Rue de la Grande Truanderie, Paris

Detail, rue de la Grande Traunderie, Paris, near downtown, in the

mid-evening after dinner. 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. (hand-held) Thanks!

Enjoy! John

I truly Love your works. And this is way you use Great lighting And mood in your work, Just wonderful! ~ Steve,

Pretty impressive handheld shot ... the light is great.

The 'funny' (not humorous 'funny' but 'interesting 'funny') thing is that I don't intentionally set out to do anything particular with lighting -- I just see something I intend to capture, then I go about capturing it.

 

I figure if I'm interested enough to take that photo, my tastes will coincide with a certain number of members of PN or the public, as my tastes were honed early on as a photo editor for Associated Press, and I learned a little to gauge not only what was a good photograph to display but also what the public liked.

 

Now, as you can tell, I don't post the most highly-rated photos, as I am interested in posting photographs that I like personally, rather than chasing ratings.

 

I could be a much higher-rated photographer simply by pulling and ash-canning my lower-rated photos and keeping my higher-rated ones.

 

However, some the raters felt were 'stinkers' judging by ratings of 4/4 or even below have gone on to be rewarded as 'winners' with outsize 'viewings' 50% more than other, nearby photos rated one or two points higher -- which is why I seldom take down a photo, except to rework it a little.

 

Thanks again for the comment/You are always welcome here, but you don't have to rate highly to be welcome. Rate honestly and whenever you want and so long as it's honest, it's completely welcome here. After over 6,000 ratings, they don't mean so much to me individually, except as a point of curiosity -- as a whole, but a high rate and high praise, now that gets my attention!!!!

 

John (Crosley)

Dale, even without vibration reduction -- one of the best gifts a photographer ever was given by Nikon (or IS by Canon), I'm a steady holder, once handholding a shot for a full 2 seconds in the after-sunset evening glow as I photographed a waterfall and no shakiness at all -- I WAS well-braced, but with a 200 mm lens at that.

 

This was a 200 mm lens at full extension or nearly so, I think, but the V.R. feature was on, and the only problem was the pigeons flying left blurs in the other photos. This is one where they were relatively still; pigeons fly at all hours as long as there's light, I guess, and also food. No wonder some people call them 'rats with wings'; they're voracious foragers and are unafraid of humans.

 

Thanks for the compliment on the shot, also, you can partially thank 'shadow/highlight filter in Photoshop CS2 for its help in adjusting the levels of brightness and shadow and bringing everything into 'view' here, without lots of 'selecting' and so forth. (shadow/highlight in my book, does not count as manipulation, as it is a brightness tool that affects the whole photograph, no different than 'levels' or 'curves' in a sense.

 

John (Crosley)

John, I wouldn't really worry about other people's ratings, If you want top ratings, and tons of comments post nudes! Kidding aside, I am really hung up on night street shooting myself, handheld, and I think the warm coloration that tungsten lighting provides really sets a mood for colour film. I think the whole ratings system is a sham, A low rating should always be accompanied by a comment...... but they rarely are, this should simply tell you the person rating you lowly doesn't have an articulate reason to do so, therefore the rating is moot... this is a forum, not a competition, after all... The one accessory one should not be without when shooting handheld at 1/10th or slower is Tom Abrahamsson's soft release button, ... check his site out sometime, cheers, and that is a great photo. Harv

I somewhat agree and somewhat differ.

 

Raters can be quite quixotic sometimes in evaluating photos, but I had two scenes, almost identical, of a farm covered with plastic, in which three farm workers were on a hilltop, but in one the figures were up, down and up, while in the other they were down, up and down (stating whether or not they were 'erect') They were grouped as three and it was a pleasing photo.

 

The photos, somewhat different, actually almost scored identically, though posted months apart and no reference was made to the other that I can recall and even if there were, it probably would have made no difference -- who's going to 'fix' ratings to make scores identical.

 

The fact is ratings are a 'popular' 'popularity' contest. That's all.

 

But 'popularity' is important to know sometimes, especially if one is planning or considering turning pro, as I am. I need to know what people will look at and what will 'sell' and what will not, which is why I post such a great range of things/PN is the greatest test audience in the world for photos, I think.

 

Are ratings a sham? If one wants to evaluate artistic merit, this is my highest scoring photo of three posted today, yet in my opinion the least 'original' and maybe the second best, while the best has the absolute lowest scores. So I disagree with the raters, but I frequently do; it's kind of my 'sport'.

 

And I seldom, if ever, get upset, just amused by ratings and raters. After all, it's mostly newbiew who are doing the ratings and a few tried and true members.

 

When a photo gets singled out for ratings by a bunch of raters with the PN logo next to their names, then I sit up and take notice, however. Then I know I've pleased an extra special audience.

 

And my post probably is either very good or very original or both.

 

John (Crosley)