Only She Saw (me shooting them shooting her)

me shooting them shooting her.

Super!

Nice! I love it Roger!

Thanks Kenrick and Angela and also for the high ratings. Saw too late that I hadn't ticked the "no rating" box. But it's kind of fun to look at the silly numbers - may do it more often. Thanks particularly for the input on the earlier version, Kenrick.

Roger, first, thanks so much for the thoughtful critiques you've done on some of mine. This kind of back and forth is really great! I'm going through your portfolio in order of what strikes my eye at first glance. Enjoying the process a lot as you have a wonderful variety of subjects and treatments and many that require a long look. This photo has a lot going for it. The action caught very candidly. The interested expressions on all the faces we can see. The geometry of the background. The mannequins in the window tying in the background both to the main subject and the guys below her. Even the yellows in the poster relate well to the yellow of the fire hydrant. Your exposure is great and it's a sharp, colorful, and alive scene. It is also very well composed for a street shot. All that said, I still think it's kind of a near miss, one of those shots that's just missing one particular thing to go from good to great. For me, that missing link here is some sort of connection, thematic or visual, betwen the woman in the poster and the guys on the street. For one thing, I don't get your title, as no one in the photo seems to be shooting her. The camera guy appears to be shooting the guys holding the newspapers and books. So I don't get a thematic or content connection of the guys to the woman in the poster other than that it's hovering over them, which is a great start, but--for me--only a start. Without such connection of content, a visual connection would help. For instance, if the guy all the way on the right and maybe, although not necessarily, one of the other guys, was wearing a bright yellow shirt comparable in strength to the the red shirt we see, there would be a nice visual trifecta among the hydrant, shirts, and poster with regard to a color connection. But without either connection, although the composition is great and the whole idea has wonderful potential, I'm not feeling that it all gets realized. Perhaps, even a woman over on the left as part of the group wearing a similar dress to one of the mannequins would do it. What I'm getting at here is not really meant to specify what you actually should have done, just give you my idea of the kind of thing it needs. For me, this type of shot wants to make the viewer say "ahh" or "right, of course" on some level, expressing that feeling of "I get it." That's not quite happening. --Fred

Good eye, Fred. They were actually shooting a low-budget film in which SHE was included, but I didn't get them shooting her. Will do an extensive critique on one of yours later this week when I have the time to do it justice. Thanks for this.