Into the Purse

A woman traveler examines her purse and contents at a bus stop at

Kyiv, Ukraine recently, silhouetted against a large lighted sign.

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

This photo was up for less than a minute before picking up a 3/4 rating. I checked the minute it hit my screen and the rating already was there.

A ratings 'bot?' (robot)

John (Crosley)

these ?people? are out there with nothing to SAY.

simple and elegant treatment. well done. jh

But not a bad photo or even a mediocre one in any case, and even if mediocre, entirely original (how many of these silhouettes have you seen with such a 'story' or 'detail' recently -- or ever?)

That's it in a nutshell.

The ratings system works fine for landscapes and family portraits, and even simple scenes, baby photos and a lot of other genres, but presented with something like this, it kind of breaks down. There are two 3/4s a 4/4 a 5/5 and a 6/6 indicating that this photo basically is presently unratable by the present system.

It's like saying the average between birth and death is 42, but you're either just born or about to die, and you're not 42. Either this is a pretty good photo or a pretty bad one, (or even a very good one), or else it's absolutely lousy and I should be denigrated just for posting it, depending on which rater's opinion you look at and whose opinion you poll.

It's certainly not a 'great' photo: I posted one of those the other day and it's got 32 comments (but only a 5/5 average if you can believe it, since many didn't understand it, but the raters who were members (and subscribers especially) piled on with positive critiques and high rates to bring up the low rates. That won't be the case with this photo, I'm sure.

I like it; I posted it; it'll stay and I'm proud to have taken it. Those who were around me when I took it, at night, thought it an excellent capture when few thought even any capture would be impossible.

In many ways, (when it's not acting racially discriminatory), the rating system can be amusing, but it's largely a popularity contest, and in the end the 'averages' for a photo like this mean little.

When placed with my larger body of work, it fits well; it fits right in, and I'm happy to have taken it. I'll be surprised if there's another photo very much like it anywhere.

Thanks for the kind comment.

John

a good silhoutte indeed!

regards!

You'll never know what I'll post next, in part because I don't know from one moment to the next what I'll focus on.

Just whatever interests me.

This was 'it' for the moment.

Maybe there'll never be another.

Thanks.

John (Crosley)

Your comment had me actually re-looking at my own photo. In the original, before I absolutely blew out any information in the greys, I might actually have seen her eyes, but I send it into totally black and white contrast, and it didn't take much, as it was almost entirely in silhouette.

It would be a mistake to take a silhouette photo, and try to present it with some gray scale or color information intact except under extraordinary circumstances. So, there I was, wondering whether there actually were 'eyes visible' per your comment, or if it were entirely symbolic, which it was.

One need only draw a line from her gaze into the purse, and one has an idea of her thoughts, too.

(With such a large purse, one also expects it to be full, doesn't one?)

Funny how much one can learn about a person from such a thing as a silhouette photo, taken at night, on a bus line.

I like your incisive comment.

John (Crosley)