Making a Point

Little needs to be said for this 'street' 'twin portrait' or street

scene. Your ratings and comments are invited and most welcome. If

you rate harshly or very critically, please submit a helpful and

constructive comment; please share your superior knowledge to help

improve my photography. Thanks! Enjoy! John

i think it's a very nice street photo of two older ladies. are you o.k after taking the photo? you are not hurt? i hope the bigger lady didn't hit you. :)

This is just a look, and if looks could kill, surely I would be dead.

 

The real danger is from someone you couldn't possibly think is hostile, but maybe psychotic -- someone who can get near you without triggering your alarms. I have met one such person in the past year or two, and he was in a laundromat in Watsonville, CA. I got out of there quickly after he asked if 'Did anyone ever say to you that you could be murdered for your cameras?' -- a nice clean-cut looking younger white man, but who'd said some things previously about 'Jesus' and about how people who came near him had 'died'.

 

I got the clue, thankfully, or I might have been stuffed into one of the giant dryers, my cameras gone and my life also.

 

Don't worry about a bad look; I've had people give me the finger, but on being shown their own photo from my digital screen, ended up giving me the 'high sign' or the happy hand/finger gesture which youths today use (index finger and little finger).

 

I just wish the focus on this had been a little better -- focus was on her shoulder (see the tight focus on the weave in the large herringbone pattern of the larger woman's coat?)

 

I don't just stand there and get a photo like that. I walk by, pause for a second, look down for adjustments if my camera/lens hasn't been adjusted, then quickly raise camera, frame and focus -- all in one movement, snapping the shutter, and quickly then moving on. Almost like a rhythm - beat, stop, beat it.

 

Sometimes subjects catch on, and sometimes they're upset while other times I get thanked profusely (both have happened today within the last half hour).

 

You often cannot predict which will happen. You pays your money and takes your chances -- that's street photography and the price one takes to get pretty good photos, especially those up close.

 

I took a photo of some people on a street near a major railway station with a 17~55 mm zoom lens today and frames showed a grandmother and two granddaughters hiding their heads (they'd seen me coming and shooting).

 

I went out into the street and just stood behind parked cars, but quite visible to them, then stood for about fifteen minutes seemingly disinterested in them while a street vendor and his wife disasssmbled an interfering steel and canvas vendor's stand and then walked away, and then, quick as you please (since the subjects, unusually hadn't changed position), raised my 'telephoto' and took frame after frame, with the first frames being 'normal' and the last few (after less than two seconds) showing them covering heads/faces, etc.

 

But I made friends on the street today, with Olga and Zachar, an old woman and man who at first were skeptical. That's just the way it goes and if one is too skittish on the street, one doesn't belong there. It's a process, however, of desensitization -- one starts with public events before moving on to private moments, more like this. It's easy to march with a parade taking maybe great photos, and then to gradually learn to take photos in large crowds, and eventually work to getting up close to isolated people on the street.

 

If you have a porous personality (not strong sense of who you are), you'll be very sensitive and maybe collapse under the pressure -- I was more that way in my '20s, and that's some part of why I have given up photography, as I knew and wanted no other than to take 'street' photos. I worried then a lot about people's privacy and was very sensitive, but have few such concerns now.

 

In these days of no privacy, you're always being photographed by surveillance cameras -- why then not me in an attempt to find some originality and aesthetics from situations other devices are photographing often with Luddites reviewing the captures and even aiming those remote controlled security cameras.

 

If I'm in someone's house, everything's different. I'll respect their rules, and if I'm in a place where I might return or like the owners/managers, I might refrain out of respect if they make their wishes for no photography known.

 

Otherwise, the world's fair game.

 

Her looks may kill, but they're just looks.

 

I've been to Viet Nam where a look you didn't see could lead to death -- less seems more or less irrelevant.

 

Best wishes.

 

John (Crosley