The Corner Bus Stop -- L.A.'s Mean Streets

There is much life at this corner bus stop in South Central Los

Angeles -- what I call 'The Mean Streets'. Your ratings and

critiques are invited and most welcome. If you rate harshly or very

critically, please submit a helpful and constructive comment. Please

share your suprior photographic knowledge to help improve my

photography. Thanks! Enjoy! John

The background is an automotive body and paint shop/the mural represents several men with spray painters supposedly painting auto bodies.

 

In all I count eight figures in this photo -- four alive and four paint representations.

 

How do you think this would work desaturated. I kept it 'saturated' to create separation between the background and the foreground figures, and because the color red ties the bike and the child's Nike shirt.

 

(The curb also is red, but greatly faded.)

 

How would you handle this picture.

 

John (Crosley)

Very interesting street capture, great light and composition here

 

All of the best my friend

I took about six good photos yesterday, and in the next day or so I've scoped out at least two areas where if the proper people come along I can get outstanding photos.

 

I just drive through South Central LA (in my beater car, so it doesn't raise much attention), and keep my camera hidden. When I see something that is promising, I might either park immediately, be stopped in traffic, or circle the block and hope for a break that allows me to stop -- keeping my driver's side generally to the scene and keeping my camera(s) at my side, pre-zoomed, with focus point set, etc.

 

Such a photo can happen as fast as the time it takes for a trafic light to turn.

 

Thanks for the encouraging comment; I happened to like this one right out of the camera and it took very little adjustment (but a right crop to crop out a plain looking building corner which didn't fit in the frame properly and distracted. The rule is 'keep all the interesting stuff in and all the uninteresting stuff out of the fame', and I try to keep true to that.

 

Best to you.

 

John (Crosley)

This is another captivating rendition through your gifted eyes. The painted figures seem to mingle well with the real people. For instance, the one on the bicycle appears to be having a conversation with the one on the wall. What is real and what is not? While the adults are patiently waiting for the bus, the kid in red is immersed in his world of games and fun. He lives in his own reality while the adults are in theirs.

There are either four people in this photo -- or eight -- depending on whether you want to count the painted wall figures.

 

There is some pretty interesting, and at times, very good, wall art in South Central L.A. Some other art is not sophisticated, but very interesting -- L.A. is a city with a rich tradition of murals, municipally sponsored, but owned by artists, and its 'official' murals (not this one) are constantly being defaced by spray paint artists and taggers or just plain vandals, who have found the 'officially-recognized murals' are easy targets because, while the city law requires cleaning graffiti within three days, the individual artists under their licensing contracts, are responsible for 'cleaning up' any graffiti on their murals, and often the artists are long distances away -- even across the country, don't know of the vandalism or lack the resources to clean it up.

 

Therefore the vandalism on LA's older, 'official' murals stays put for a long time -- something it is said the vandals (including taggers) have learned, so their 'work' stays up longer if they deface a city-sponsored mural (but still owned or licensed by the artist. The city is just giving up, too, but the citizens of South Central have their own mural tradition -- part of it from Mexico and part of it appears to be 'hybrid'.

 

I have one capture (without the bike or where the bike is going out of the frame and doesn't appear as 'neat' or 'aesthetic' where the Nike-shirted little boy is literally caught hopping in the air.

 

As you can see from yesterday's postings, I also have 'moved back' to include groups more when I can when portraying 'wall art'. Heretofore, I have concentrated on one person (then two) in illustrating wall art (see photo from Paris where one pedestrian is going one way and a bicyclist is going the other -- a stunning feat of reflexes if nothing else, when one could only instinctively 'grab' what might be a good shot and review it later - and for that one I said 'Woo Hoo!' -- to quote member Micki F.

 

You just never know what you might find in detail when shooting a large scene or a group. I don't see everything, but I get a general 'sense' of a scene and then fire away after I've got down the general 'arrangement' into something aesthetically pleasing.

 

And the nice thing is there's no number of cameras which, if they were installed as surveillance cameras, could have continuously recorded and captured this scene from where I did.

 

There is a suggestion that still photography in news reporting at least is on its way out; there will just be 'still captures from television and tape recordings. The quality will be there, but I cannot imagine a television crew being interested in this scene; there's a different aesthetic caught.

 

And in my falling woman over the group of theatergo-ers in the Paris Subway, as one member remarked, there was so much going on and 'somehow' I happened to have my camera trained at the precise place at the precise moment (to someone who suggested that capture was just a 'freak' or 'chance'.

 

The fact is, I have a very good record of capturing interesting things, whether or not I saw all of a scene and could focus on everything and account for everything in my scenes. I aim for the scene, arrange it, and where it is complicated like here, just rely on instinct.

 

I have learned that many photographers will not 'snap the shutter' when a person crosses the frame.

 

I do just the opposite.

 

I hope that people will cross the frame -- here I was overjoyed the bicyclist is crossing the frame (and rather fast too).

 

and during it all, cars were passing, then the bus came, the traffic light changed for me, and the scene just 'fell apart' never to repeat again.

 

My captures, as here, thus are entirely 'original' and never can be repeated again -- each one its little gem (or fools gold as the case may indicate.

 

But for me, as prospector, I find them greatly engaging, at least for now.

 

Now, imagine if the little boy had actually been in the air, as he was a fraction of a second later, and I had caught him, and the bicycle were a little more left, but its front tire were still in the frame (I have that shot but the front tire is going out of the frame, ruining it, at least in my consideration, for I like most of my photos to be self-contained with nothing leading into or out of the frame unless that's part of my chosen aesthetic for that photo.

 

But the other one you commented on - the boy in the 'Scream' mask, posted also on Halloween, was my 'magic' photo -- it'll look great when 'blown up' to large size and people are walking past it. There's almost no way it could get high enough rates when presented in thumbnail.

 

Thumbnail size exposition has its place, such as on Photo.net but it's just that -- thumbnails first and small size exposition. It can hardly do justice to certain photos. That's almost the first point I made on Photo.net in a site feedback observation (and it was promptly excised -- removed from the forum -- something I don't think would happen now.)

 

I think you rated both photos appropriately, although the other photo was rated by others at almost a point lower than this before your rates.

 

I continue to appreciate your feedback, but you don't have to lavish superlatives on me; I'm just a guy who started out here and it getting better; better even, now, I think than when I was in my early '20s.

 

But think if I had been shooting all these years . . . .

 

Many thanks for the attention.

 

John (Crosley)

One can only wonder at the 'bike kid' 'talking to the wall'.

 

One supposes he has been up to no good -- perhaps he's a gang member who's on probation, parole or under one of the new orders not to associate with other gang members -- a civil order but one that involves criminal contempt of court for breaking the court's order and thus possible jail time for 'contempt of court' if one is seen associating with gang members in a certain geographic area or involving one's self in 'gang activities' which usually mean any criminality.

 

It's a new tool against gangs, and it appears to be working so far -- Gangs can be forbidden as 'nuisances' and 'criminal enterprises' and members civilly ordered not to associate with each other 'for gang purposes.

 

Riverside County (San Bernardino) just tried it, and it's yielding excellent results so far.

 

So, the kid on the bike may have spied me and been trying to avoid being photographed (not likely but possible, as I was in my car stopped for traffic, but with a huge zoom telephoto on my very large camera.)

 

I tend to try to capture something crossing my field of vision when I've got something already pretty well framed, to try to capture that something 'special', and that person crossing my field of view where I'm framing often adds increasing complexity to a photo.

 

All this occurred in lowering light from the end of the day; and the day ends more quickly now here at the end of October (the day it was shot was Oct. 30, the day before Halloween.)

 

Best to you, Adan

 

John (Crosley)

John, I appreciate that background information. Mural painting seems to be a traditional form of expression in the Mexican culture. After all, Mexico gave us some of the best muralists in the world. Experience and intuition are closely related and I think they develop side by side. Thanks for sharing.

Mural painting was a great Mexican tradition, but it's alive and well in South Central L.A., and not just with the Hispanic Community; it's also in black stores (though some blacks may be of Latin Descent; not all blacks are Americans as the Caribbean is full of black people; same with Brazil (though I am not aware of great murals or muralists on those areas.

 

It is worth a trip through South Central, just to see the many murals and pretty garish shops, all sporting yellor or yellow and blue, especially auto parts and repair shops.

 

It's almost like driving into another country for this Northern Californain and Ukraine resident.

 

I think murals are wonderful; who needs bare building walls? LA is a great storehouse of great murals and wall art.

 

Thanks for the feedback.

 

John (Crosley)