 

John (Crosley)

There are wonderful film B&W photos and there are complaints about 'digital sheen', but if that is a bother, there are programs that will add the 'look' of almost any film ever made and widely circulated (or even modestly circulated) to a digital photo, but I don't think I need to do that -- I'm just happy to have an image, and here a good image to show.

 

By all means, have a look at the rest of my photos and be sure to tell the good from the mediocre - I post a lot, and not all are meant to show my best - they're even labeled primary or secondary in most cases.

 

All the best.

 

John (Crosley)

 

I like the color version more, but that's just a personal view; that picture is one of my favourites on this site, no doubt.

Thank you for the kind compliment.

 

Yes, I actually like the color version better, too, but this is 'strong' also.

 

I think even Cartier-Bresson would have been envious (not jealous) as he tried to tear up his color work as it didn't meet his standards. If he'd taken this photo (color version), I think he would have been pleased. (Show me a learned critique who can prove me wrong and I'll listen carefully. I'm not suggesting, however, that many of my works are up to the Cartier-Bresson standard, but I'll place this one there.

 

I'm pleased that this image is a favorite of yours -- I very seldom post an image twice, and only once before have posted a low-rated or low-viewed photo before (man under movie poster of 'Under the Sea -- life of Bobby Darin - a study in Triangles -- one on top reversed on bottom, elsewhere this folder)

 

I have twenty to forty gigabytes of photos I haven't even reviewed; there must be more good shots to post as well as tons of nature shots which need separate review.

 

Best to you.

 

John (Crosley)

Why things look easy when done by you? Thanks for sharing your time, photos and texts! Great work.

Harmony always looks 'easy', but you should see the holes in my shoes.

 

Thanks for the fine compliment.

 

The opportunity to 'see' such a photo only comes once in a while.

 

Henri Cartier- Bresson, on the other hand, I believe, saw such things hourly or at least several times daily.

 

Big difference.

 

Thanks for the accolade.

 

John (Crosley)

The symmetry of this photo seems carried through, though few may recognize it, by the background woman, right, who is cut in half by the frame.

 

In the showroom window photo, there is a player/referee figure, also cut in half from top to bottom by the falling (and kicking) player's outstretched arm, his body and the ball. Two figures cut into pieces, one in each portion of the frame.

 

That falling, kicking player, with four limbs (two arms and legs, and composed mostly of blackness) is analogous to the dog, right, on the sidewalk and performs a function of balance in this photograph with the dog the counterbalance.

 

I think if one did a weight/mass analysis of this photo, one would find that this photo also in some odd ways obeys the 'rule of thirds' in a way few could comprehend without it's being pointed out.

 

The wall together with the photos, appears to comprise about 2/3 of the photo; the girl, her dog, the sidewalk and the split in half woman, all appear to comprise about 1/3 of the frame.

 

Thus a 'rule of thirds' composition.

 

Askew!!!

 

How about that?

 

Or am I just full of it?

 

Comments?

 

John (Crosley)

This is such a well seen photo John, but one of those that won't catch the eye of those more 'flash' type viewers or at least at the first glance. I took a little while to observe some of the nuances of this shot and got surprised and amused with the repetition of positions in the billboard and in the street. The girl and the dog make a near perfect 'mirror' of what's happening in the wall. Even the details of both the player on the ground and the dog looking in opposite directions from their respective partners or the lifted dog's paw combining with the hand of the player being his only member not contacting with the ground; PRICELESS. I have a lot of appreciation for captures of such little brief moments, and why not 'decisive' (Cartier-Bresson is one of my very favourites as well=). I'd prefer the approaching woman on the right edge not to be included, but had you waited just a little longer and probably you'd have lost this precious moment. Hope my English was not too confusing. Cheers, Alex

Your English is not only NOT confusing, it's eloquent and to the point.

 

You have seen and understood this photograph well.

 

It's exactly as you say -- and it's one of my best, however unsung.

 

It was not destined to be 'flashy' as they're no wonderful expressions of moments or great moment captured here -- it's a composition, and it stands (or falls) on the precise alignment of the stars, so to speak.

 

What is amazing is that passing on a nearby corner, I could see this scene unfolding, caught its first part with one capture, decided it was not quite what I wanted and fired the shutter again.

 

I caught just what I wanted -- even the 'half woman', though an inconvenience, is mirrored by a partial figure in the photo, if one belabors the point.

 

There is not any English deficit in your critique at all -- in fact your English soars.

 

Best wishes.

 

John (Crosley)

This photo has about 1338 views after request for critique, and four rates, with three of them anonymous and the only way it can ever have gotten to the TRP sorting engine is through the comments, after five days of being posted, but with lots of critiques, and thoughtful ones at that, thus making the 'comment' TRP category, as well as the yearly 'folder views' and for other 'folder views' time periods.

 

And it's one of my best shots ever, this time desaturated.

 

John (Crosley)

John - you are wrong! I think the girl has a wonderful expression on her face. Her face is a window to her mind. To me she is thinking "What the 'heck' is this man taking a photographs of this wall and me for!".

 

Adey

I am very happy to be seen as being 'wrong about this girl's expression not being so important compared with the overall composition.

 

Very happy, because I did not give much merit to her expression because she was looking directly at the larger me bearing down on her with two cameras around my neck, one camera to my eye and focusing and firing -- she must have thought 'who is this crazy man and what IS he doing pointing that thing at me for gosh sakes (too young to swear easily).

 

Of course I can make no excuses -- only apologies after the fact -- after I got a marvelous capture, but how could this young woman/girl ever understand that???

 

I just HAD to take this photo -- some photos are like that -- when you, your camera, and the scene unfolding become one -- all for a few precious instants.

 

And I am happy to have underestimated her 'look'.

 

Thanks for letting me know . . .

 

John (Crosley)

 

 

Looking back to when I took this photo, on a street in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine (now Dnipro, Ukraine), I remember exactly every little detail, and having viewed it over intervening years, I still feel that as a 'street' photograph captured in a fraction of a second on the fly this is one of my finest photographs.

 

Look at her leg which mirrors the leg of the leg of the football (soccer) player (and the dog's leg too.  Look at the field stripe in the photo, a line which continues on the line through her thigh to her ankle.

 

Look at the building line which encompasses the window frame and how it's diagonal, lending dynamism to the photo, how her arm supports her leg (which drew me to her from a farther away corner to take this photo in the first place), and the entire balance of the photo.

 

This is a photo I'd be happy to have represent the best of my abilities, along with the best of the half to one million other photos I've taken.  For me, it's a standout, even with the woman in the background cut in half.  I don't need to take flawless photographs -- just interesting and mostly 'appealing' ones.

 

For me, this is most appealing, especially from a compositional view.

 

john

 

John (Crosley)

Dec. 2016, after my 19,000th comment was posted today by others and me in reply.