Hot Summer Dayz III

A little beer, a hot sun, a cooling fountain, a little too much time

and some b-sing, and then mock blows are traded one late summer

afternoon between two male friends. Your ratings and critiques are

invite 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

Very nice capture. Is that water spray behind the two figures? I also love the "spears", it gave me the illusion of a fence. Great Posting...

Yes, that's a water fountain behind the two.

 

Indeed, they are backed by a wall of water sprayed by those tubes you call 'spears' that you liken to a fence.

 

Thanks for the recognition.

 

I had several like this, as this didn't just happen in a moment -- it lasted over a minute, but this was the best for my money at least.

 

I'm glad you liked it.

 

This fountain is a favorite of mine in July/August for photographing -- maybe just one or two last year were among my best/one was among my alltime best.

 

Thanks again.

 

John (Crosley)

 

I like it! Try cropping to a square format, keeping the shadows - see what you think.

I actually did, and also to a shorter rectangle, but it didn't improve it so much I wanted to crop it at all.

 

I pride myself on framing in the viewfinder and look down on re-doing my work in the darkroom.

 

I had ample chance to frame this as a vertical, and before I posted, I tried it out as a square or a slightly more elongated rectangle, eliminating the waste receptacle, right, but I like it with the 'air' around the figures -- it just seems called for.

 

I am sometimes 'warned' for cropping too tightly, and I often crop very tightly.

 

In fact, if one looks at the shadows here, the only way I could crop this tighter, given the aspect ratio of a SLR digital format is to frame it as vertical or crop it in the digital darkroom, assuming the shadows are essential to the composition (which they are, in my view).

 

Thanks for your helping hand. It did not go unnoticed. I had similar thoughts, and my reticence to crop may have had no small part in my decision, as opposed to pure aesthetics (I like to think not, but who knows?)

 

I'm glad you stopped by with a constructive comment; I always welcome them.

 

John (Crosley)

Sometimes I'll go over to guys like these and show them the product of my efforts.

 

But right up until the time two of them went away, there were photo opportunities, and I was a good distance away, against a building wall with a 200 mm Nikkor zoom at full extension or nearly so, for the film equivalent of a 300 mm lens capture.

 

So, when two walked away, it seemed pointless to go to the third and show him my capture.

 

I hope someday they all see this though, and also recognize that it's they. (correct English . . . yes).

 

John (Crosley)

 

 

That's a two-liter bottle of beer, nearly empty, to the left of the taller man who is mock boxing or playing 'slapsie' with his friend in mock combat.

 

When it gets blasted hot and there are no personal autos and public transportation has no air conditioning (or the mashootkas -- Mercedes vans bought used from Western Europe and imported here -- have it turned off because the doors that open and shut are always letting in blasts of hot air, the air conditioners are ineffectual.

 

So, many people, especially young people, including people who would be vastly 'underage' in all of the USA are beer drinkers and they drink enormous quantities of beer in the summer -- it helps keep them 'hydrated' though not nearly as much as drinking water. It's cheaper than cola which is outrageously expensive by local standards, though not by Western European standards where cola equates somewhere between gold and silver for expensiveness, right beneath the price of ice cubes (often brought three to the silver container with silver tongs -- with the silver container quickly ensuring that they melt).

 

And of course, McDonald's even will refuse to give more than a few ice cubes to anyone but an American and the American must INSIST on a full load of ice before he/she will get it, and then only on account of being an American.

 

It is, after all, a precious commodity.

 

The common belief throughout Europe, including Eastern Europe is that any large intake of ice, enough to cause body cooling necessary to beat the heat, actually will cause a 'cold', which is balderdash, disproved by a US Army study sometime in the 1930s, I recall, and which was carefully controlled.

 

If large amount of ice intake or chilled beverage intake caused 'colds' then most of America in the summer would be suffering from 'colds' after trips to the 7-11 and the 'Quickie-Mart' where ice is dispensed in huge quantities.

 

But convince a European of that, especially since it takes expensive energy to produce that ice, (and filtered water, to ensure that delicate tourist bowels don't get upset).

 

So, have a beer, is the rule.

 

A warm beer.

 

Chug-a-lug.

 

But not like those underage drinkers in the USA who must drink fast to avoid going to jail and end up lifelong binge drinkers from their early habit of downing the beer fast to avoid getting a ticket or thrown in the clink for possession of alcohol under age 21.

 

John (Crosley)