Midnight Supper (Dinner with the Models) II

Some people lust to 'hang out' with models (mannequins as they are

known in France/Europe) and this homeless guy in San Francisco after

midnight is no exception. He has brought his 'midnight supper',

parked his wheelchair, and has decided to have post-midnight supper

with the models in front of one of San Francisco's tonier clothing

stores; FCUK! (clothing brand, please note) Your good faith

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

John,

 

Very interesting photo and story behind it. Thanks for sharing!

 

And unbelievably hard to photograph, too. It involved numerous trips around an eight-block area with my auto, hiding my camera and shooting through my front windshield. I regard this as one of my most interesting street shots.

 

Technical problems related to shadows/background detritus and necessary photoshopping kept it from being posted until now -- it always has been a 'must post' for me, regardless of whether viewers like it or not.

 

I feel strongly about it.

 

Imagine this guy, handicapped, and wanting company so much, he has to have supper with the mannequins -- how lonely can you get for female companionship -- especially the pretty kind? And those probably are all his worldly possessions on the back of his wheelchair . . . too, as San Francisco is finallly tackling its huge homeless population. Vagrancy laws are outlawed and San Francisco has a great park for sleeping, as well as numerous shelters, which are ignored by the hard corps homeless population in part because of strict rules.

 

I'm glad you stopped to comment.

 

John (Crosley)

HA! ok, I'm a bit dyslexic and can't spell my name half the time and saw this in the thumbnail form and went WHAT?

 

(sigh)

 

So, you got my attention!

 

I actually hate and think both words are awful with the cu or uc as they look the same to me. But I digress. This is supposed to be about the picture right?

 

Or is it?

 

I do find it very interesting that this man in the wheelchair is eating his midnight snack in the LIGHT of shops display window. This is more of a story than even a picture. I like the colors and all but the story is incredible.

 

This is what I would call a great story picture for a magazine and I personally think you should STILL be out there doing this kind of work! This is what you are good at.

 

I do have a problem with the same thing you mentioned before and that was the shadows and reflection and such but that is not what this picture is about.

 

It is the story and the way he eats there with his "girls".

 

This is a great picture and I think you captured it perfectly and you really should start showing these to some important people!

 

Who they are, I don't know but I know I am not one of them! ~ :) ~ micki

 

 

You are a very important person.

 

Over 30 million 'views' have been made of my photos and I'm sure a substantial number were made by you -- no not millions by you or even thousands, but careful viewers who took the time to have a look -- almost all being, to my mind, very important people (and you are even more important, for reasons I needn't elaborate).

 

Yes, I, as all potential consumers, did a double take on the word 'ck' 'kc' which is why they used it; to garner attention -- can their brand be 'that' much better?

 

So why not just use a 'gimmick'. It sure helped the photo which already has its 11 rates despite not being so high.

 

You are right; it tells a story, and you misunderstand about my NOT doing this sort of thing; I took up photography long after any troubles or difficulties I had; it's part of my therapy.

 

It has helped me considerably, too; as the satisfaction of just one good capture is worth five happiness pills -- this especially so.

 

And I am about to show this and other works to 'important people' -- with the help of Dennis Aubrey, also of this service, who is helping me get an introduction and part of the reason I'm returning to the US tomorrow from Ukraine and it's part of the reason I have an assistant - we're cataloging, organizing and copying hard drives to disks and making everything shipshape so everything can be marketed efficiently.

 

It's a huge job with a terabyte of more of photos distributed on 5 terabyte hard drives -- most as backups -- distributed around the world for safety's sake -- just read in my comments about the photographer who lost much of his output when he couldn't be present in a move, and it was lost, or meet a friend of mine whose girlfriend destroyed his entire life's work in a fit of pique.

 

I learn from such things and right now, I'm immune from such catastrophes -- with hard drives -- DVDs in albums, etc., approaching completion and in safe places with people who KNOW WHAT to do in case something happens to me, and who are financed in case I cannot continue, so my work will be carried on.

 

Because I also judge it 'important' in parts.

 

Lots is just so-so and not important at all, but some is just plain 'important', regardless of ratings and I'll try to get it into museums, galleries and break into agencies in the coming few months.

 

If anyone knows of any leads to same, let me know (or contact Dennis Aubrey for me, since I cannot take telephone calls in Ukraine.) My e-mail address is johncrosley (insert @ sign) photo.net and I review it frequently. If no answer, and it gets shunted into 'spam' -- try again, and send from a different e-mail address; I answer all my mail, or contact me through a comment here.

 

I'm hardly a good Photoshopper, and the rules here say I have to do my own Photoshopping, but if some of my work were Photoshopped well, I think it would hold up well, just as many famous photographers used professional printers.

 

Who said you had to do your own printing? Photoshopping is essentially printing. The man who does the little printing I do, says my prints are 'so easy' because they're always Photoshopped correctly he has to do no manipulation in his machine.

 

But I want perfection and since my output is so voluminous, there is so little time to take photos (unlike early 8 x 10 photographers who labored hours in the darkroom and took 3 shots a day or 10 a week and maybe a few hundred or thousand in a lifetime, I do hundreds of thousands, and need time to sort and preview them and make new ones -- sometimes I can get ten to 20 good ones in a day and a few keepers a week -- real keepers and several lifetime keepers in a month.

 

All while going to the restaurant, the store, crossing a plaza, etc. Just normal stuff. Going for a stroll.

 

Take the case of the man who set himself on fire the other day. Emerged basically unsinged, but there he was, shirtless, rolling in flames, as I walked to dinner at night.

 

I photographed him and some day, I'll post him with his body surrounded by flames, his mouth frozen in his (temporary) agony, from which he suffered no real burns (it's a trick of course, but a good one, and there's nothing fake about the flames or the chance of major burns -- no, not the M*A*S*H kind.

 

You just never know how many captures you would miss until you take one or two cameras with you everywhere. Then you'll be amazed (especially if those cameras are f 2.8 or 'faster', are zoom, and you preset the iso before every change in light level).

 

Micki, you are important to me.

 

Without viewers like you, I would not be taking photographs.

 

Without feedback like yours, the joy would vastly be lessened.

 

(my surgery was in about 2000, in case it's of any interest; I'm a rolling stone/no moss under my aching feet.)

 

John (Crosley)

A really beautiful shot, John! Best regards, Ruud.

My expression and now my travels and instead of watching TV I search the pictures here on PN to find what people have spent their time preparing for others to look at.

 

I feel if they found it important to post then I should find it important to look at.

 

If something makes me stop to look at it and catches my eye I will stop and look and then I will try to look at their portfolio and find something else different that also looks eye catching to me.

 

Then I have my friends and peers I have met that have encouraged me and helped me learn how to take better photo's.

 

I am glad that you are goin go get your stuf organized and such. I too am starting to print and get things off my other computers and finally organized and printed from other hard drives (we have a total of eight computers, four new and our old including my old lap top). We are a house of the computer age and NOT one to watch TV but a house where the kids make A+ and study advance stuff for fun while still playing and talking and IMing (fun stuff with their friends and me from their rooms). And a husband who's IQ is far beyond me but who still needs me whenever he needs anything scripted or WEB person and know my way around pretty good.

 

When I see a picture like this I count my blessings and remember that I not only spoil my kids but I need to remember to make them see things like this on a regular basis.

 

Even tho they work for what they get (they did pay for most of their own computers with their own money) they don't get to see a man in a wheelchair eating food like they would when they lived in DC here in our neighborhood.

 

SUBURB ~ nope.

 

I will show them this picture in the morning. Hope your travels went well. ~ micki

I think maybe you can appreciate how difficult this shot was to get -- the guy saw me parked during his first foray in front of the window, and he was in the wrong spot, so I moved on (eight blocks or so to 'go around the corner and back' because of traffic patterns).

 

I came back and he was there, but still in the wrong position -- still too far away, but it looked like might be in front of the window, and still wary, so on I moved again.

 

Twice more before I got to him as he chowed down on dinner with the mannequins -- like some big shot producer or entertainer, except, of course, these mannequins are not a euphemism for 'models' -- they are mannequins in the U.S. sense -- just store window 'dummies'.

 

For someone who wrote above that this photo tells a story -- it certainly does, and also about my doggedness.

 

I sensed that he was going to come in proper juxtaposition with these mannequins, but he was very wary, and it took maybe 20 minutes (and my circling the area four times) before he settled down to his meal.

 

The rest is above.

 

I'm glad you liked it.

 

Dinner with a heavy dose of pathos.

 

John (Crosley)

Good for you -- as the song said 'Teach Your Children Well . . . ' (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young), and you appear to be doing just that.

 

I could easily have guessed IQs but a high IQ will get one a MENSA certificate and a job at the local post office -- where it seems there are an unusual number of MENSA members, but then I remember Einstein worked for the Swiss Patent Office (in his pre-Princeton, pre-everything else days).

 

This is a very touching photo in many ways - it's about hunger, homelessness, family (lack thereof), the need to connect (however bizarrely), about mental health, and you can go on from there. I see it, as I said to Ruud Albers above, as one full of pathos. (the sign doesn't hurt it either, as it immediately draws the eye to it . . . thank the ad guys for small favors)

 

In fact, if one re-arranges the letters of the clothing brand, one can just caption this guys life and the photo with that one word, adding an exclamation point, can't one?

 

At least he's in San Francisco; elsewhere in the world, he's probably be dead, an alcoholic (if he's not one), in prison, or living under some house, possibly eating rats he catches (there's a thought, isn't it? And it's entirely possible in other cultures, but not in the good old US of A.

 

But watch out, funding cuts are hurting the Medic-Aid program and other humanitarian/welfare programs according to new data from the South (news item) and doubtless cannot help in San Francisco either, which has a huge homeless population, since the cops are limited in how much they can roust them for being poor (vagrancy laws having long been outlawed).

 

Before, the cops would just run such people out of town, until the Supreme Court ruled 'you have a right to be broke', a message many mayors and cops have not gotten, in part because a large percentage of such people cannot stay within other, reasonable founds of law, and in part because it's almost impossible to exist without money (try finding a public toilet in San Francisco to urinate in . . . . especially 'after hours' and if there is one, the addicts will take if over, and even shoot up in it and then fall into torpor inside.

 

There are no easy solutions, unfortunately.

 

I wish there were.

 

You can put such people into shelters, but the shelters have (1) violence and (2) strict rules about staying beyond the meal and sleep time, so they literally 'throw you out' at daybreak or thereafter. They also impose such strict rules that many such people cannot live with them and choose instead to chance the streets.

 

San Francisco attracts such people because it's Metropolitan, rather warmish year around, tolerant (predominantly renters who are one step from being on the streets themselves) and quite liberal, and judges are drawn from the same sorts of people.

 

And many such people are 'homeless vets' who were not done a favor by serving in Viet Nam, Afghanistan, Iraq i and Iraq II, and an increasing number of those with blown off limbs are gonna be appearing from Iraq II, I think (you can't possibly have figured it out first from reading it here, can you?)

 

So (insert name of clothing brand).

 

I'm glad you are teaching your children well.

 

Travels were fine; no problem at all; up in one country, down 8,000 miles later.

 

John (Crosley)

Hi John,

 

this is another emotion-stirring picture. Which is your approach in photographing people? "Studying" your work you must be very much at ease with others, getting in touch, talking to them, throwing a bridge. Photographing people means getting into relationship with the subject. I you (if I) are passionate about the subject, the picture will show this.

 

But you also take "secret" pictures of people, without them noticing. Shouldn't be always easy, since your Nikon DX2 is too big to be overlooked.

 

You must be very patient too, spending quite some time on a location, where "something" might happen sometime.

 

Your photography is really a joy and a source of knowledge and inspiration.

 

Luca (mr)

There is no 'correct' way to photograph on the 'street'. One just has one goal in mind -- to get the photo.

 

If that means walking up to a person, pretending to shoot the building across the street by aiming up high, then lowering the camera for an instant to include them, then so bet it, especially with an ultra-wide zoom, which will catch people at the periphery, without their even realizing it, for people instinctively (and wrongly) have a view of what a lens's 'field of view' is. That can work to your benefit.

 

Sometimes, I'll just walk up to subjects arguing and photograph the argument; and they'll be so engaged, they couldn't care less about me, or those in political discussions.

 

Sometimes, as above, it requires discretion, and simply parking, and raising and lowering one's photographic equipment, pre-focused, with the iso preset, auto exposure right on, means that you'll get the capture no one else will.

 

And patience has its virtues. When I saw this guy, he was headed towards this fabulous backdrop but it took him the better part of 20 minutes to haul out his 'midnight supper'. Since he previously had spotted me, that required I drive away, and find a new place to park (around the corner, but still visible) on no less than four occasions (and the traffic circulation there meant about eight blocks, and in any of those four trips, he could have disappeared).

 

So, this was a stakeout.

 

I just KNEW he was going to park in front of this fabulous window.

 

The midnight supper was an add-on that I hadn't anticipated, but it was just all too delicious, from a photographer's point of view.

 

I recently wrote to worthy subscriber Matt Vardy in comments under one of my photographs about the various plans, tricks, devices, etc. that I use -- a real litany, which changes from moment to moment.

 

I'll even walk up to a likely subject, and stick a camera in his/her face, take my picture and hold out my hand and introduce myself, as though that were the most natural thing in the world and show them their photo; the surprised people almost uniformly react with gentleness, but then I'm not photographing that way in downtown Oakland which has a high murder rate, even if one only wears the wrong (gang) colors.

 

(addition with edit): And as a white guy, photographing black people in the US poses one of the greatest challenges, for its almost universally assumed that as a photographer I'm 'Whitey' and 'I'm intruding' on someone's privacy who's black far more than anyone who's white . . . which is an absolute fallacy --- I'm an equal opportunity intruder.

 

I get the most outrageous looks when I actually tried (for a while) to show black people respect they said they wanted by actually asking them if I could take their photograph. They looked at me as though I were the Ku Klux Klan from Mars . . . . so outrageous did they take such a suggestion and so offended they were that they had even been singled out to be photographed . . . . it's a shoulder chip that many of our ancestors helped place there, I'm afraid, as I just returned from photographing a Pentacostal (black) mionister, who thoroughly enjoyed my photographs and photography session there on the street (and all those Russian Pentacostalists who have emigrated to the U.S. or remain in Russia/Ukraine are gonna be REAL surprised when they realize that their Pentacostal religion was founded by a black man in Atlanta -- something few know, or could easily come to terms with, on account of ingrained Russian/Ukrainian racial stereotypes.

 

It's an unchoreographed dance, to be able to do this thing called street photography. Maybe one starts with a tele, observing people from afar, or goes to where people expect to get photographed -- say Disneyland, or a parade or a political rally and uses a more normal or wide angle lens. Whatever works, really.

 

As one gets more comfortable (and more glib and comfortable with the fact one is NOT stealing images *or souls* but recording them for all mankind) then one develops a sort of righteousness in what one is doing, of course not every frame is 'righteous' in itself, but overall, there is a certain righteousness to 'street photography' when it reveals certain innate 'truths' about mankind.

 

Sometimes when I have my (Russian) assistant with me, she'll follow me, and to the poor, give small handouts, but not associated with me in any way. (I don't want a reputation as a 'soft touch' or people will be posing for me, which is the antithesis of 'street' photography.)

 

It's a skillset which develops over time. I refer anyone who reads this to the biographical statements of Gary Winogrand, street photographer extraordinarire, who shot almost exclusively with a wide angle in New York City (and a few other places). He took hundreds of thousands of rolls, often pumping the subject's hand with his outstretched hand, according to witnesses.

 

I sometimes do the same; othertimes I am entirely clandestine -- whichever suits the capture.

 

News experience helps, as people expect to be photographed; slip in with news photographers at a parade or rally or even a sporting event and you'll see how your presence is 'taken for granted' (if you have pro looking equipment and appear to know how to use it).

 

Best to you and thanks for the nice comment.

 

John (Crosley)

 

 

 

 

fabulous fabulous capture John. Thank you for taking the time to get this shot and share it with the rest of us. And bravo to the human spirit and this man who seems to be able to make lemonade out of life.

Thanks a lot. I just wonder of this man's 'lemonade' is connected with 'reality' or not. Does he 'know' they're just mannequins, or does he have some particular ideas of 'friendliness' with them that he has to share with them at nearly 2:00 a.m.?

 

I suppose the final tests are whether he's happy and whether he's harmful.

 

God knows, he certainly is outside the 'norm' -- to shoot this kind of shot, you have to almost be an expert in 'abnormal psychology'.

 

;~)

 

John (Crosley)

Another great shot that you are rightly proud of John!

 

For me its the contrast between the bright consumer dream with hundreds of dollars to splash out on a designer label, versus the harsh realities of life on the street, junk food, cold, disdain and never a chance to enter that "dream life" which is so pushed in his face. When I first went to the US I was shocked by the homelessness problem, particularly in SF but as in all good things, the UK has quickly caught up.

 

Social comment at its finest.

We didn't have a 'homeless problem' that was visible in the US when we had 'vagrancy' laws, which made it a crime to be 'aimlessly about' with no money.

 

Police jailed you or sent you on your way.

 

That ended when the US Supreme Court said one of our freedoms was to wander 'aimlessly about with no money' and so the bums came out of the woods, or by the train tracks and bad districts into the good districts, panhandling and living on the street.

 

San Francisco has been a magnet because they gave money (from state and federal governments), was such a beautiful place to panhandle, and never got too cold -- in winter at least).

 

So bums are a perennial problem. Mayor Gavin Newsome, a good-hearted mayor with some skills has come out with a program of offering help -- and far less money, called 'Care, not Cash' and we'll see how it works.

 

There are shelters for homeless people but it requires good behavior and no drinking (and no pets) and many just can't live with those restrictions -- they give up their 'rights' when they enter those places, and many value their 'rights' way more than they value their own physical well-being, although shelters can also be a dangerous place.

 

Seattle has a new experiment where they provide housing, but let the bums drink in their rooms and then try to intervene, called 1811 Lakeview residence in its downtown, Denney area, and it may be successful as the bums don't have to rush to do their drinking and with a roof over their heads, the cost of medical intervention seems to be minimized a little, perhaps more over the long term of this new experiment.

 

Once again, my comments have turned into a long discourse on the subject -- a very good result arising from taking such photos. It is not my intent to start social dialogue with such photos -- or better yet -- a particular social dialogue.

 

It's just in the nature of the photos I take, that they will generate comments; as I don't ignore much, and find grist for my photographic mill in EVERY part of human intercourse.

 

(I take pretty girl photos too, but just don't post them, usually)

 

In fact, I'd just as soon have been taking photos of these women (real life) than this photo, maybe, but ANYBODY can take a photo of a pretty girl. Hiding out in one's car, driving around blocks, hiding one's photo equipment and that one is photographing, is not easy, but I'm driven when I see a potential good capture.

 

I took an evening's worth of not so good photos, just to get this one good one, but he calculus was worth it, in my view.

 

In a lifetime calculus, one can be remembered for taking one good photo or a series of good photos, no matter how badly the rest of the photos turn out.

 

I just wish I had a Photoshop staff to work on my photos; it's too time-consuming for me. I liked it when you could just turn film over the Costco and get good prints . . . then I could photograph away.

 

And each photo must be Photoshopped together because of the type of work I do; even if just to enhance brightness and adjust levels -- apply my favorite (shadow/highlight filter) adjustment and then sharpen a little most times, as all digital photographs require sharpening (according to Shutterbug Magazine).

 

However, I ran into a guy at Seattle's Glazer's photo sales company who had a new Leica M8 digital camera. He said that although the camera had a number of quality control issues relating to 'mechanics/electronics', including auto balance color, that its optics were so perfect (he had all Leica's lenses already) that everything was so pin sharp he never had to sharpen at all!!!!

 

He said the quality of the photos was simply amazing, if one ignores certain problems that can be worked out over time.

 

(His had a sensor in which an entire line of pixels did not work -- which meant his was back to the Leica service center for sensor replacement or some other work. That being said, if you own Leica lenses and shoot black and white or use 'Camera Raw' in Photoshop to adjust your color balance, he said it was an excellent camera.)

 

Ivan, I live for comments such as you made. It can be hard to explain the compulsion to drive about in the world's possibly most beautiful city, taking photos of bums, but that is what I do sometimes. I don't have any photos of famous landmarks except COIT tower and Lombard Street (claimed to be the world's crookedest), but I do have photos that 'define' the city in another way, I think. I must return and take more, possibly in a few days.

 

Thanks so much for your nice, flattering comment.

 

John (Crosley)