Slipping Off the Curb (St. Germain, Paris)**

This 'street scene' seems surprisingly simple, but in actuality is a

little more complex than meets the eye. 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 knowledge to help improve my photography

skills. (This is as good as I think I can photograph a simple

Parisian Street!) Thanks! Enjoy! John

Among the photographic devices, is an ever-so-subtle 'S' curve moving into the right middle distance, drawing the viewer's eye toward the distance, all broken up by the pedestrian woman, her arms outstretched, obviously having tripped -- maybe haven fallen off the curb, or, peut etre, quelle horreure!

 

Perhaps she has stepped into 'merde' (That's that stuff that comes from the rear end of dogs -- chiens, unattended - no poooper scoopers were seen thereabouts, and no Parisians were seen with pooper scoopers for their dogs, but then again, few Parisians were seen with dogs at all, this trip. Let's hope they're not eating them; they eat everything else, with sauces, garlic, butter and WITH GUSTO, all with a special wine for the occasion.

 

Now which wine (or beer) would one use to accompany one's dog, if a Frenchman decided to make it a French delicacy? I suppose the French might defer to the North Koreans and the Chinese who have more experience in the subject, but the French rapidly pick up the cuisine of other nations.

 

One woman, I knew, who lived in the Philippines before she went to law school, complained and complained about her neighbors dog barking in the city dominated by prostitutes, Olongapo City next to Subic Bay Military Base. One day, there was no barking and she inquired. Her neighbors calmly informed her that they 'now' knew about why the dog barked so loudly all the time: 'It's liver was bitter', they told her.

 

Americans like dogs because they're cute and cuddly; not so in some other nations. But the French, more so that other nations, will allow dogs in hotel rooms, in restaurants, and other places, so it's unlikely that poor Fido (or 'Fifi') has ended up in some pot au feu with steaming carrots next to him or reduced to the 'base' for some stockpot.

 

John (Crosley) ;-))

The correct spelling is St. Germain des Pres (with a downward accent) over the 'e' in 'Pres' (rhymes with pray) which my keyboard presently doesn't support and I don't know how to spell in English, though I do know its correct name. I abbreviate it to St. Germain (not St. German, as in the request for critique, though I cannot know if the French accept that as a proper abbreviation. It's a VERY lively area, with shops open for the chic and upper class on weekdays and filled with restaurants and tourists on weekends, especially Sundays.

 

John (Crosley)

Personally, I believe it was a race to the dashing knight in the white shirt. Overcome with excitement or perhaps a gentle nudge from her friend (in an attempt to get there first), she slipped into a puddle on the street. ;) Nicely captured, John. For some reason, I also like that reflection at the bottom right of the frame.

 

-Tammy

I had my telephoto focused on the scene but was examining another area and didn't catch the exact cause of this misstep, so we'll never know.

 

I wear glasses (not now required for driving, but they aid in distance vision, and I often take them off for photographing, place the 'arms' in my mouth and let them dangle, as I photograph away, or if I'm in a hurry, as here, my eyeglasses sometimes stay on and get in the way of a complete view taken under some time constraints, and I can miss something important (as seems to be the case here.) (da*n glasses, but they're no longer necessary . . . like my mother I outgrew the absolute need for them; they just make driving and distance viewing more comfortable, and hence spotting that occurrence down the street happening 'or about to happen' that much easier, so I am loathe to give them up.)

 

So, you and I each are left to our own imaginations, which probably is how it should be.

 

As to the puddle, I love shooting in the rain; a prominent newspaper photographer saw me out one day with my cameras in the rain and warned me 'they'll get corroded and rusty' and I said 'but I'll get the photos you miss, and they'll be good ones!'

 

And I think I'm right on that one.

 

Rain saturates (literally) reducing the need to do the same in Photoshop or other photo editing programs, so I love it. (I just hate the cold that usually goes with a November rain, as here, and it rained almost every day of my stay, except (two now).

 

That's the price of photos like this, though. It's a happy photo for me; like you said, it's the moment.

 

Thanks for stepping in (and not slipping in the process)

 

John (Crosley)

 

(By the way, this woman's almost certainly a Parisienne, and if she slipped, she should have slipped in a Poodle) (groan, rim shot -- old vaudevillian joke.)

This photo, for whatever reason, seems to 'grow on me'.

 

I took many photos of this picturesque street, near a school, including of school boys coming the opposite direction full of enthusiasm, and also of the women going the other way, but only until this woman's arms flew out was the capture 'right'.

 

In some ways, that was the element that has caused this scene to 'grow' on me.

 

Is it just peculiar to me? Maybe because I was there?

 

John (Crosley)

Looked unremarkable in the thumbnail, so I was pleasantly surprised when I opened it. I think there is a special quality to narrow old urban streets on misty days...invigorating if it is not too cold. BTW, does rain really saturate? I can see that happening with gray and earthy colors as you have here, but I wonder about bright colors. What say you?

The very word 'saturate' comes from the word for being 'saturated' with water -- in fact molecules often have two states, with and without the OH radical -- either being with or without 'saturation' and the effect is that the color often changes, as above, to being more 'intense.

 

So, yes, things do indeed become 'saturated' and saturation is a word borrowed from photography to represent the real world as it is represented in color renderings such as film/printing, etc., and is synonymous with being 'more intense, such as colors during and after a rain.

 

Just look at building facades composed of wood, stone, paint, or other materials after they have been soaked (by rain driven sideways) at how intense their colors are, and photograph a city, such as Paris, as I have just done, under such circumstances, and you'll have a whole different idea about color.

 

By the way, paint which is unsaturated, often has a chalky, feel to it, and also looks dry on film/print as well/same with stones, etc.

 

Here's an experiment. Go drop some water on some soil and some stones and look at them. See the colors change. That's not the water; it's the soil and stone colors absorbing the water and giving off different 'saturated' light wavelengths'.

 

Enough said.

 

Good question. This one I could answer. Some I just give up on. I try to know the difference.

 

I know it looks like 'nothing' on thumbnail, or just 'unremarkable' but that's the way of life, isn't it. Some women (and men) are the same way.

 

John (Crosley)

 

 

 

 

 

Peculiar? No, definitely not.

 

The woman in black could be me. I'm always in a rush, not paying attention and well, sometimes gravity and I just don't get along.

 

I find your work interesting, inspiring and your eloquent writing equally so. Thank you for sharing.

 

Tammy

Tammy V. is answering my question posed above whether this photo and my particular appreciation for this 'small' photo were just 'peculiar' to me, as I've grown attached to this photo, for reasons that far seem far to surpass the sum of its parts -- maybe it has a synergy; and I asked a question of the viewership, was it 'peculiar' to me.

 

Her answer, at least for her, was 'no' and that as to her, at least, I'd caught a certain kind of moment - maybe a klutzy kind of moment we all experience from time to time, but which one seldom finds captured, and if captured one seldom finds captured artistically, (in such nice surroundings and attractively).

 

Here, the frame was set, and the woman just happened to do whatever it was she did that caused her arms to fly out -- which of course was to regain or maintain her balance, which is what flying arms are there for (and why high-wire groups like the Flying Wallendas always used those long poles when they went on the high wires, or why those slack-wire, more low-wire artists, make extensive use of their arms -- as counterbalances, for some weight-distribution problem.) She of course had misstepped in some way I was not 'seeing' exactly, but her arm movement caused me to trip the shutter and capture what I saw later as an endearing moment.

 

It just seems, while capturing something 'pretty' along a 'pretty' street in Paris, I also captured a 'moment' and maybe that has transformed this 'little' photo into something just a little greater.

 

John (Crosley)