Shuffling Through This Mortal Coil

'Shuffling Through This Mortal Coil' shows an aged, crippled

traveler at the bus station (vauxall) at Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine as

he shuffles with his travel bag at his destination after a bus

ride. Your comments 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

Raters are encouraged to rate this photo for aesthetics, which does NOT mean whether they are happy with viewing an aged, crippled man, but whether this photo has 'impact' on them, as it is a documentary photograph.

 

I note after only a few minutes being posted, it has 4 3/3 ratings and one 4/4 rating, for the poorest showing of any photo I've ever posted, and it's actually one of the finest, most impacting photo I've ever posted, and I'm proud of it.

 

The explanation in my mind is that raters are rating whether they're comfortable with the SUBJECT on this holiday weekend as it draws to a close, rather than whether the photography is any good.

 

If the photo has drawn such a 'negative' response then surely it has the 'impact' that I believe it has, and I believe the raters (so far) have shown that by their strong negative feelings, though they may have felt they were showing just the opposite.

 

(If this really is an 'awful' photo as a 3/3 rating would indicate -- then someone show me and explain to me clearly why that is so, under the rating guidelines, as I feel just the opposite. Aesthetic photos and 'original' photos ratings of 3/3 would indicate that this photo has no aesthetics at all, but aesthetics are not just limited to making the viewer 'feel good' and originality is supposed to mean that you probably haven't seen something like this before or very often. Is this, on the originality mark, for instance, a cliche and widely reproduced sort of image?)

 

John (Crosley)

 

 

superb story! superb photo!!! writting stories with light its somenthing that was done here!

congrats!

the important is what you wanted to show, to tell with this photo!

Your thoughtful comments about your own masterpieces are always astonishing. Philosophizing ("without hammers" (or with them), paraphrase) on the accomplishment of the aesthetic impact vs. the substance that unfolds "story-tellingly" was always a task I too was interested in (an diligently tried to execute). Classic thought (classicist, not to go into details) used to define art (and its "branches" (in modern terminology - if I'm allowed)) by the notion of beauty. The eye was its solely guideline (in art), aesthetics, on the other hand (as opposed to art), was predominantly an ethics' child. That is: they valued art by the feeling it aroused optically, aesthetics obviously followed constructed on the foundations of "normative", normal, "good".

 

Today (even after the pop divide, the changing art, the oncoming (and probably fading) of conceptual art), as I'm seeing, things haven't changed a lot in the minds of the "plebes" (no offense meant), id est: they value photos (and photography is de facto the "eight" art) technically, eye-centered around the thin layers of lenses - they look at beauty, not meaning. They criticize "the bad", they, concluding, think if terms of categories, big stories (even if I personally think we have entered the postmodern - at least theoretically (by probabilities)).

 

If a photo is "ugly", yours are "ugly", you should be pretty much proud of it. As I said earlier in on of my posts, your works "speak life", they are damned to pierce the social, therefore (if, by classic aesthetics, not "beautiful" in some way) damned to arouse contradictions.

 

---

As for the picture: stupendous example of the just-said. The back-lit silhouette walking towards overexposure, blur causing sight suffocation, lines leading "nowhere" (framing his way, framing the semiotics of it), his posture, the still figure on the left, people at the end of the walkway, well... life analyzes it: everything fits as it should. And most importantly: it speaks.

 

---

It do not claim generalization monopoly, but the aforementioned rule (imho) is quite a big slice of photo.net's anonymous cake. Sadly so. The second one is obviously client謩sm, but that's another debate (not to follow);)

(sorry for no cedilla over the 'n' in your name -- Spanish keyboard not yet installed, though it will be before my next trip to Argentina).

 

Thank you for your endorsement.

 

As an aside (which I am pretty fond of doing), I have a new (sometimes) assistant, who was with me when I took this photo, and next to me, I think, watching me move rather rapidly as this man shuffled by on the bus platform.

 

When I got home to the US and she to Moscow, I sent her a minor collection of some of the photos taken in Ukraine, and this was one of them, and that included also other photos, including the recent '3 generations' photo which has been much commented on.

 

She and I get along amazingly well, though there is an enormous age difference, and she has amazingly good taste.

 

So, when she saw the photos, she picked this one out as the best, the /most touching, or at least (for her) the most noteworthy, for I think it surprised her that this was such a success when she saw it (she was gone by the time I was in Kiev taking the 'three generations' photo -- en route by train to Moscow.

 

Well, Anya was right, I think. (she's pictured -- more or less -- in my 'faces' folder, but you really only can see her eyes)

 

And I am happy for your endorsement.

 

There was no way I could understand that this photo deserved successively 4 3/3 ratings. It certainly had to be, so far as I could tell, a vote AGAINST the subject matter.

 

That's why I placed my comment above, so at least raters might be a little educated, because I just don't pull my photos in the face of bad ratings. If a superior photo gets bad ratings, it doesn't reflect on me; it reflects badly on the raters.

 

(If I suspected a robot or other ratings malarkey, then I would consider pulling a photo, of course, especially if administration were not handling it promptly).

 

But I reasonably understand the plight of the newcomer, just signed up, who dislikes being reminded of human frailty who VOTES AGAINST FRAILTY upon being reminded of it, instead of for the impact that photo has upon him -- for the strong feelings it raises in him/her.

 

If indeed this photo were 'among the worst' ratable, then why not really give it a bunch of 4/4s and all the ratings would lump around that number and none would raise beyond, say, a 4/5, and that would surely be an 'indictment' of the photo's merit, or at least say the photo did not have great ambitions.

 

But this is an ambitious photo, and in my mind it did meet those ambitions.

 

And it is clear from other ratings, and from critics, such as you whom I trust, that others also have seen not only its potential but its accomplishment.

 

Of course, that's subjective, but I play not only to a popular audience, but also to the intellectual audience . . . and am not confined to either.

 

I photograph in various genres.

 

I foresee that someday this photo might be a stock photo and might be sold and resold -- it's symbolic of old age and the infirmities that come with old age, and is universal, I think. (though it's possible the man, in this poor country, man be younger than myself, but might look 20 years older -- people there are always astonished at my age -- even here, also, I guess, and part of that is the fulfillment of photography and the chance to meet people and to share what I see with a worldwide audience of critics (yes, even the 3/3 raters.)

 

Alfredo, thank you for your words of endorsement, they mean much to me.

 

John (Crosley)

 

 

Yes, indeed, there is a big divide between the 'common' and the 'intellectual' analysis of photography and the audiences for the same differ considerably, as discussed above and in your very erudite comment.

 

In fact, I am known both for erudition and discursiveness, but for erudition, I'll pass the baton to you, for your excellent discourse on the nature of photography/photography criticism by amateurs and experts -- it's seminal.

 

The fact is, though I get astonished from time to time by events such as happened when I first glanced at the ratings, I do not get flustered or upset -- I'm far beyond that.

 

This is a wonderful photo, I produced and I'm happy with it and that's that.

 

If everybody wrote criticisms that told me 'John, you're all wet, it's a terrible photo', then I would re-examine.

 

But they haven't.

 

The 3/3 and 4/4 raters have come and gone anonymously, but some of the higher rates either speak for themselves and at least two of the better thinkers have left important criticisms, yourself included, as well as countervailing rates.

 

I don't beg for rates; that evens out in the long run. Sometimes I get high rate I don't quite understand. One is for a guy on top of steps in Odessa with a cell phone that was widely praised. It seemed ordinary to me, but garnered high rates and much comment, partially because half the photo was black, which seemed perfectly normal to my mind, since I don't consult any 'rule book' before framing my subject or releasing my subject. In fact, sometimes I'll deliberately obscure all but a tiny fraction of light and place my subject in that light -- I did that the day before yesterday and it produced a wonderfully 'focused' result of a singer in a park.

 

And my folders get high enough views that low rates have little real effect; people have marked my folders and their placement on the top rated engine are high enough that all my photos get seen anyway, so low rates for me are not something that condemns a particular photo to obscurity; a very nice place to be, but my equanimity came far before any folder of mine reached the top 1,000 folders.

 

Dolmen, you have written something important, and of course, the second edition of what you write is implicit in the first and needn't be written at all.

 

In that way . . . it's sort of like an ellipsis at the end of a well-known sentence to which we all know the end where the speaker needn't finish the sentence or phrase, because we can all fill it in from our own experience and knowledge.

 

(and it's more politic ;~)) )

 

Thanks for the nice essay in my photo's defense (and mine as its photographer).

 

John (Crosley)

Yes, this may be an 'ugly' photo in a sense, but to me it's 'beautiful'. I see the beauty and the grace in this old man . . . as imperfect as his body is.

 

His imperfections with light surrounding him in just the right proportions, have helped me to create something that I consider beautiful.

 

I once took a photo of an obviously deeply handicapped young man near a fire engine at night (fire engine for background) under streetlights which left a very long shadow of the man and his Canadian crutches.

 

One might think that such a subject would be a little depressing, and it was, and that therefore the man might object to being so depicted.

 

But this poor young soul actually was quite elated; rejected mostly by society and the girls) all his life, he had been chosen by someone for a serious piece of photography, and, for a moment, he had become the star of an 'important' photograph.

 

He smiled, shook my hand and thanked me for taking his photograph.

 

He realized something that maybe the raters who rate such things low don't

 

Even those with nature's and/or time's imperfections can in the right circumstances take their place in life's beauty if portrayed right, and the artist can make a social statement at the same time.

 

(that's my take on it, and I'm gonna try to stick to it.)

 

John (Crosley)

A great part of this photo's impact, to me, stems from the man's deformed right foot.

 

Other photos showed him with his disability and were almost equally as strong, even those showing him from a distance, but this one, which showed his right foot turned inward revealed his disability (at least one of them) and that is why this particular photo (among several good ones) was chosen.

 

John (Crosley)

The number of ratings for this photo went from 12 to 9, indicating some of the 3/3 ratings were bogus. However, that didn't improve the ratings much, because apparently the photo entered the queue once again and new, low ratings were substituted.

 

Alas, they also were low.

 

That's OK.

 

I still regard this as one of my best.

 

No one has written a cogent critique to convince me otherwise.

 

Anyone care to try? I read everything with care and consider all viewpoints.

 

Now this photo no longer is on my most-viewed list because ratings have fallen below 11.

 

Alas, the bogus ratings did 'something', even if illegitimately.

 

Thanks Administration for keeping the 'game' honest.

 

John (Crosley)

Getting back to you having just now finished reading a rather significant debate about showing photo equipment and how it implicitly pulls the strings of the rating system. And with that I partly agree (even if the issue, we all know, is multifaceted, highly fragmented, complex).

 

Premise: it doesn't count for you (at least not directly) since you list your equipment within the "technical details" field which is not seen as a "half-title" beside the picture.

 

But: as a logical (to me) consequence I again thought about the "techne", classical that is, perspective that most raters "carry" with them while contributing their (probably fair) opinions. It is symptomatic: looking through "classical" eyes brings a technically-oriented focus that values crisp/sharp photos, within normative borders, "touchable" (therefore the parallel with equipment info contamination), clicheed (another p.net problem steming from it: aesthetics vs. originality and how one ghosts the other). The predominantly latent "conceptual" beauty, bottom-layered, works as a left-over and is concieved as beauty only by a minority.

 

No shit (excuse the term) you get astonished while receving unfounded and inconsistent ratings, it is completely understandable: your artistry takes place within reason, "theirs" is, on the other hand, optical by the book.

 

And I'm writing this 'cause I deeply respect your work and how you thematize it. As you might have seen, I'm not a photographer, but I probably like to problematize my "pastime activity" the same way you do your works of art.

I don't have the patience to 'create' a new field for my equipment, and I have far too much equipment to list all of it, and I am not about to do anything to 'fields' that requires special work. I take photographs and I post them; I work on them only reluctantly to bring them to postable (and printable in some cases) standards, and that's about all.

 

You have hit the nail on the head; I don't strive for 'optical' aesthetics by normal standards of what's beauty; what is beautiful in my mind is creating the epitome of just about anything, even if it's the silhouette photo of a crippled, bent over old man. In fact, such a photo may be the apotheosis of my photography; that and others like it.

 

And my many contrast photos are part of the process of photography which invites those who like to think to view and enjoy my photographs, and if experience is any tutor, there is a sizable subset of experienced and capable photographers here on PN (and other services) who truly are intelligent, intellectual and do like to think very much -- they usually form the top tier in just about everything and in photography too.

 

And it is their criticism that has special meaning to me.

 

Of course, if I were shooting magazine covers for Cosmopolitan, I'd have a different view of things; same for autos and skin cream. I'd be more a technician of the bosom, the painted finish and the lacquered or creamed finish ;~)) But I'm far more than a technician, for it is something deep down that I hope my photos touch, and, as in your case, I hope they touch not only the photographers who judge them but also those who view them who are capable of understanding them.

 

And many times ordinary people on the street, not geniuses usually, are fully capable of understanding photos of great depth. I have experience of showing such photos to lay people on my viewing screen and even had a man who didn't 'get' a series in which he featured a prominent part, suddenly 'get' his part recently, and run across a street, come up to me, interrupt a conversation I was having with someone else, and proclaim me a 'great artist' (he was an accordion player, photographed from the back, at a slow shutter speed, while I photographed people and transportation moving past him in blurs, blur after blur photo, with him in perfect sharpness playing his accordion, seated on a box.

 

I thought when I showed him the photos on my digital screen that he was a blockhead for he seemed incapable of comprehending them; and later he proved me wrong. It just took some time for him to make the transition from busking to photo analysis. That's all.

 

Ordinary people are capable of the most extraordinary thought if the thought is presented to them in the proper way; I learned that when I practiced law and would often teach my clients a half semester's worth of torts or contracts in an hour or so, and have them understand it and ask pointed questions based on a full understanding (and often that was garnered by a six to 12-year-old interpreting English to a another language and back again.)

 

But raters will be raters; and they will rate feel good ratings for nobody has given them a ratings tutorial and they are 'free' and unrestrained.

 

That's OK with me, for one comment like yours is worth 10 or more 3/3s.

 

Thanks for weighing in again.

 

You are free to stop by and comment any time/photographer or not -- a critic does not have to be accomplished to have good criticism. The old saying 'those that can do, and those that can't teach may have some validity, but it's not necessarily valid criticism of the teachers for they have their value even if they cannot 'do'. And the same for the critics who are present 'cannot' but have seminal thoughts and share them. Others read their thoughts too, and can be elucidated, as well. And my comments section is open to all of good faith.

 

Welcome again.

 

John (Crosley)

A lot of comment on PN about 'originality,' while 'aethetics' seems really to ask how much you like an image. I studied aethetics my freshman year with one of the best, H.D.Aiken at Harvard, and one of only two professors at that institution I considered great teachers, and attribute to the word a great deal more than most. It doesn't matter with one's own work...that speaks for itself, but it does matter when judging the work of others.

I generally disregard the ratings, usually looking at them out of curiosity or looking for the raters who have names attached. Every once in awhile I get miserable ratings for images I think are quite good, but very rarely is the distaste for them articulated in any satisfactory way. What might be useful would be a general critique of one's oeuvre, rather than casual ratings of individual images, but PN is not really set up for that and that requires a devotion one cannot expect. Meanwhile, inferior ratings make me rethink an image. Sometimes I see the weakness in an image, sometimes I think the raters are wrong. I think I should create a folder of images that received bad ratings that I consider good...I think it would tell me something about my style, assuming I have one.

As for this image, my first thought was, "There, but for the Grace of God, go I." This is an unbelievably expressive silhouette. I suspect it troubles the purist photographers because it is a bit blurry and the light parts are washed out. Some folks want to see old age in a crisply shot old man or woman with deep wrinkles. Although I like such photos if they are good, images like "Shuffling" are direct at the same time that they make the viewer add his own thoughts.

BTW, I was trained in law as well, but didn't like it and taught instead, practicing law as little as possible. I have a Ph.D. in Anthropology as well, but the market dried up as soon as I got my credentials and I fell back on law to teach in an undergraduate program at the U. of Central Florida. My undergraduate degree was in Art History, art being my first love, and now that I'm retired it consumes much of my attention. And it is a love that responds unconditionally, which is what is lacking in the women I know.

Harvard - educated, law degree, art historian.

 

Left wing snob living in San Francisco.

 

That's how some people will read that, but not me.

 

I feel kinship with you, but my photography has freed me; it has transformed my life. I feel you still are turned inward.

 

I identify now with being a 'photographer' and suppose it is the identification I had been missing all my life.

 

I am not hurt walking around with camera(s) around my neck and people, stating the obvious, saying 'are you a photographer' to which I reply 'no *hit Sherklock'.

 

If they're young and I want to have a smile with them and/or their companion . . . 'Was it your mother who made you so smart?' Of course, it's an excuse to have a conversation which is what they really want, and I just bit. And I almost always do. And I share my captures, if I have any good ones, with people I meet on the street; it's my first 'test audience' prior to Photo.net or any other critique. It's invaluable and gives me the ability (sometimes) to stand up to lousy ratings, for I know what is popular then on the street.

 

Understanding women, now more than a little, I also have a motto. 'Never chase them if they go away' and the corollary, 'no matter what they say, watch their feet' [e.g., if they say they love you and want to be with you, but are taking a powder and moving to NYC to be with a boyfriend, their words are meaningless]. If their feet bring them to you, that's sufficient expression of their real intent and disregard all the flowery words or words expressing opposite intent.

 

If they are meant to be with you, and go, they'll come back and the sooner one lets them go, the quicker they'll return if they are meant to come back. This isn't always so, and that doesn't mean one disrepects them, but one can't waste a lifetime pining away over a lost love. Been there, done that, and it don't change nothin'.

 

I now have very good relations with my wife, the one who believes I caused her brain cancer, but absolutely no hope of ever living with her again, though I can feel her regret and know of mine -- both are palpable, but she still internalizes that belief I caused her brain cancer, and it would never work. (She lives far away in another state and her brain cancer may (!!!) be cured, and she now has some wisdom about life, which was lacking).

 

Tant pis. I've been forced to move on.

 

Strangely, being friends or friendly with the one woman I was madly in love with and and who was madly in love with me, seems ignominious, but at least it's something.

 

And my present companions are much younger and very pretty and engaging -- and also very deep . . . as women who are 'on their own' from age 16 with parents with no money must look out after themselvs without expectation of a handout have different priorities than many American women who often are quite spoiled.

 

It's something you could only experience, I'm afraid Ransford, and I could write about it and sound like a pederast, which I'm not, because I demand in my companions a sense of maturity, but I also enjoy watching that maturity develop and helping guide it.

 

Maybe I'm just a strange duck.

 

Le Canard etrange.

 

(and the word, canard is a double meaning, of course, as in French it means 'joke' as well as duck as in the journal named 'Le Canard Enchainee' -- the duck unchained -- the joke unleashed.)

 

John (Crosley)

Have to urge that I'm not left wing, nor from San Francisco (unfortunately, in the latter case). I once wrote a book on the Bush/Gore fiasco in an attempt to elucidate the American legal system, especially the electoral college. My publisher thought I was a liberal and my editor thought I was conservative. I learned a lesson from that...if you try to be fair and even-handed, you won't sell many books.

After someone, maybe a student, suggested I was a sexist, I asked my wife (#2), the feminist, if she thought that were true, she said, "No, you're an elitist, you think you are better than other people, male or female." I beg to differ, but I don't think any women who knows me well would consider that I held women in low esteem.

And, yes, I suppose I am turned inward, although I would call it 'introspective.' That's my nature, a troubled soul, but still looking for meaning, which brings me back to my favorite subject, art, especially photography. I am satisfied that spending my waning years making photographic images is a meaningful endeavor...more on that later if you're interested. This avocation, plus a lot of effort in keeping myself healthy, including avoiding doctors and medication, keeps me from looking like the fellow in your image, but I know someday that could be me.

Elitist is not a bad word in my book; it means that you look for and have high standards in relation to things you do, but also probably that with high intellect and achievement you probably also are a perfectionist - e.g., someone who strives for perfection, but by its very nature, that cannot ever be achieved, since man, by the nature of various predominant religious systems, never can be perfect -- only God can.

 

So, unless you are Godlike and therefore maybe insufferable as is 'The Donald' who may think himself just a touch Godlike, then you probably are condemned to spend life like the rest of us mortals who like perfection but never can achieve it, but with a view from the aspect of the top with a Harvard education and a J.D. (or equivalent) and having taught law and knowing art history, etc., one can expect some unhappiness if you are trying to achieve perfection and think you really can approach that state.

 

You never can, and if you have not come to grips with that, you may be a very unhappy person. Me, I've come to grips with my second-class talents, in various aspects, and still strive and recognize that in every field, I'm outclassed by many, but my striving is no less, but I'm a heck of a lot happier, and I do ever so much better for my realization.

 

I will never be God-like; I'm no Godhead and I'll never try. I've failed at so many things, I may have set a world record, but one learns from one's mistakes unless one's an idiot and if mistakes teach, then I may have 'wisdom', and that has its own value to those who value such things.

 

Maybe in this country fewer appreciate wisdom than in many other countries, but in the Orient where veneration of ancestors and the elder predominates, and in the Eastern Countries where age is respected (if rarely achieved by males), I have a rare sort of respect accorded me, plus I don't look nearly my age, with only a touch of gray.

 

It's man's nature to go where things are nicer; unless of course one is a stick-in-the mud or a confirmed masochist (or just stupid). And, being free of obligations now, I am contemplating my future, and it is leading me places I've visited before, and will certainly visit again and again, and I may live in those places, semi-permanently or permanently. Things there are nicer; and the people are nicer.

 

As an airplane pilot who had been in the East told me as he boarded a 777 to pilot it to the U.S., 'those people [in Eastern Countries] seem to get so much more out of life, don't they?'

 

I just nodded agreement, and vowed never to forget why.

 

Economic prosperity could potentially breed happiness, and the fact it doesn't is that the freedom it brings also brings the freedom to be isolationist - one doesn't 'need' friends to help pay one's debts to borrow again to buy the next week's meals so one can survive.

 

One can tie oneself down to a house and never open the door or speak to the neighbors and that can go on for decades if one chooses.

 

It's not necessary to be social.

 

Socialability in the U.S. with its prosperity is a matter of a social personality or a conscious effort (or both) and those who are not naturally 'social' have an extra difficult row to hoe.

 

So, I greatly appreciate my friends and my trips to the East and also to South America and my photography which breeds friends. I recommend 'street photography' as it defeats the isolationist in me. I can hardly take out my cameras without cracking a smile at a good photo I've taken, or generating a handshake from a subject or five.

 

It's kind of like skipping around (as you did when you were a child). Did you ever see a child be grumpy and skip. I cannot be unhappy and photograph. Can you? It's like trying to skip and frown at the same time; it's impossible.

 

My remedy has been to photograph more and more; it's second nature to me now; and I enjoy it and people look forward to viewing my better photos. (I learned my lesson long ago when I took slides to a dinner party and bored my host. People get a second or two's view of a photo and off goes the display.)

 

Then no more, or they get my name and a google.com reference if they want to see more. More often than not, the same people will approach me, and point out a particular photo from my portfolio that they looked up on their home computer -- and say 'about that photo . . . ' (describing an obscure photo I almost forgot I'd taken) . . . . 'I really liked that' and often with questions. It happened today, just before I went to my home from someone I met this afternoon and gave my name too.

 

It may happen again tomorrow.

 

It's very gratifying and it means also that I don't shove anyone's nose in it; if they want, they can look and if not, I don't make them guilty for not.

 

To each his own.

 

And to the isolationist in me, I've learned to defeat it.

 

Every one has his own way of learning how to get through life; those are my experiences and they're new. I hope there is something there that you can take as yours, Ransford, and adapt it.

 

John (Crosley)

Poorly exposed and composed and focused. You cannot shoot this; the background blows you away. Remember you emphasize the importance of backgrounds......Ransford, I have such a folder that you mention. "Photos People Absolutly Do Not Like" and they might be right.