Girls Will Be Girls

These two girls, during a party (see their dresses and their

mother's shoes up the stairs), engage in some girl-girl horseplay; a

telling minor moment in childhood. 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 is a beautiful photo. Full of color life and happines

HA!

 

Here you go,

 

Say, say little playmate

Come out and play with me

I need a friend you see

Such special friends we'll be

 

 

Chorus:

Say, say little playmate

Come open up your door

And we'll be special friends forevermore

 

 

Say, say little playmate

Come out and play with me

We'll have such fun, you'll see

Climb up my apple tree

 

 

 

I could not resist! This picture just brought back so many memories and is such a wonderful picture with the colors that match in the dress and the wall to the brick and the shirts. The playfull play of the skirts is wonderfull. The way that the mothers shoe is showing is just perfect as it matches there shoes perfectly and it shows that one day they to will be wearing big girl shoes just like her. This is a wonderful capture and all the way fromthe flowers in the back to the laughter on the girls faces is just pure JOY!

 

You can not buy this kind of joy, this kind of joy is only seen or held in a hug. You captured it with your camera. BRAVO!! :) ~ 7/7 ~ SMILES ~ micki

just so you know... LOL ~ new format ~ :)

Thank you. The colors were most propitious. I take a lot of photos, and when I took this, it was a standout -- the action of the girls was wonderful and very telling.

 

That their clothes matched the surrounding elevated it just that much more.

 

John (Crosley)

The 'edit' function has been taken away overnight, or I would have edited your name's spelling properly. My apologies.

 

John (Crosley)

 

I regard this photo as one of the wonderful 'little photos' that tells a story about human behavior.

 

Two girls are outside fooling around, passing time while the adults are having a Sunday party (see momma's or the adult woman's party shoes, all pretty on the floor up at the top of the steps -- those are not house shoes), and the girls are all dressed up.

 

This is a Sunday in a region of Buenos Aires and I am on the way to the airport in a taxi with my camera in my lap, stopped in traffic at a traffic light, and the girls are fooling around, while I'm photographing them, looking for what poker players call a 'tell' -- some distinguishing physical action that 'gives away' their true nature.

 

This time, (as opposed to many) it happened, AND I caught it well, with a very good color background, considering how they are dressed -- with matching (almost) colors.

 

It's almost as though a photo stylist set this photo up.

 

It tells a 'little' story, and as such, it's one of those 'little photos' I'm pretty proud of, and that are the sort that I see and I know no other photographer ever saw before and never will see again (they might see something else, but not this one, not ever.)

 

And playful girls do lift other girls' skirts -- to embarrass them, because that's a big 'no, no' from the parents, and that is sure to bring a rebuke if known.

 

So, how else to misbehave a little and get a 'rise' out of the friend/possibly sister?

 

A pretty little scene in my view/captured as well as one can from a moving taxi window starting out from a dead step at a stoplight on the way to the airport.

 

Lesson: Always have a camera in your lap or nearby, adjustments made for ambient light and appropriate shooting, nearby, so that you can get a shot like this.

 

Bless your poem, Micki F. (and you).

 

John

The 'that' from Amazon that Micki F. referred to was an advertisement from a photo retailer (unnamed here, as it has gone away and I am sure they are not paying for a continuing advertisement) . . . yuck to have it in the comments column -- that could have me rethinking my involvement with Photo.net to have my comments as direct shills for photo ads; get ready for a letter writing campaign, Micki.

 

It was extremely intrusive and defeated the purpose for which I post my photos; if I wanted to post my photos and have THEM be surrounded by advertisements, I'd submit them to a local newspaper or a wire service, which would gobble them up AND pay me.

 

John (Crosley)

HA... Whew, I got really tired of looking at that thing! It was NOT pretty and had no contrast and bad colors!

 

I am also glad I can now edit my comments as that was very irritating.

 

I'm glad you liked the little poem. This playful game they were playing got my duaghter in MAJOR trouble when she was about this age as I caughter her through the window showing off her skirt. YEP! Didn't think mom was looking. They all do this at about this age. That is why it is such a great picture.

 

And yes, my camera is ALWAYS ready to go and is in my purse or my pocket since mine is a pocket camera. I take pictures of everything everwhere. Just not of people as I am to shy. Yes me, too shy. Not the husband.

 

I will enjoy your pictures for now. ~ micki

Please see my response under critiques under 'Carnival!!!???' - it's important.

 

I enjoy your contributions greatly.

 

John

A delightful scene and how fortunate you were to have the colors ideally suited to the girls' clothes.

Sometimes the Photo Gods just smile propitiously.

 

Can't really explain it otherwise than to say that if you shoot enough, you'll 'see' subliminally these things, (the colors and the playing girls as I did) and be drawn to them, focus on them, and eventually 'catch' them in some fairly predictable and girlish behavior, as here. (See above comment of Micki Ferguson about the predictability issue).

 

I'm pleased to have captured this. . . . . a one of a kind photo, I think.

 

Nice to hear from you.

 

John (Crosley)

Yes, experience is a great teacher, not only in looking through the lens, but, of course, in examining the results..what is good, what is bad, what works, what does not. And processing the image provides many lessons. In my own case, having a much longer exposure to drawing and painting than photography, I see the photographic images as reminiscent of a wide range of fine art impressions. Sometimes this leads me to a satisfying rendering and sometimes I deceive myself into a fruitless pursuit of rendering for its own sake. PhotoShop provides many seductive traps to the latter path. Nonetheless, it is an enchanting voyage, like Odysseus, sometime you encounter Polyphemus and sometimes Nausicaa.

And, sometimes, as critics may accuse me, (maybe too often for comfort), of drawing from Narcissus . . . perhaps?

 

I will try to be more humble, I think, except in expressing my opinion about which photos I like and for which reasons -- for those I am entitled to my opinions -- I W O R K E D for them. (to paraphrase the old Smith Barney commercial parodying the 'Paper Chase' movie and television show).

 

Editing is a vital function, of course, and I think maybe I am a better editor, many times, than photographer (for I think I am a pretty good photo editor, having made my living at it once, but then again, I am reviewing all my photos for three years past to determine which are 'winners' I might have missed, and there are a few of them).

 

I wish I had a schooled photo editor who could review my images for such 'hidden' content -- who knows, I might have some wonderful photos that have escaped my perusal, which I might have thought about processing at one time but got lost in the overwhelming burden of the new photos I take.

 

I actually need a whole staff just to process what it is I take.

 

The young Russian woman, Anya, pictured twice (in McDonald's in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, in a black and white photo suggesting viewers look closely at 'the background' with a couple smooching' shows Anya and another photo with her sweater pulled over her nose in 'Faces' folder also shows her, with scads more to post) has undertaken to be my personal assistant for the time being, to assist me when I travel in Eastern Europe and also in preparing my photos for submission to galleries, museums, agencies, magazines, etc., as well as numerous other tasks and, indeed, just in cataloging them.

 

(You can't get any smarter or more capable than she, as well, or as good humoured, either; a true gem, for whatever time she stays with me as my assistant -- how lucky I was to have bumped into her in Red Square a year ago Christmas and to keep our communications open for such a surprisingly good and unexpected working relationship.

 

She can't travel outside the former Soviet Orbit until she gets a Russian passport, and we'll see after that, but I certainly have grown to depend on her in three short months (and she helps me with my photos too . . . ;-) (not a girlfriend, just an assistant of highest caliber who has the luckiest boyfriend in the world.)

 

I hope to take her to Argentina, as she seems now to have a little of the photography bug herself, and I can see her 'style' as she begins to frame a photo, and for that, almost read her 'photographic' mind as she sets to take a photo.

 

Ransford, I recently read in a high school publication from my graduation year of a guy who spent 35 years as a boiler inspector for my home state, and he said he planned now he was retiring to 'go to his dream mobile home on the Deschutes River, near Bend, Oregon to live out his retirement years.' or some such.

 

Well, I haven't ever inspected a boiler, but I've done lots of other things, and I'll be damned of they're gonna put me out to pasture to smell the flowers -- I'll 'shoot' the flowers first and everything else interesting that crosses my path.

 

Life has barely begun, so far as I can tell, in this incarnation.

 

And as that guy prepares to spend his waning years I'm just beginning to sprout a few grey hairs -- still blond (mousy, however) after all these years, and I couldn't even begin to tell you or anyone how I spent my day -- it would be unbelievable.

 

John (Crosley)

For reasons I can't explain, all my best friends are dead, except for the women, of course. Never thought I'd outlive these guys, but here I am. Seems to me I recall that Hokusai had made plans for his art up to the age of 120. Maybe that kept him going for 89 years. He's my role model (his woodblock prints are great, but his notebooks reveal his talent best). Maybe I should look for an assistant. Hey, that would make you my role model.

For reasons I can't fathom, I may be a role model for more people than one can imagine.

 

If you could see the stares than young Anya gets (the double and triple takes) and figure that we share an apartment or hotel two or three weeks a month, you'd know it's good for the blood pressure and whatever else ails me.

 

Alas, she has a much loved boyfriend in Moscow, whom she showers with attention, the text messages clicking away constantly, and the telephone often occupied. If you could see my divorcing wife, you'd understand my liking for lovely younger women (we'd be together except in her brain cancer disordered mind, I caused her brain cancer -- she's a world class beauty, and quite young and not only beautiful but amazingly intelligent).

 

If you could see me, however, you'd wonder exactly what draws such women to me . . . . others have and scratch their collective head. I scratched mine until it was bloody, then just gave up and figured it was my inveterate interest in practically everything that was 'catching', over good looks.

 

Anya certainly has the world's most wonderful disposition . . . bar none. A chance meeting has turned into what surely will be a lifelong friendship (my life, I am sure).

 

I can't speak (or write) highly enough about the personal characteristics of that young woman, and hope only that some day I don't have to eat my own words.

 

John (Crosley)