black and white: then to now Rock Bottom, But Not the End of the Descent

'Rock Bottom' is the state of this hot, worn out and drunk beggar,

but he has not hit the bottom of the stairs yet --- the final descent

he must accomplish to get on the Metro home (if he's not sleeping on

the streets, just as he is sleeping, cup in hand, on the Metro steps

here. Note how, although mostly passed out, he has the cup upright.

He's not quite THAT drunk or passed out. Your ratings and critiques -

- on my photography, not on his drunken, disheveled state -- 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 if you can! John

I had just 15 or so seconds as I moved up the steps to photograph this guy, starting from the time my friend, Nina, pointed him out to me, from far away, as a possible photographic opportunity (what a good friend).

 

There might have, over time, been fabulous photographic opportunities, but just after this photo was taken, there was something that woke up the drunk, he raised his cup, became aware again, (was he aware enough to 'know' he was being photographed?), and he slowly arose and disappeared.

 

It was a scene that had already 'constructed' and was waiting there for me, for a proper juxtaposition or 'setting'.

 

I got just one proper shot before it quickly 'deconstructed' -- so quickly I almost didn't get any good photo from it at all. And I may have missed a 'great' photo from it -- who knows?

 

I count it as a 'good photo' that 'might have been great' if I had been aware and around for a while, while this guy was passed out. Who knows how long he was there, or how many people gingerly passed him? Even in Ukraine which has a serious drinking problem (like neighboring Russia and other Slav countries -- parts of the former Soviet Union), drunks passed out on steps like this are an uncommon occurrence, especially someone begging while being passed out.

 

Also, the day was almost obscenely hot and humid -- a day more typical of Bangkok than Ukraine following a more than week-long heat wave with heat in the 90s for a country not equipped for that.

 

It might have been cooling rain that revived him as thundershowers growled overhead and the sky lighted with lightning.

 

Thank God for air conditioned apartments.

 

John (Crosley)

 

(Copyright notice: This image is copyright 2007, All rights reserved, John Crosley)

Considering the circumstances, you couldn't have done any better - great shot! I would just airbrush the white bag or whatever it is under her skirt.

You are riding a hot streak John, good work!

Thanks for the great comment.

 

You may not be aware, but I seldom manipulate my images.

 

If that had been a Tampax string perhaps, but it's another man's shoe/a sneaker (tennnis shoe for those from the West Coast of the USA).

 

I believe in absolutely minimal image editing.

 

This is a crop, however, -- see the unsual aspect ratio (ratio of width to height--or vice versa).

 

I also am averse to cropping, thinking if I am really doing my job, I can do it behind the viewfinder, not later in Photoshop.

 

That I had to do so, is an indication of how 'rushed' I was.

 

I pride myself on minimal to no manipulation.

 

Let the persons who treat this at Photoshop.net have this place as theirs; I have my own personal niche and my own standards.

 

That's not to say I NEVER photoshop manipulate (occsionally, I have to desaturate an interfering color object in a color photo that derogates from the color scheme (I did that in TWO photos, and in one black and white, selected a disconcerting book cover that interfered with the subject greatly, and took down its 'brightness' almost to total darkness -- leaving just enough detail so you would know what book it was -- a paperback with the familiar 'Idiot' on the cover, plastered on the front right in front of the real action -- a mother hitting her kid on the head while her kid pulled his sister's head backward by sticking his fingers up her nose . . . (who wants to look at a humourous book cover that's distracting with such a photo, but the book cover was 'hogging attention'. Similarly on the famous 'steps of Odessa, all gray, to the right, there was a red concession stand, which got desaturated to the same grayness as the steps.

 

That's just about it.

 

In 850+ photos, I can just about recount those instances in which I've 'manipulated', and I've been honest about it where asked.

 

Again, thanks for he nice words. I pride myself on my 'street' work. It consumes me.

 

John (Crosley)

I am 'in the groove', and I hope to keep it there forever.

 

I just wrote to my ideal Elliott Erwitt asking for pointers, maybe to meet.

 

That's aiming high, but he's the king for me -- he headed Magnum for three terms and his book 'Personal Best' is not just a heavyweight in avoirdupois (poundage -- kilos) as one of the heaviest books I've ever owned, but he's master of every kind of photograph he's ever attempted.

 

I realized that when I was a kid growing up and reading Look, Life, and Colliers as well as other magazines that purchased Magnum photos, his were prominent in my life, and prominent in my development as an 'artist' from the day I bought my first camera.

 

I just instinctively knew what a good photograph was, because I grew up on a diet of his, not knowing they were 'his'.

 

When I bought his first book, a couple of years ago, I said, 'this is how photography should be'.

 

When I opened my newly purchased copy of 'Personal Best' -- a huge 'coffee table' book, this winter -- regrettably too big to ship to Ukraine with my luggage, I understood that I have spent my time on Photo.net in my 'street' work, trying to emulate him.

 

Where better to seek advice from than this 'great' -- the last 'great' from the hey dey of the great magazine photographers.

 

This will not post as a link, but copy and paste this into your browser to see the work of a man who's been on a hot streak since at age 25, in 1953, Cartier-Bresson asked him to join Magnum and who headed Magnum for a very long time.

 

http://www.elliotterwitt.com

 

(notify me if this is a bad link)

 

The guy's a treasure and still going strong after 50 years.

 

(There's a similar link at the end of my portfolio comments.)

 

Tim, I'm driven to become the best current street photographer currently producing. This excludes such greats as Salgado, who are established and are already institutions and perhaps Bruce Davidson.

 

I have some formidable competition, but I'm not a Leica photographer, and I mean by that, a high-producing photographer, not some artsy-farty guy who takes and posts a few beautiful Leica photos a year and nothing more, but instead hundreds a year, as now, from everywhere I go and everything I see.

 

First I have to get better than you (and I have no red umbrella in the trunk of my car . . . ;~))

 

I'm 3 years into this now, and I'm getting better by the day as I master my equipment, the street patois and 'feints' necessary to work with my 'street' subjects, and the result is photos like this, pulled 'from my hat' -- definitely NOT my best, but you've been seeing some of my best lately.

 

Thanks for the nice, encouraging comment.

 

Now go look at the work of a guy who's been 'hot' all his life.

 

I may be anbitious beyond my talent, but my only mistake may be in writing about it. I may modify the word 'great' by meaning 'great -- and hugely prolific', but then I have YOU to contend with -- it'll be a fair fight, though I admit you have greater talent.

 

;-)

 

John (Crosley)

Stick around.

 

I have tons more unprocessed photos; many of which show great promise, and I'm stuck alone with Photoshop CS3 and nothing to do in the evenings but process my captures.

 

There's likely to be a slew of new photos in my hard drive in the next week or so.

 

I feel like a photo producing machine, but in reality if I take photos an hour a day, I'm lucky and for three hours or four, it's amazingly productive time for me.

 

John (Crosley)

No excess fat, shapely legs, small 'heels' on her summer shoes, even though it calls for sandals or athletic shoes because of great heat, dressed up in a skirt and top, slightly dressy on one of the hottest, sultriest days of the year.

 

I can guarantee from her dress, she is not very good looking or very well groomed by Ukrainian standards, plus there's nearby university, where female students 'rebel' somewhat against Ukrainian/Russian/slav standards for 'slav' female dress/and flats are OK in the hottest days of summer for them, though high heels are de rigueur at other times.

 

In fact, when it's not at its sultriest, few Russian/Ukrainian women who view themselves as proper women would go out without 'heels' of some sort, no matter the discomfort.

 

My assistant's mother, who is in her '40s in Moscow and married, wears heels every day, everywhere, and it is unheard of to go out, anywhere, even to the grocery, without adjusting one's makeup or applying fresh.

 

Except of course for students, especially for those who've been to the US under Work/Visa program which is popular and giving them needed money for a summer's work. It has financed many needed educations and bought a number of 'machines' -- cars, for women who never could dream of affording such luxury -- even though it takes a can opener to open the doors of the used Ladas (built as the Soviet version of the Fiat Brava, from a plant Fiat sold to the Soviets long ago, as sort of the Soviet Volkswagen).

 

There's much to be read from viewing a photograph if one knows the 'territory' much as regular 'viewer' Micki Ferguson 'sees' detail and can 'read' a photo probably better than any CIA analyst (which reminds me, I probably ran into a trio of CIA operatives in a nearby park -- we each distanced ourselves from each other quickly after we found we had 'different interests' them in politics and presidential election and me in 'street photography' (only).

 

I have the training and knowledge to understand and appreciate all the political machinations which are going on now, but I am always suspect with my cameras, and I want NOTHING to interfere with my mission of capturing LIFE in all its glory (and ignominy) on the streets, and the worst mistake would be befriending anyone from the USA's covert services, as I'm already suspect.

 

I just point to my work on Photo.net as evidence of my bona fides.

 

And, like it or not, I can barely read Russian or speak it.

 

So, I would make a poor spy.

 

and what spy would carry such huge, expensive cameras in this day of 10 megapixel miniatures?

 

I'm after big game of my own choosing, such as this drunk and the passerby -- those are my prizes and you, dear viewers, are my Langley.

 

John (Crosley)

Ok, you deserve a lot of respect for your philosophy, which is especially valid for documentary shots. I just hope you also respect mine (and many others'), about Photoshop: it is part of photography as a creative process, we just do at the screen what we did in the darkroom before. I find it frees my spontaneity and creativity to know that I will be able to improve later what I cannot always achieve at the speed of light! Except when authenticity is essential - does it matter that much if it is done in the viewfinder, under the enlarger lamp or on the screen ??

I began in the film days,when there was no Photoshop, only cropping with enlargers and using such 'analogue' techniques as 'burning' and 'dodging' and the occasional use of Farmers' Reducer to thin out an overly exposed negative, to make it more transparent and thus not so dark and obscured, the reversal of today's digital sensors.

 

In digital sensor's 'blown data' is gone forever. Period. It represents 'overexposure', but in film overexposure resulted in thicker negatives, which could be chemically reduced by stuff called 'Farmers Reducer' which I used only once, though successfully.

 

Coming soon; high range sensors, in which we'll have a range of data that exceeds what we can reproduce on paper. It's a certainty, as there really is no reason sensors have to stay at their limited range -- once the scientists and the mathemiticians get through with the things.

 

And 'unsharp mask' is an antideluvian name for an antideluvian technique for sharpening, done in an analogue manner by darkrom techs, so its digital equivalent has some validity and relationship to the analogue darkroom.

 

It isn't that I'm so purist; I use Photoshop too. I'm in a contest with myself and no one else.

 

I just prefer to frame a photo in the camera.

 

I once worked with (and totally disdained) an airheaded ditz named Marilyn who had a staff photographer's job at a local blat, where I was assigned as a write/correspondent with Associated Press (depending on the day).

 

She had a Rollei, wide angle, with a flash. She was clueless about photography but had developed instincts about how to make a capture.

 

If she saw or heard action near her, she fired, and then looked at her film to find out what she got, then cropped like heck. It looked on her photos like she was an able photographer, but I knew the truth -- she couldn't 'shoot' worth a hill of beans.

 

It is nice to know that you can do various things to rescue otherwise 'lost' shots in the digital darkroom, but there is great satisfaction knowing you won't have to, if you shoot like I want to and try to.

 

So, when you walk up to a woman in a thunderstorm under her collapsing umbrella, you instinctively adjust the Nikon Easy Exposure rotator to lighten the exposure by about 1/2 to one stop, because the woman's face will be shielded under the collapsing umbrella. Similarly for the woman whose umbrella is being blown away from her with the sky as backdrop, one has to use the same control to lighten the easy exposure adjustment, even though Matrix Metering usually is 'right on'.

 

Framing is another thing where it helps to be right on; the story of Marilyn above, should be a good enough example.

 

It's nice to take a scene and then later decide how you wanted to be a photographer, but is that being a photographer or an editor.

 

After all, I could send grade schoolers out with an auto everything camera, tell them what to take, and then edit their results in my digital darkroom.

 

I want control of the process from start to end, or to be able to end it at the capture point with a perfect exposure that requires no or little more work. I'm work averse, I guess. And I guess that's part of the reason.

 

The other part stems from lack of money as a younng man, to pursue my hobby of photography.

 

I took transparencies/slides and the exposures had to be perfect and framed perfect -- no photoshopping or cropping allowed. It just didn't work that way. What you saw was what you got.

 

Before that, when I only could afford an occasional roll of Tri-X and it was an event when I got one, and then bought film in roll-your-own cassettes which I filled with 100' Tri-x bulk film in my Watson loader, I did not have the money to enlarge, so I had just to look at my bare film.

 

If it wasn't right in the film, it wasn't right. Period.

 

If I could afford a contact sheet (they were usually a dollar or two, which I didn't have), then I still got full frame captures, one after another, all in order, so my good ones were next to my stinkers, and I could study them. It was better than looking at raw film, but not much better. (If you hold raw developed film, emulsion side up to the light, just so, it becomes a positive image, though not black and white.)

 

So, there you have it; my past shapes my present, and makes my choices for me. I'm loathe to change them because I came by them honestly, and they serve me well in the field.

 

They impose a discipline on my shooting.

 

The above is a crop, only because I did not have time to move into positiion because I spied the man, too late, being notified by model Nina, only at the last second, and then having to climb stairs and find passersby to frame the guy -- after all, just a passed-out guy on steps means little.

 

I did want someone looking askance at him . . . but the photo gods did not smile that much that evening.

 

You see, there is serious, adult discussion to be had and we are not 'at odds'. If you understand how I came about my 'ideas', you may respect them -- I hope you do.

 

In the proper circumstance, say I am shooting a building and capture a murder happening in the corner of a frame, you can be sure I'll be cropping (Look out, 'Blow-Up').

 

Again, for the umpteenth time, that's why they make chocolate and vanilla.

 

Just so long as Photoshop is not a crutch for avoiding actually taking photographs until you're on your computer, at which point you become a 'digital artist' instead.

 

Just call yourself what you are in that case, I think, but I suspect you're actually taking good photographs and enhancing them in the darkroom.

 

Some, like Ben Goosens, only take photos as a starting point and then it's digital editing all the way, and such people truly are Photoshoppers and of a high order, for that also is a high art, don't get me wrong -- it's just not what I am.

 

Thanks for responding cooly and rationally; we might have many things in common.

 

John (Crosley)

You truly amaze me how you can pull it out and get it ready to just click it.

 

I love how he has his back arched like he does and how he has his cup still up in the manner he does.

 

You got a clear shot of him with her motion walking down the stairs. This is a great shot and I have to admit you are on a roll probably because you have time to sit and look through the pictures.

 

I did agree with the fact that shoe really got on my nerve so I did do some PS on it to see if it helped my eye from focusing on it and it sure did.

 

You know how I feel about ANY PS work on your stuff unless you needed to crop something out. This picture needs that shoe out as it is an eye soar.

 

This is where that PS helps. There are somethings I "PLAY" with in PS and somethings I DO NOT touch (like the swimming pool jump that I just uploaded). If the picture is good you do not mess with it. I have learned that and TELL that to my husband over and over. I on the other hand mess with stuff because I do art with it and that is something totally different. YOUR art is your work and your talent is your ability to take things and bring it right into the form of pictures. Something that is almost unheard of now. BRAVO for that!!!

 

This one just needs that shoe gone. So I am showing you.

I will delete if you want me to ~ I hate editing others work but wanted you to see it.

I like it better with the shoe gone, but until some gallery owner or museum director and I get into a fight about it, and some patron is willing to pay me thousands if the shoe is gone (thousands more), it'll stay in, to remind me that 'street shooting' is just that.

 

Remember the brouhaha about the newspaper photographer who claimed he uploaded from his 'personal file' of retouched photos' a photo that had been retouched to make it look better when other photos from other photographers in the same position showed someone in the scene who 'was not there' in his.

 

So, he claimed, it was 'just a mistake' -- he kept a 'personal file' of retouched photos just for his 'personal satisfaction' and he made a bad decision when he 'accidentally uploaded' that photo from his 'personal file' instead of the unretouched photo -- nothing lost; just a simple error -- you see?

 

News photography is serious business; how people look should be how they look, and tampering with photos is serious business. I used to be told to 'flip' a photo, to put the part on the prettier side, since a photo probably would be on the 'left' page in the business section of some such. I always refused. It's the old foot in the door argument.

 

We did retouch photos, but only to de-emphasize or gray out the backgrounds, and we employed AP artists with airbrushes to do just that; or redo and correct badly skewed images from Europe and resurrect them for use in the USA -- the artists were busy with those, but they were forbidden from making a change in the photo content.

 

No changing hair part sides for me, but OK with others, but beyond that, nil zha (not allowed).

 

I don't know of any transgressions.

 

The public loses faith in photos that are documentary that are tampered with, or digitally altered or otherwise altered.

 

So the shoe will stay, however unattractive, and if it's taken out, the back will say, altered photo, I think.

 

And, about that photographer and his 'personal file' and his 'single mistake' -- well they compared photos he took and which passed through his computer with the originals which did not go throgh his computer and guess what?

 

There were a great number of significant alterations -- I think enough to fire him for 'cause' and right away.

 

This is a hobby for me; I may turn pro any time soon, and who knows who my clients will be or what policy they will have about verisimilitude.

 

I don't want to be known transgressor who has to be read the riot act.

 

I want to be a known 'true blue' kind of guy -- who shoots straight about verisimilitude.

 

I want people to trust my documentary photos.

 

If there's a guy walking in the background, he's there, and so much the worse for the art, but them's the facts. If required, and if known, the shoe might easily be desaturated . . . if agreed all around and I am so inclined, and it would not show up.

 

PLEASE DO NOT DELETE YOUR ALTERATION as it will make this an orphan post.

 

And it's good and shows enterprise.

 

For which I thank you.

 

You are an artist; I am a documentarian.

 

There's a significant difference, except I am an artist too, but with different duties.

 

God Bless You, Micki,

 

Great comment just for the exposition of the differing callings and their duties and obligations.

 

John (Crosley)

You are a documentary photographer. I expect nothing else but exactly what you get. The same thing I ask from my husband when he takes a picture of a sunrise. DO not mess with it, it is perfect as it is.

 

You are right I am an Artist and I would be able to tell exactly where you changed something with my eye as I look block by block anyway. Trust me I have done that with some of the pictures here and made good friends doing so. I have even helped "fix" a wonderful picture of Kennedy (which was a thrill) for someone who needed some PS work done. I am not the best but better than some on documentary photo's because you have to go into the photo and change things at the root pixel by pixel. If you don't do it that way then it is noticeable.

 

I would not ever expect you to start changing things in PS, sharpen and change contrast a bit yes. But erase and do wild stuff would compromise your work. You are beyond that. It would be like killing a tiger with a machine gun. Your not going to do that. Overkill is not your game. Leave that to someone like me. Let me do that PS overkill fun stuff.

 

~ micki

A young, creative, ambitious and talented studio photographer could not arrange it better. But that it is real life makes it priceless. Karl

I'm not young, or a creative or talented studio photographer or director, and therefore such a photo never could have been invented or staged by me.

 

I'm clueless (or I was before I began practicing with my studio lights) when it comes to actually 'creating' scenes, as opposed to finding them and preserving them for mankind.

 

I view that now as my life's mission -- to find and preserve in an artful manner such scenes as this and many other sorts -- from girls to gays to guns to anything else you can imagine.

 

Shortly before this photo was taken I was taking photos of a pair of gays in a nearby park, just a block away, to the astonished stares of Ukrainians, many of whom are very anti-gay (I'm not but who cares -- they can have their orientation, and I can have mine, and it doesn't threaten me or anything I hold dear.)

 

I've been to war with a camera.

 

I've taken photos of nearly everything I've come into contact with and will continue to do so.

 

I hope to continue to do so in a manner that suggests that it's 'art', without being 'artsy fartsy' because that's not my intent.

 

My intent to show the harmony as well as the dissonance in a scene such as this and in life in general -- someone has to do it, and I seem to do it pretty well (and I also have a knack for 'seeing' things others pass by, at least when I carry my camera(s).

 

I take it I have succeeded in your eyes.

 

Thank you so much for letting me know.

 

By the way, I'm plenty ambitious - photographing, thinking of photography, trying to improve my photography, posting my photographs, reading about photography and working on my computers (on which I store and edit my photography), editing my photography (and taking time out to devote to my love of certain feminine things), and then when my head hits the pillow or the airline or bus seat back, again thinking photography -- and often even dreaming now of how I'd photograph a certain scene . . . yes, I'm ambitious and devoted. And nobody is paying me for this at all.

 

I do it for my love of photography and the chance I'll preserve a scene like the above, in a 'classic' or worthy manner forever.

 

In short, I'm creating my legacy now, and I'm working hard at it.

 

Elliott Erwitt the famous photographer who headed the Magnum Group of photographers founded by Henri Cartier-Bresson, David Seymour (Chim) and others, has been working as a photographer for 50 years. He joined Magnum at 25, and in an old post I read he was 78, but he may be older -- afraid, he has written in his last book 'Personal Best' that people assume he's dead.

 

He's not.

 

Instead, this man is a living legend who's taken more outstanding photographs and done more things photographic in his lifetime than one could imagine.

 

Since he's still taking photographs by all accounts, one can imagine he's still making his own legacy, and will to the day he drops.

 

I respect that, and I think I'll try to emulate that.

 

John (Crosley)

Did you notice the grayscale tones in this high ISO photo, a desaturation from a color photo?

 

In part it's due to 'sidelighting' which in reality here is 'backlighting' to the guy -- sidelighting to me.

 

The light is coming from his rear and overhead, diffused and reflected off the Metro entry walls for a wonderful lighting 'glow' -- one couldn't ask for better lighting than here.

 

Hint: If you ever get a chance to shoot out or sideways from inside a Metro entrance (underground) or an underground subway entrance in daylight, even early evening or early morning, do it. The lighting range can be magnificent.

 

To me they the tones here are wonderful -- which makes it look more like it was captured by a Leica than a Nikon and more like a full-frame photo than a crop, which it is.

 

(I had little time to move into position before the guy sat up and moved, causing the scene to 'deconstruct' -- something I've been writing about extensively lately.)

 

Best wishes.

 

John (Crosley)

Henri Cartier-Bresson would have looked down at me -- that cantankerous old Leica photographer who literally wrote the book on 'street' photography.

 

He likened anyone using auto exposure and then autofocus and 'like hunting doves with a machine gun', which is similar to your analogy.

 

I'm true enough, and I could also have taken this with a Leica, but I could not have been as enormously productive with a rangefinder camera (which are very light and concealable) but are horribly hard to see through for me and impossibly difficult to focus in low light, especially the old ones with a separate window for focusing -- so the old photographers went by Elliott Erwitt's old maxim 'f8 and be there'.

 

This photo couldn't have been taken at f8.

 

Even if he had been there and 'pushed' his film to the limits as the evening light was so limited. And when he spoke that rule, they didn't even make film as sensitive as my digital sensor was set at for a wider aperture, as I had here.

 

Bless you Micki -- 'root pixel' is how I think Photoshopping must be done, and no other way, but I don't have the time or patience for such things -- that's for the artists and the mathematicians who love 'precise' work.

 

I'm a generalist and a guy who is a Renaissance type of guy and an 'overall' thinker. I'm bored by 'details' (and to those who would say, but you would have been great as a youth at electronic games, let's just say I 'suck' at those, and have since they were invented -- and I also am bored by games of any sort.

 

Life is a game, with very high stakes, and I hope I play it well. ©

 

John (Crosley)

Hi John...catching the hot and cold...well done...there's photography like yours in Basel at the Art Basel exhibition every year in June...i'm going...regards bob

Let me know when and where, and I must come to Europe at that time anyway, (maybe if it's not too late to make plans).

 

I don't even make prints, however, and that is my goal in returning to the US -- to learn about printmaking from experts -- or a little about their knowledge about how they do it; I cannot be so presumptuous as to think I could make one passable fine art print, though I have two of Epson's finest printers, the 2200 and its successor, but never used -- either of them.

 

I regard printing as high and fine art, something I'm almost unworthy of, and something one must almost devote years to to become minimally proficient.

 

I went to Photo Paris last Oct./Nov., and briefly attended and saw what a HUGE market photography was on the continent; it was pretty overwhelming -- but, alas NO street photography, other than the odd old Henri Cartier-Bresson masterpiece from this or that gallery (which attracted an enormous amount of attention.

 

Almost nothing of the sort of work that I do -- that I saw.

 

Most would have been spoken of as 'fine art' of varying genres, from flowers and pretty women to industrial landscapes taken with huge cameras . . . just nothing like anything I've ever taken or would envisage taking.

 

I didn't think to myself 'Oh, I don't belong here', as that was the reaction I might also have had when I joined Photo.net a little over three years ago and everybody yawned except AZ (Bailey Seals) who gave one of my photos one of his highest ratings and later wrote he liked my photography (in a post now removed from my comments -- probably having to do with administration changeover).

 

Instead, my reaction was 'I'll have to make them like what it is I do, and maybe open their eyes, if I can, and how can I do that. . . . and can I do just that? Louis McCulloch of Belfast also was there, (then unknown to me) but his work was more classically mainstream for the fine art crowd and he has accolades from them as photographer of the year for his country.

 

 

Louis posed his work at once, that he took in Paris; I'm still posting mine; I was soooooo prolific, and have returned since then as well, so it all merges together. I've done some of my finest shooting in Paris.

 

It's just that I can't afford to stay there.

 

John (Crosley)

I was so concerned about having to 'crop' this sucker and having so little time to take it and not having framed it entirely in the viewfinder, that I overlooked that it looks wonderful in exposition here.

 

So I posted it first in a folder called 'Stuff' or another folder called 'More Stuff' where I post things I think I want to post but don't know if I want to commit to one of my really first class folders, such as my main black and white folder or my single photo, color, folder, where some of my best work lies -- work I wouldn't mind being judged by -0- especially in black and white.

 

And there it languished until the rates and comments began to come in and I began to look seriously at it, especially with its wonderful tones, and the gray scales with this white guy and white cup over there all alone, basking in the shadows (a contradictory sort of thing in itself that belies his condition -- how can one bask in the shadows of the early evening, in a Metro entrance?)

 

Well, that's the paradoxical nature of his situation and the paradoxical nature of this shot to me.

 

I liked it, but was blocked from seeing its true worth -- or its potential.

 

I see it now, and I think it is one of my very best shots.

 

I'd be happy to be judged by it.

 

I'd like to have another 12 or so photos on my bio page for 'representative work, and this would then be one of them.

 

As it is, for now, that is not going to change, as I think those photos all are good enough to give anyone a good taste of what it is I do.

 

And how well I can do it.

 

This is another example.

 

I'm now very pleased with it.

 

(See -- I can be very myopic about my own captures -- and sometimes raters and especially commentators can fulfill a major function in opening one's eyes to the 'real' worth of a good capture -- among the chaff there are some wonderful, discerning critics on this service, who hunger for real 'meat'. This is the sort of thing that attracts them, I think.

 

It's certainly no saturated sunset or time exposure 'waves' washing on the shore.

 

John (Crosley)

Above is the full-frame photo with no cropping. You probably can guess why I cropped it, not having had time to position myself properly for the capture, but maybe you like the full-frame photo.

 

Please take the time to compare the two and let me know your thoughts; I'm prepared for any sort of (rational) opinion (does not mean it cannot also be emotional -- just not 'mental' ;-))

 

John (Crosley)

Here is the original color photo, full frame, made smaller to fit in-line PN web posting limits. That should read full in-line web posting size. (I am unable to edit the photo caption that I know of without reposting -JC)

 

John (Crosley)

It wasn't until today that I realized what you meant by the 'hot and the cold' -- meaning that he was cooling his back on stone steps which pull heat away from the body and thus seem cooler.

 

I hadn't realized that, but it adds fundamental importance to my analysis of my own photo; what had been a scene of just another drunk beggar, becomes now a drunk beggar, overheated, sweating probably with enough animal sense to do like a dog does on a stone floor -- literally go spreadeagle -- except this guy's on his back -- spreadeagle in reverse.

 

 

Look how his upper back, neck and head conform to the steps and landing on which he is lying -- designed for maximum exposure between naked parts of his body and the colder feeling stone steps . . . not what's photo analysis, Bob, and I hadn't given you your due.

 

Now you have it . . . I am greatly thankful.

 

John (Crosley)

It's different form the desaturated one, but it's very good. It tells a story about a human wreck and two nice passer-bys. of course the guy lying down gets out of the central picture focus, so this becomes a different picture.

 

ATB,

 

Luca