color -- then and now Mickey D's (Abroad)

Say what you will about Mickey D's (McDonald's), (and for the most

part in the USA it's earned), abroad where I am it's another story,

with fast service, fresh-cooked and hot foot, served by intelligent,

smiling and helpful people (like it was when I experienced my first

Mickey D's when I was a youth working my first summer job -- not at

Mickey D's). This is a scene from one such in Kiev, Ukraine, where

visiting Mickey D's is a 'luxury' because restaurant food itself is

a 'luxury' and American restaurant food has 'prestige' as well as

nearly everything else 'American'. (yes, even me ;-) Your comments

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

Nice picture John.

 

They are working so hard to ignore each other. And your white table in the center emphasizes that nicely.

 

Good capture, well seen.

 

 

Thanks Chas,

 

This is an entirely original photo that seems to have 'worked out'. How many 'empty table' photos have you seen posted, where the table separates two women, one of whom is quite lovely? Probably not any, I presume.

 

I was attracted by the girl/woman, right, as I dined on a cherry pie (perezhok) after a dinner at a nearby restaurant with model Nina (who was not partaking), and she urged me to take the pretty woman, right's, photograph, but has not yet learned I don't (always) just take a photo because a girl is pretty but to make or create a composition or to complete a composition.

 

Likely the girls (both) were trying to ignore me, as I moved right in front of the table, white, with my body atop a chair, and proceeded to pretend only to take a photo (camera raised upward) of the photo on the wall, knowing the two women/girls, were in the picture and waiting for them both to be in position.

 

Unhappily, the wide angle distorted and the horizon was not exactly level, so I had to rotate slightly, and also I had to trim the photo top to get the photo top 'level', but without ultra wide lens distortion, that would not have happened.

 

After two years of not even owning an ultra-wide lens, I am constantly with my ultra-wide (12 mm --- 18 mm film equivalent) Nikkor 12~24 mm zoom f 4, which is a supersharp lens for which I often forget to sharpen the capture, it's so sharp.

 

It's one of my two mainstays; the other is the 70~200 mm f 2.8 E.D. V.R. lens or on bright days or other days the 18~200 f 3.5~5.6 V.R.II Nikkor (the only single lens any photographer with one lens should have).

 

I am forever taking unusual photos -- because I see things differently, guided solely by my mantra: 'Keep all the interesting stuff within the four lines of the frame, and keep all the unintersting stuff out.'

 

All else is fair.

 

And my stuff ranges across the board, just as my interests do.

 

Although I prefer 'candid' as I like how scenes 'construct' and 'deconstruct' since it tests my ability to follow 'action' without being restricted to following 'sports' which bores me to tears.

 

I do like bird photography for the same reason as I like 'street' photography, and when there is no 'street' photography, I will sometimes head for a bird sanctuary where birds are flocking, since they move ultrafast.

 

Thanks, Chas, for commenting.

 

Looks like this was NOT a hit with raters, so it won't be seeing the top rated photos gallery. But I like it, and so did you, and that's good enough for me.

 

Thanks again.

 

John (Crosley)

Funny and good at the same time John!

Coming from maybe the best (and probably the hardest working) photographer on Photo.net.

 

Thanks, Tim.

 

John (Crosley)

The next day: the ratings have increased and apparently it 'was a hit with raters' or at least it has garnered high enough scores to gain the top-rated gallery, which is more than good enough for me, though it does not yet have enough scores to make my highest-rated list, and it seems, never will, although I hope I write too soon for this somewhat 'oddball' photo -- a photo dominated by 'blank' space or 'negative space' in the center -- a highly unusual compositional device.

 

John (Crosley)

is it that unusual? i really start to like this compositional trick, especially when it is brought to use (and executed - you perfectly included the table) so well. a hghly interesting and original shot.

I can't say for sure it's 100% original in the thesis of using a completely negative space center, but this photo never has been taken before, that's for sure.

 

And the use of a blank table, as a centerpiece, surrounded by two 'subjects' equidistant from the center line of the photo and with great symmetry in the photo is not something I recognize from before or anywhere else.

 

I try to make 'captures' and give little credence or care whether or not a type or sort of capture has been attempted before -- I just take the photo and if it seems to work in the viewfinder, that's my photo. Often they are original because that's what I do; twist and turn and contort myself sometimes to take photos where none ever have taken them before or of subjects in ways none have ever attempted or ways none ever have attempted. This is a case in point.

 

Like when I practiced law, I often invented new ways to accomplish things as well as ways to do the 'old things' different ways, because I wasn't allied with anyone and did it all myself (so I had no one to follow and did things by mastering the basics rather than looking in a 'rule book' of how to practice law 'by the numbers' but instead looked at what the 'law' required, and that generally was quite successful. I apply the same approach to photography, and especially happy I am not the product of some big photography school or studio or the acolyte of some 'name' photographer and spending my time trying to imitate that particular photographer (and always coming up short) instead of being the best me I can be. (apologies to that Wyoming lawyer, Gerry Spence, who always wears buckskin suits into Court and seems to win all his cases, for using his analogy).

 

I did have to 'rotate' slightly to get the table into 'synch' (complete horizontal), and to 'trim' the poster/photo top to eliminate distortion caused by an extreme wide angle lens.

 

So, this is a slightly cropped photo.

 

I was more pleased by this than I ever imagined when I first looked at it or when I took it. I thought it would just be another 'good attempt' to fill up a hard drive, rather than a photo that could be posted.

 

Thanks for your comment, florian.

 

John (Crosley)

The art inherent in every day if we only have eyes to see. Could it be that capitalism creates isolation? All dressed up and no where to go, who's more honest the Girls or the photo? Nice idea, nice technique, great shot.

Except to say thanks.

 

This photo is an 'American Original' from Ukraine . . . created by an American in an American restaurant with an American theme (from Ukrainian citizens).

 

Art is all around us; it's only for us to recognize it; that's my principle task in life -- that and to record it.

 

Thanks again, and for your thoughtful comment.

 

John (Crosley)

Except it turned out far better than I ever planned.

 

I was completely surprised at how well it turned out, especially with the addition of a little rotation and suppressing highlights through shadow/highlight filter to 'bring up' the background poster, which was a little washed out, thereby bringing it more 'equal' in luminescence to the rest of the scene, and therefore creating a sort of 'triptych' -- three separate scenes -- the woman, left, the woman right, and the scene behind, all seemingly separate as in some medieval work of art, set for an altarpiece (which is certainly in my subliminal mind how I got the idea in the first place, but somewhere very far removed from the present -- say 40 years or so).

 

I recommend for those interested in 'street' shooting the fine column in yesterday's Dick Cavett Column in the online New York Times on his history of humor and humor writing, and the numerous -- 30 or so -- comments that follow it, which seek to identify the process whereby the creative process (in humor writing and presentation) finds its roots. The same sort of process seems to have some relationship to 'street shooting' I think.

 

Recommended reading for anyone really interested in the 'skill' of street shooting and studying the skill (although I have an idea it can be taught and am actively seeking to 'learn' the skill of teaching it.)

 

And someday may be leading 'classes' in teaching 'street shooting' for advanced beginners through experts.

 

Anyone interested -- drop me a line. My e-mail address is on my bio page, and such classes could be held anywhere in the world as part of a travel seminar.

 

John (Crosley)

John: a great image.

This image (and its popularity with viewers -- as well as myself) is a great surprise.

 

I was just 'taking another image' (of several which I took, until I 'got it right' -- got the table mostly horizontal and 'to taste' before I walked away with my woman/girlfriend.

 

I dismissed it, especially because the poster, rear, was not as strongly colored, as here.

 

It's now slightly stronger colored, due to an adjustment in shadow/highlight filter, but not really much. It's my favorite filter.

 

Sometimes you 'see' things you don't even see.

 

Dick Cavett, the comedian wrote about 'creativity' in the context of comedy and comedy writing in a column in the New York Times a day or so ago, and it got many replies in the New York Times 'Opinionator' for its Internet supplement.

 

Several wrote about early TV comedian/brainstormer Steve Allen who was such a fertile genius who told jokes, was a TV host, wrote books, and did, it seems, just about everything.

 

A writer to the Cavett column recalled John Belushi of Saturday Night Live fame lampooning Steve Allen who played Allen in a spoof on that show. An interviewer noted that Allen, among numerous other things was 'writing a book' 'What's its plot, Steve?' asked the interviewer?

 

'I don't know, let's pick it up and look inside . . .' said Belushi playing Allen. . . . . who wrote so instinctively he might have been writing telepathically.

 

Maybe I take photos a little that way.

 

Though I'm trying to write down the ways and devices I use, to pass it on.

 

Thanks also for rating it so highly (I don't look until after I've written my comment. I'm glad it truly did please you.)

 

John (Crosley)

 

(I've got more photos -- tons of them, to upload. I'm a photo generating machine and if I ever get low, just send me out on the street for a few hours. If I come back empty-handed, that's a rare day, and a couple of hours usually fixes me for uploads for a week or so.)

 

Best wishes,

 

John

This is a really great one, John. In the picture within the picture we have harmony, but in the immediate picture we have what could be interpreted as a certain kind of iciness. Only the colors are warm.

 

Very good work.

 

--Lannie

I like to think I can take a pleasing photo in any genre, but 'original' is my roots, and of that, 'street' is where I began and where I hope to excell.

 

I continue to grow in 'female' photography, which I don't post, and maybe never will; I don't want there to be confusion, or for me to be confused and cater to high viewer numbers, scantily clad or nude women bring their own viewers, regardless of a photographer's ability, sometimes (no sleight to John Peri, who's fabulous as what he does . . . .)

 

I took a side trip up Washington State's Kalama River, a tributary of the mammoth Columbia, with its 'steelhead' fishery and 'drift boats' lazily floating down with fishermen, and hauled out my 70~200 and then my 200~400 f 4, as I had driven up a private drive next to the river, braved rolling my car into the river down a steep embankment and being 'lost' for several days possibly injured or dying, and took back some peeks of the fishermen agains a green river, over a fishing hole.

 

'This is true Photo.net stuf' I thought to myself, as I posted it.

 

Result: mediocre to poor ratings.

 

Something like this, truly original, taken after I ate a hamburger and a perezhok (cherry pie) -- pretty darned high ratings and although 'stetching myself' only for my own good,and not trying for anything -- just 'working out' for my own self and not trying to impress anyone.

 

It was almost by a fluke I posted this, as I had nothing else in color I wanted to post in this folder that was as good and this just said 'post me and see what happens'.

 

I have learned another lesson.

 

Be true to yourself.

 

(not too original, is it?)

 

John (Crosley)

 

 

I like your analysis.

 

Going it one better; there is harmony in the more desaturated rear photo; and more iciness in the present (also depicted in MY photo), for somewhat of a contradiction, a reversal or at least a 'twist'.

 

Of course, that is full in keeping with what you were saying, I think, but in more words than you used, and expands on your thoughts -- you just got me to thinking that this is more than a simple capture.

 

A photo within a photo with two 'subjects' or 'moods' -- that boosts my thoughts about this photo and maybe makes me understand why I liked it more than I understood and maybe why raters did also.

 

Thanks a lot!

 

John (Crosley)

 

P.S. I just took a look at your rating; I am glad you think it earned the highest of all ratings (as stated above, I never look when returning a comment, so I'm not influenced).

 

You seldom stop to rate here, and I'm especially flattered.

 

J©

You never know what I'll post next (sometimes I don't know until I click the 'upload' and 'browse' button and settle on a photo -- in fact that's most often the case).

 

And often I think 'oh, that's a 'GREAT' photo', and it turns out to be a ratings dud, and then one like this which I like, but have no expectations for, turns out to be a growing hit, like some sort of fungus -- it just sort of grows on you, even though there is no preconditioned 'taste' for it . . . since it's 'one of a kind' ('sui generis' in 'Latin' or legal Latin terms)

 

;~))

 

John (Crosley)

Everything works perfectly here, from the unorthodox composition to the toning. You do are the master of juxtapositions John!

I don't know how I came about it; it predated my photography.

 

From the moment I saw Wall Street, then the Statue of Liberty, where the tired, huddled masses gathered at nearby Ellis Island 'yearning to breathe free' and saw the Statue of Liberty was all green and understood that was the color of money -- dollars, I understood the power of juxtapositions.

 

I never could put that one into a photograph, or I would have, but I think somewhat symbolically, from time and again, and always have, I guess.

 

And, in my more practiced eye, I tend not to 'filter out' everything, as so many do -- I see 'everything' which makes me a poor attendee to a play, theater or concert, as I'm forever focusing on the backstage and sidestage stuff rather than the performance . . .

 

I 'see' so many things.

 

Differently, I guess.

 

Thanks for the kind remark.

 

John (Crosley)

 

In a comment to a recent Dick Cavett column in the 'New York Times Online' 'Opinionator' column, a reader wrote in that 'Groucho' Marx, the famous comedian, once said from an early age 'I listen funny'.

 

Well, from an early age, at least before I got my first camera, I was attuned to life's contradictions -- it doesn't necessarily make for he happiest view of life, as one is always making contrasts, but it does make for some pretty interesting photography . . . .

 

"I 'think' symbolically' . . . might have been how Groucho words would have phrased it, or "I soitinly 'think' symbolically" to get the cadence right.

 

And as I get better and better at it . . . I get happier and happier with what I see as my mission in life . . . to make such captures (and help lift others' awareness of life's contradictions -- and sometimes absurdities, which are often inherent within those contradictions . . . which may be one reason Henri Cartier-Bresson wanted to call himself a 'surrealist photographer'.)

 

I think possibly that's what he meant . . . even though in general he embraced the 'surrealist movement' whatever that is/was.

 

I don't tend to 'define' myself with a movement of any kind . . . and would rather be 'sui generis' -- one of a kind.

 

A Renaissance photographer if you will.

 

John (Crosley)

The two women here are illuminated by Mickey D's overhead light, but also from giant windows, right, from this second-story dining room, that illuminates the whole room.

 

They provide illumination from the side (sidelighting), that 'models' and provides 'relief' for the features of the women, for a most felicitous 'look' for the two women/girls.

 

It's a precious kind of light, from shadow in the very late afternoon, when the sun is yellowing, but it's in shade so it has some blue mixed back in with it and the overall effect is 'white' -- mixing red and blue in equal measures which matches with the good photo quality indoor lighting of Mickey Ds.

 

One couldn't ask for better lighting and a better time of day to take such a photo -- very late in the afternoon/evening in this far northerly part of this northerly country -- nearly as far north as the far north Moscow, which is to the East and not much farther North.

 

Right at the time this was taken, daylight was 17-1/2 hours a day+ according to the site Weatherunderground.com, which is seminal in such things.

 

It will be longer by June 21, the year's longest day.

 

John (Crosley)

As always you find a good composition anywhere, great eye.

That's my goal.

 

It only happens a few times out of hundreds.

 

Those are the ones I post and the rest languish on my terabyte hard drives, unseen, reminding me of my mortal status ;-))

 

Would that it were different.

 

But I do like this one, very much, because it 'came from nowhere', after I ate a 'cherry pie' like they used to serve at Mickey D's in the USA which you can't buy anymore. . .

 

And a 'diet cola' to balance things off.

 

Or so I like to fool myself.

 

Thanks so much.

 

John (Crosley)

Funny so say that, earlier in the week was putting my success rate at about 1 out of every 250 photos taken. That's if I am lucky. Yours seems to be much higher. Always a pleasure to view your portfolio.

I used to take more photos of different things, hoping one would stick; and hoping to the law of averages, I'd get one or several that were not only interesting but 'good photos'.

 

Sometimes I'd succeed, and a few times I succeeded 'in spades'. Other times my shooting was 'ordinary', but I learned to shoot everything 'interesting' I saw, in the hopes that what I found interesting my viewers also would find interesting.

 

I often was very correct.

 

Now that I have Photo.net's viewership ratings and comments as a guide, and my own intuition and experience, plus that of many experts, I have learned to select my subjects with a little more care, and those that I do pursue, I pursue with more photographs.

 

I have developed the idea (assuredly known by the early magazine photographer/photojournalists) of watching a scene as it 'constructs' and 'deconstructs' with the idea to catch it before or as it 'constructs'.

 

If you see a girl kiss a guy and hear some 'hooting' in the distance, there might be a photo opportunity there, with uninhibited people, so I move in that direction. A scene might be more likely to develop or 'construct'.

 

If the girl kisses the guy and an old woman walks in front of them and gives them an awkward glance (or one of them looks over the shoulder at the other and interrupts the smooching to give the old crone an awkward, miffed, or otherwise disturbed glance, you have the development of a scene worthy maybe of being captured.

 

The old crone walks by and the scene deconstructs.

 

Perhaps words are exchanged, and the scene then continues to construct.

 

Maybe a bottle is thrown or words exchanged and fists upraised (I've seen it happen -- even in my direction, which is hard to 'capture' -- no one ever means to hit me -- they're too drunk to accomplish it anyway.

 

Eventually (so far at least) everyone goes their separate way, and the scene then deconstructs.

 

I keep pushing the shutter release throughout now, instead of looking for one 'perfect' moment.

 

An early Leica photographer with a 'winder' film advance would have been in a pickle.

 

A Graphlex photographer would have been pleading for God to stop events as that photographer inserted a slide with new film or reversed a film slide and removed the dark slide to make a second exposure. I have a 5 frames per second Nikon D2X(s) and a Dw200 (2 of each) and I am forever carrying at least two of them, with a short zoom and a long zoom, with 8 gig flash cards, and a pocket full of them (just in case Al Qaeda strikes again. Former acquaintance Eddie Adams of Pulitzer Fame (for the shot on Life Magazine of the Saigon Police Chief shooting to death in the head a Viet Cong prisoner -- or at least an 'accused prisoner' -- which helped turn the course of the war against the United States, was AT the World Trade Center either WITHOUT his cameras, or without film (I don't know for sure which, but he could not take photos of the most famous event in present day American history. He had been dogged by that earlier image and his change to overcome it had been denied him by failure to come equipped.

 

He died soon thereafter, a photographer haunted forever by an image he learned to hate.

 

(I met him when we both worked at Associated Press photos, at 50 Rockefeller Center, New York, when I was a fledgling photo editor, a job I had for about a year, but which I worked two shifts, usually and got paid for both under union rules (time and a half for the second shift). I quit to quadruple my salary and write for a business magazine (and take photos.)

 

Then I went to law school, having given up photography.

 

I put my cameras into storage; some were stolen and replaced.

 

I hardly took an image for 30 years.

 

The rest is recent history and a growing experience for me.

 

I wonder what kind of man I'd be if I'd continued as a photographer when I was given the photographer's job as a young man of 22 with AP?

 

No one will ever know, but I bring a lifetime of experience to my photos now, plus the ability and confidence plus the world knowledge to write extensively and with great confidence.

 

I hope that shows in my photos.

 

When I take a portrait, if often is at 1/10th second at f 2.8 at ISO 1600 in after dusk gloaming and I have to take five to get one good one, but it might be a very good one; in other words, I take chances, so I take a lot of bum photos to get the one good one -- I have to.

 

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

 

Thanks for yours, Peter.

 

John (Crosley)