Strawberry Fields (and Plastics) Forever -- End of the Season

It's finally end of the season in the Pajaro (Pa' ha ro) Valley, near

Watsonville, CA, and Mexican laborers tear up the plastic sheets

which prevent the strawberries on the plants from contacting the

ground (and aid in irrigation). Ground contact used to mean berries

were 'spoiled' and discarded according to old time pickers. 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 superior photographic knowledge to help

improve my photography. Thanks! Enjoy! John

Good exposure, but maybe a bit too much dof, too many men in focus, whats the subject? One of the most respected suggestions in photography is, "subject should be isolated from background". Best regards, Jim.

While I agree that 'sometimes' good advice is to isolate 'subject' from other things and practice it daily, here there is something else going on.

 

The question then is what is the subject; in this case it is the trailing plastic and also the repetition of the trailing plastic (at diagonals) through to the background.

 

I only had three minutes in a field before the field boss chased me away, very politely (since he spoke almost entirely Spanish), but also very firmly. He wanted a business card, and I don't have any since I have no 'business'.

 

So, total time in the field was three minutes.

 

Actually the numerous photos I took may look better in color, and I may try to post one of them in color. Posting is always a learning experience.

 

I tried to get a lifetime best shot; it was there in this field, but the short time there prevented it.

 

I am not so sure DOF is the issue here, since the subject is other than what you supposed, but it just misses the mark. I absolutely know that a worthy photo was there in that field, and I could have taken it, but I just didn't have proper opportunity; time was too limited.

 

I made do.

 

Thanks for stepping in and your criticism.

 

John (Crosley)

 

HERE IS A LINK TO MY BIOGRAPHY, WHICH HAS A LINK TO MY ENTIRE PORTFOLIO, OR SIMPLY GO ABOVE AND CLICK ON THE WORD ABOVE 'PHOTO' AND IT WILL LINK TO MY ENTIRE PORTFOLIO OF NEARLY 1,000 PHOTOS.:

 

http://photo.net/photodb/user?user_id=888636

 

OR JUST CLICK ON ANY PLACE WHERE MY NAME -- JOHN CROSLEY -- IS PRINTED IN COLOR -- IT'S A 'LINK' TO MY HOME PAGE, THAT NAME AND LINK EVEN IS ON THE PHOTO ABOVE NOW.

 

EARLIER PHOTOS IN THE SERIES 'Strawberry Fields (and Plastics) Forever' ARE POSTED AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS THREAD.

 

John (Crosley)

It is a worthy photo indeed and I think it is great documentary work. I like the B&W rendition because it focuses on the work of the laborers. The two workers in the middle pull me right to the composition. Perhaps it is the positioning of their bodies. One moving towards us and the other one turning his back and walking away. The plastic sheets serve as a common denominator and in some way "link" the protagonists here.

You have successfully understood this photo; but somehow in color it was greater than its rendition in B&W, which is the opposite of what I thought it would be; perhaps the many shades of black and reflections of color off the black and the extensive greenness of the strawberry plants plus the colors of their clothing had something to do with it.

 

Some day, I'll post a companion photo, perhaps in color, which I feel is very strong.

 

I looked at my EXIF data on the flash card before I reformatted it and discovered I had been in the field exactly 3 and 1/2 minutes before the field boss gently but firmly chased me away.

 

I took a lot of photos in 3.5 minutes, and I am sure there was a winner to be had that day and with those circumstances and setting, but damn, I don't think I got it.

 

At least it's not something I can see.

 

And I absolutely KNOW a great photo was to be had if I could have stayed a while.

 

(Damn field boss asked me for my 'card' and I said I don't have a 'card' as I'm an amateur, and he said 'then you must leave' in broken English. A 'card' meant something to him, but probably only a mobile phone call to the real 'boss' somewhere else.

 

The strawberry growers are scared to death of workers compensation claims being documented and also of the workers being 'organized' by unions.

 

(Why hasn't he Farm Workers' Union which had great support, been more 'vigorous' in enforcing the rights and needs of its workers?)

 

I bet Cesar Chavez is turning over in his grave -- the FWU which was so popular now looks mostly like a sell-out.

 

Not that I'm greatly in favor of unions, but then if they chase me out of their field, I feel on this photo, I can write anything I like (which I almost always do anyway), without feeling like I've 'harmed' a friendship or acquaintanceship.

 

You just can't explain to a Hispanic (Mexican but English speaking - kind of) field boss that you're trying to make art and possibly 'great art' from his workers - it is a message that does not resonate with such men, trained to be suspicious and to be 'overlords'.

 

Adan W, it's a good enough photo, but it could have been better. A better one may be coming sometime in the near future, but not for a while, as once again I will be traveling (look for Ukraine photos soon, after present-day LA photos).

 

Best wishes and thanks.

 

John (Crosley)

It's a pity that the "boss" was not aware of your talented presence and see what you could have accomplished. Talking to a wall is a futile exercise. As for your upcoming pictures, I will be eagerly anticipating them. Great work preceded by a sense of expectation is an invitation that can not be refused.

Remember, I also produce a lot of crap -- better spelled with capitals 'CRAP'.

 

To see all of my photos, click on the link to my Portfolio in the photo above it's a 'hot link'.

 

I may be as good a photo editor as a photographer, but I do take tons of photos, and in many genres.

 

Famed printer Michel Karman and I have spent parts of several months just beginning to go through my captures, and he says he is 'blown away' by the extraordinary diversity and depth of photos I take. He's so effusive in his praise of my work, it's sometimes embarrassing, but it echoes private thoughts I've had, but shared with no one and is very refreshing, plus he brings a whole new aesthetic view to analysis of my work -- seeing 'great photographs' in treatment of photos I thought were 'OK' but not great, finding other photos that were 'great' among my discards, and in general being extremely congratulatory about my work. It's pretty heady stuff; I cannot remember ever when I've been so flattered professionally at anything, especially since in this case, I just started out photography because I had a decades-old 'knack' which I knew I had, and a yearning to make 'great art' which I thought would be understood by no one.

 

And that yearning has taken me to South America, Australia, Asia, Europe, all over North America and even to the Middle East, taking photos of various genres, but including my first love -- the 'street' photo - or at least its first cousin - the 'candid' photo -- the sort which I first saw exhibited in 1969 by Cartier-Bresson who was introduced by me by his former colleague Jimmy White who worked with him in China (I never told anyone I met Cartier-Bresson, but I did in San Francisco, back then). Jimmy White was an AP staffer who worked with me and an old China 'hand' who worked with Cartier-Bresson.

 

I decided soon after that Cartier-Bresson had 'done it all' -- so great were his photos, and allowed myself to be diverted from photography into writing (my stories went all over the world from my second day on the job and also to editing -- then to AP world headquarters as a department head).

 

Michel knows which are the great ones as I see them, but he also sees 'great ones' for his own aesthetic tastes, and he is a guy who has printed for some very famous people in photography as well as being 'master printer to the stars' -- both of photography and celebrities who are very serious photgraphers.

 

He's a force of nature and somebody I willingly listen to; he's seldom wrong about photos. He's just the man I prayed for to go through my vast collection of captures.

 

He first asked why I 'didn't delete' because I took and kept so many digital photos, then he hauled what he said were dozens, even hundreds worthy and even superior photos into his computer from my two terabytes of hard drives I had given him or my 'raw' captures -- those I didn't 'see or chose' from my captures -- even a few that have 'blown me away' once I have seen them.

 

I have far too many captures -- even too many good captures to be going over all of them.

 

I take a few obviously good captures from each download and let the rest molder, and sometimes something simply great escapes me for lack of reflection or simply because I didn't 'see' it or someone of his caliber wasn't around to tap me on the shoulder and say 'but that's fantastic' as he does frequently, and with great emphasis on 'fantastic. I frequently hear from him 'John, you're a fantastic photographer'.

 

Which suits my vanity well, in any case, but I worry that he's just an audience of one.

 

You'll probably be seeing some of these photos, but others are too subtle or esoteric for the Photo.net audience and would not do well here.

 

The lesson I have been learning all along is that Photo.net is just one audience of photo enthusiasts.

 

This man prints and applies his own techniques and aesthetics to negatives and captures that will sell sometimes for $40,000, and the photograpers totally trust him to take 'license' with their prints -- to print them to the finest aesthetic standards.

 

I might name names of his 'clients', but they are mostly also personal friends of his (as he had become with me before he finished his task.)

 

Maybe one 'client's' name will suffice; he was personal printer to and friend of Helmut Newton, late, great photographer (mainly of women), as well as so many famous names it blows me away.

 

He also has printed for movie star Jeff Bridges, who with his wide angle/panoramic Noblex has created and seriously exhibited, including at the Museum of Photographic Arts at the Prado in Balboa Park, San Diego -- work I saw and said to myself 'I wish my prints could be blown up, and I wonder what they'd look like if they were printed as beautifully as those of Jeff Bridges and hung on a museum wall'.

 

Some of Bridges' work was pretty mind-blowing, and the print quality was astounding.

 

Bridges is a very serious and artistic photographer with very high standards who doesn't just trade on being a 'movie star' in his photographic aspirations -- he achieves them maybe 'despite' being a movie star, although famous faces populate his captures.

 

So, my mentor was Michel Karman, master printer, and he was shepherding me through the maze of 'establishing myself' as a serious artist, and aspired to do what he termed a 'fantastic job', -- which is saying something, because he has a very powerful personality and amazing charisma...

 

(He's Belgian/French, born in the Congo, educated at the Sorbonne and wrote his doctoral 'thesis' on the relationship between 'art and photography' if I understand correctly.

 

I cannot write enough about the aesthetic judgment of this French-accented, wiry little guy, whose eyes and judgment about images are 'magic'.

 

He's the 'guru' you may have seen me write -- you can find him in Google.com if you want to look him up.

 

I understand the service he has been performing for me may be available to others of great talent, though I think frankly I am the first, as he came to me on recommendation as being a man 'who will change [John's -- my] life', from a fellow printer and before that from member Dennis Aubrey, both of whom are deserving of great thanks, which I have given them.

 

Michel Karman is a fabulous audience for my work which he praises exceedingly highly, and amazingly critical, but if he likes something he is extremely enthusiastic and honest about it, as he's been with me. (We've talked extensively about the assertions in this comment which he has said have represented his opinion of my work properly.)

 

(Sorry for getting carried away . . . I didn't seek until yesterday permission to insert his name here . . . as I too am more discrete than my writings might show.

 

In other words, before I write something about somebody, I usually ask permission or 'know' that it's OK with them based on experience.

 

If you run across a photographer of fantastic quality who wants their work evaluated and analyzed (for a fee commensurate with the work involved), they might get their work evaluated by this man but only a select few persons with output of high quality.

 

And they must be prepared for total honesty from him.

 

He truly is a 'master printer to the stars of photography' as well as simply a 'master printer to stars who are excellent photographers'.

 

He lives, eats, drinks and talks art and the aesthetics in ways that simply blow me away, and you know I'm hungry for that right to the end of his work with me; we seemed to get along very well.

 

And I don't write about individuals until they have passed my serious judgment; I value what I write and what I say about people and don't want to be seen as a panderer.

 

Only time will tell if this relation ship which began as one of mutual admiration will blossom into friendship as promised (he says he 'loves' me, but that word is overused in Hollywood, and I long ago learned to watch for actions instead of listen to words) or just stay one of mutual professional high regard.

 

After all, he is the best of the best, and I have spent long hours with him as he has talked about his work and his profession as well as his elaborate (and highly favorable -- your photography, John, is 'fabulous') evaluation of my photographic work.

 

Thanks Adan W.

 

John (Crosley)

 

 

 

 

Thanks for sharing that information John. You are one fortunate man and I wish you the best. You deserve it.

My terabyte and a half or two terabytes of digital photos are in his hands; and I consider them worthy hands (of course they're also backed up two or three ways, if you know me, and the results spread around the globe. I've heard just too many stories of photographers losing their life work from storage locker companies that foreclosed, from house moves then went awry, from angry girlfriends who put prints out on the lawn on a wet night and threw away negatives or slashed them, I had a wife who (with earlier correspondence from other women to which I never responded, got into my computer and drew -- with Microsoft Paint I think -- lines through many of the photos of the most beautiful young women who had written me, and also the photocopies of their letters (for which I was planning a book) forever erasing their faces or obscuring significant parts of them, and then further defaced scanned copies of the letters of the most beautiful to erase their names, addresses, and phone numbers. . . . )

 

Loss of a life's work due to unforeseen factors can deprive a photographer of his legacy. In my case, I have taken steps that should prevent it from happening to me. Once downloaded, I copy my work onto a second computer, and with master printer Michel Karman now, leave a copy with him also -- when we meet, I transfer files to my hard drives in his possession.

 

I own a lot of big (terabyte and a half to 500 gig) hard drives, but all for a purpose -- better than buying insurance, for how would I value my collection of unpublished photographs or even prove their existence or worth if they were stored on several hard drives together that were destroyed, and their worth might be claimed to be 'speculative' and therefore unprovable if anyone were responsible for paying me their 'worth' -- a responsible party can't be responsible for 'speculative' damages -- it would be my duty to prove their worth, and they are not currently being marketed, so I might end up out of luck if my work/hard drives were destroyed and there were no backups (and someone existed who was responsible and had a source of payment).

 

One look at the recent fires in LA (I saw them from the air as I arrived from Ukraine and Paris, would be enough to convince any photographer not to rely on stored negatives, but to scan all negatives and spread the scans among safe places, far away, where they are not subject to whims of ex-wives/girlfriends/creditors/storage locker foreclosures (which can happen in two or three weeks after due date), and so forth.

 

Michel Karman and I found several of my RC prints had fused together from some water having touched them; one was one of my most-viewed images for which there is no negative. He worried about having his staff separate them by rewashing them.

 

I said, without hesitation, 'no worry' because the prints had been subject to the highest quality scans previously, which are all stored.

 

And when I couldn't find a hard drive recently, thinking possibly a thief had pulled it from my car, I still wasn't worried; copies of all recent downloads existed then in two other places. Download by download, I back everything up.

 

At times I get lazy, but then I think of one member, David Malcomson, who had a collection of photos, his household was moved during his absence and all his photos disappeared, he wrote me.

 

There is photographic guru Chaz, (whose name is copyrighted, and he gets royalties for that from the perfume of the same name), who was the chief photographer for Ladies Home Journal and Harper's Bazaar -- two of the '50s and '60s most respected photo publications, full of photos of fashion and famous and/or beautiful women. The magazines' photo archives burned while in storage -- there were no backups except for those photos that were printed, and those only within the pages of the various magazines. A life's work up in smoke.

 

With digital, on a solo hard drive, it could come from a distant lightning strike sending an electrical surge through power lines to a computer, erasing a hard drive or rendering its data into a hopeless jumble.

 

These stories should ensure any superior and serious photographer who has any brains will back up his photos, then distribute the backups to 'safe' places, each far removed from each other.

 

They key, of course, is to produce photos worth saving and printing -- ones for the next generation and maybe some 'stock photos' or 'gallery photos' which will finance one's retirement.

 

I met several such individuals in Thailand two winters ago; they tend to gather in Thailand in the temperate winter months of December and January . . . one runs into lots of photographers who go there to live for the cheap living and great photographic opportunities during those winter months; and a few other photographers who lead photo treks into Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar (Burma -- chancy), Laos, and Viet Nam.

 

I'm hoping to get into rural China before the Chines build factories and high rises over everything; there is a wealth of history in remaining China, but reports are that those who are building are just bulldozing the old wooden houses/apartment houses, neighborhood markets and bazaars and other places of the 'old culture'.

 

That is a true 'cultural revolution' of a grand scale (without deaths, forced detention and forced re-education).

 

Stay tuned.

 

Back to Ukraine tomorrow.

 

John (Crosley)

This is the first shot, attached, of 'Strawberry Fields (and Plastics) Forever'.

 

Taken in Watsonville area, California.

 

John (Crosley)

This is the second of the series 'Strawberry Fields (and Plastics) Forever', Watsonville area, California.

 

John (Crosley)