Study in Twos

This 'street' scene from an Eastern country shows 'pairs' -- in fact

three of them. 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

'Threes' in composition is a favorite subject of mine, and this has three pairs -- in effect, three doubled, for a rare take on this compositional theme.

 

That presentation has not been updated in hopes of new software for Presentations, but this will be headed there once the software is in place.

 

John (Crosley)

Fabulous composition. I see a "T" with the pair opening the door on the right background, the horizontal placement of the model on the poster on the left and the pair walking straight ahead in the right foreground. Also, the synchronization of the walking pair is very appealing. The pink on the models' clothing and the sign provides some cohesion in this composition.

This is one of the best compositions I have done in recent time; I couldn't have stage directed it any better.

 

Two others spring to mind: 1. the girl fixing her leg outside a store with a photo of soccer (football) players on the field, where the lines of the players and their field are extended into the composition of the girl and her dog -- one of my all-time favorites. Another is the photo of 'three generations, with a billboard of a baby, a grandmother (babushka) in the foregound and a young woman walking in middle ground across the scene.

 

This is just one of those compositions that I always dream about, and the colors just tie it together. It definitely is first a color capture. See how the color of the photo frame is repeated in the sidewalk, the skirt, and the building front, while the red/pink color is repeated in the store sign (you, of course, saw that and noted it).

 

If I were shooting an ad campaign I couldn't have done better.

 

Thanks for encouragement.

 

You are right on, as always.

 

John (Crosley )

 

(you're up late, or early, aren't you?)

 

jc

I couldn't sleep very well so I was up by 2:30A PST. Later on I will be flying to Minneapolis airport for a quick turn in search of inspiration ;). It was gratifying to come across your new pictures in the meantime.

 

You are right about the colors and white is pretty prevalent here.

 

Adding to the synchronization of the pair walking on the right they both are looking at the same direction as if sharing the same thought.

It's almost as if this photo were planned -- everything is in place so neatly -- like some mathematician or geometrician put it there. Two figures on the poster, two entering the grocery, background, and two to the right, just stepping out of the frame.

 

I took three or four predecessor photos with these same two girls (on continuous servo) and of course the one where they are in the right corner (feet at least) was the best. Either it's the first or the last, generally, that are the best.

 

Reason so many times it's the last is that was satisfactory and the artist stops. (

 

Q. Why do you always find the thing you're looking for 'last'?

 

A. Because you stop when you find it . . . therefore by definition it was last -- it would defy logic to continue looking after it's already found.

 

So, when I get a satisfactory capture, I generally stop. I realized I'd never see this circumstance again, no matter how long I stood there, but it was only a few minutes (less than five, I'm sure).

 

I am in a lot of circumstances, where if everything would fall into place, that would be great, and I'd have lots of captures with such synchronicity; alas only a few do, but when they do, they're great and special to me.

 

Good luck in the Midwest.

 

John (Crosley)

Great work, John! By the way, who is your choreographer?

 

--Lannie

Sometimes you not only get lucky that things fall into place, but you also have the luck and/or sense to press the shutter release at the right time. I'm bold in pressing my shutter release, especially if there is movement that might make a decent photo, whether or not I know exactly how things might turn out. In other words, I take lots of chances. Result: lots of discards but also some wonderful photos that could not be 'previsualized' exactly as taken.

 

I'm not quite so 'lucky' as it appears, maybe, as I saw these two young women approaching and caught them with 'C' (continuous servo) drive, as they approached me, and this is about the third shot.

 

As you can see, this technique worked out particularly well in this instance; with the 'choreographed' pair entering the store behind.

 

This same technique also worked well on a prior photo that was (in my not so humble opinion for that photo) splendid. That is the photo of a toddler (on a billboard), a grandmother in the foreground and a young woman walking across the middle ground. I think I named it 'three generations' or some such.

 

That photo was one in which I had the baby poster and grandmother set up, then out of the corner of my eye realized the young woman was going to step through the scene. Rather than wait, I set my camera to fire on 'C' drive, and captured the young woman in one frame at just the right spot to 'tell a story'.

 

There's a general rule for the 'street' photographer; don't just stop shooting because someone steps across a scene. It just might 'make' the scene complete to include that person.

 

I was criticized initially by the expert who's going through my photos for using 'c' drive (which I use more now than previously), but he has withdrawn his objections, after I noted to him that although Cartier-Bresson could previsualize and capture everything that he could see and anticipate, there are some things you just can't anticipate, but rather you must anticipate the circumstances which will arise that give rise to interesting captures -- including the synchronicity above, as well as certain fleeting facial expressions, hand movements and gestures, etc.

 

Sometimes the brain just isn't fast enough even for the most astute 'street' photographer to 'see' and capture precisely those instants, and 'C' drive is a valuable adjunct.

 

Remember Eddie Adams' photo of the police chief of Saigon blowing the brains out of a suspected Viet Cong that was on the cover of 'Life Magazine'?

 

He had his Nikon set to 'motor drive' and that 'shot' of his was one of a sequence -- he fired at the outset of the scene, on instinct, not knowing how it would end, or that he'd get that precise photo.

 

I think it is a legitimate device to use 'C' drive sometimes, especially where there is action -- especially action that cannot be anticipated or analyzed in enough time to press the shutter release at just one moment (and no other).

 

Early cameras made such photography impossible; that's why they invented 'motor drives' and why they're still quite useful.

 

Just because Cartier-Bresson could not do or would not do it (he didn't buy Nikons with motor drives), doesn't mean it's illegitimate; rather if it serves a good photographic purpose, it would seem illogical not to.

 

(By the way, Adams forever regretted that shot and its interpretation; he fully believed the police chief had a good reason for shooting the man, even without a trial, as the 'suspected' V.C. it was said had killed some of the police chief's family members a day or so previously - something known but seldom noted. Still, the execution on the street was not the 'rule of law' that Americans were so famously trying to instill in the South Vietnames -- or as we have professed we are trying to do so in Iraq, either -- we learn few lessons, it seems.)

 

Thanks, Lannie.

 

John (Crosley)

I went shopping yesterday at this supermarket, rear, and looked at this same poster, foreground (it's still there, and may be for a while).

 

I was impressed, as I have been for some time, about the synchronicity of this particular shot -- how I just happened to have been standing there, having alighted from a jitney bus (marshrutka -- pronounced mashootka), and stood there, trying for various captures for a few minutes, and this scene unfolded.

 

Once it unfolded and I got this capture, I ceased. There was no reason to try for something better.

 

Note especially the colors and the way they blend ---- this is surely a truly color capture, that also would show well in B&W, but better in color because of color synchronicity . . . . how lucky can a photographer be?

 

It's one of my more fortunate captures -- happening suddenly and without preplanning, other than just standing there trying to figure something out.

 

And for that, I got this -- one of my better photos - that looks like it actually was 'designed' by a 'set designer'.

 

Maybe that's it's drawback -- it's too 'perfectly designed', and people don't realized that it was photographed completely 'ad hoc'.

 

Or maybe people just do not appreciate this one -- truly one of my finest ever for 'street shooting' and especially for 'color street shooting'.

 

John (Crosley)

This is one of a few photos that for me is the epitome of color 'street' photography with exacting and precise composition throughout and extraordinary color coordination.

 

I think this is what Cartier-Bresson wanted and could not reliably achieve, which is why he so demonstrably and with such vitriol at the end of his life tried to destroy his color work.

 

He just could not get the 'geometry' (his professor Lohte's term for composition which he taught was geometrically based) together with 'color coordination' on the level of this photo (or several others posted here -- two red-haired women in Paris Metro, one a blown up photo mannequin and the other an old woman with red hair (wig) in correlative positions and garments.

 

Or "Red Rushing' taken in Paris Metro not far away, of a red abstract art work on Metro walls, and man running by in front of it in a blur holding a blurred but clearly discernible RED shopping bag.

 

And a few others.

 

Not too many.

 

I think Cartier-Bresson had ample reason to be frustrated, considering how prolifically he produced 'great' black and white photos when it turned out that he could not do the same with color.

 

If he had more shots like this or those other two,I think he might have reconsidered.

 

But if he had to shoot with 'color transparency film' which was required for publication (not orange masked negatives which could not generally be sold), he had to dedicate a camera to that, and he generally (not always) liked to carry one camera.

 

Thinking in B&W for one camera and much more rarely in color for another (loaded with transparency film) would have been a great burden for him, I think, for in my own lifetime, seeing such synchronicity of color is a quite rare event, even at the rate I take photos (no other comparison to le maitre is intended -- he is great, I am just a guy with a camera who followed (and for a while, unknowingly was a contemporary who never heard of him, until I saw his work and literally gave up the career I foresaw in photography.

 

He had done did it all - and more than I could ever foresee for myself.

 

I know now there is great hubris just in that action, or appears to be;.

 

I saw his giant exhibition (and believe I met him in person) at the De Young Museum, San Francisco, 1969, as a new hire at AP sent there by an 'old friend' and 'China Hand' from AP who once worked alongside Cartier-Bresson, Jimmy White. He said my photos reminded him of his friend Henry.

 

So, off I went to the De Young Museum, I think I recall meeting the French artist, and (not knowing who he was) taking in wall after wall and room after room of fabulous and now iconic photographs which I know now by heart . . . .

 

I remember thinking to myself (I was alone): This man has done it all - all I could ever hope to do, and similar to the 'style' I had developed thinking that style 'on my own' (not realizing I got that by reading pictorials as a youth and photo magazines.)

 

So, hubris or not, when I saw his work, and compared my good (see it here in the start of my Black and White folder, taken at age 21-22-23, I just literally 'gave up' hopes of a career in photography - even let my promised photographer job I had 'landed' at AP slip away as they expressed a wish I become a writer (though I had no training.) I became a very good writer, and by doing so, I thought I 'saved face'

 

After all, though I liked my photos very much, they were not exactly Associated Press standard fare, (and I was not in love with the idea of going to baseball, football and basketball games with a camera, even if that meant later supping with (say 'hey') Willy Mays, as most in that job later did . . . it just held no interest at all for me - not even dining with the great "say 'hey'" kid himself.

 

So, except for brief forays from time to time, I gave up photography as a serious interest.

 

Consider this.

 

Associated Press assigned me to San Francisco, then and now the most coveted photographic assignment in the AP universe, and I probably could have stayed there . . . . . in Baghdad by the Bay . . . . . taking photos for them and getting paid . .. and having a job for life in photography and I gave it up

 

Because of having viewed the greatness of the work of Cartier-Bresson, during my first few days at work.

 

He did it all; I would always be a 'wanna be' photographer compared to him.

 

Maybe I was 'rash' and a bit premature.

 

he was retiring, but I did not know it.

 

He was retiring to paint and draw and exiting photography; selling his works at $100 or $200 apiece (which I lusted after but I made $135 a week) before taxes.

 

Later Dickie (as my acquaintance Chaz who was chief photographer for Ladies Home Journal and Harpers Bazaar called him) (Richard Avedon) in a preface to the Cartier-Bresson -- Charlie Rose interview speaks with Rose, and Avedon when asked if Cartier-Bresson correctly belongs among the TOP TEN 20th Century artists, says 'why not' and says 'we all owe everything to him'. (paraphrased). (and Stieglitz before him, of course).

 

So, I quit photography because I did not then measure up to one of the top ten artists of the 20th Century.

 

Silly me.

 

I've still had a rich life.

 

And at an age where Cartier-Bresson gave it up, I'm just getting started anew.

 

John (Crosley)

 

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