'I'm All Twisted Up Inside'

This teenager is 'all twisted up inside' -- according to her body

language at least. 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

Nice capture. You must truly take your camera everywhere. Do you just take it everywhere or do you go out looking for shots?

And the very few times I don't take (usually two, with two different zoom ranges) my camera with me, I end up kicking myself; I see stunning captures tht no one will ever make.

 

I do go out 'looking' for photos some days and will come back with tons of shots -- some of them might even be wonderful.

 

Or, I can go out 'looking', shoot the heck out of everything and get nothing, then walk into a Mickey D's and get something like this.

 

One never knows.

 

Luck favors the well prepared, now doesn't it.

 

I am well-prepared, almost always, with my focal point set, my iso changed, and my zoom somewhere near the setting I might want, even when I stop to get a burger.

 

Results speak for themselves, I think and it's one of the reasons I'm so incredibly prolific (fact, not bragging).

 

Best to you, and thank you for the observation and compliment. (I haven't yet looked to see if or what you rated -- keeps my comments almost totally 'honest'.)

 

John (Crosley)

After a meal deal from McDonald's I would be twisted up as well. Cameras are like American Express cards, never leave home without them. ;) - Nice shot John. It is so representative of teenagers.

Actually at a Ukrainian McDonald's a meal (served without mustard or ketchup -- the almost universal American disguises which have made their way around the world -- the food is more than palatable, it is downright good.

 

No stale or soggy french fries (homeland fries).

 

No meat kept warm in a bin for 15 or 20 minutes while it continues cooking and drying out.

 

Everything cooked fresh and served fresh, almost universally by intelligent, well-motivated people without a bad attitude (which otherwise can be common in the former Soviet Union, but we're seeing less and less bad service attitude the longer capitalism has had to mature, people there more and more are seen as 'worth' the value of what they bring to a business, and businesses are judged not on five-year-plans or loyalty to their employes, but instead loyalty to their customers in terms of service and delivering needed products in a timely (and pleasant) manner.

 

Young Ukrainians are the most easily adaptable, of course, and some of them who turn to entrepreneurship do very, very well (and have little competition from older people who couldn't adapt so well to Capitalism's differing rigors.)

 

That guy driving a Mercedes or BMW (which often cost twice or three times the price of the same vehicle in the U.S.) may be in his late '20s or early '30s, and got power to buy such a vehicle through doing skillful business (and no longer is presumed Mafia as we once the usual case in Russia during the late 1990s, when anyone with a good car was inevitably 'mafia-connected' or attached in some way either to corruption or (or even 'and') oligarchs.

 

The part about this photo I like is that it really hardly matters what country it was taken in. If I didn't tell you, would you have known it was taken in Ukraine rather than say a well-appointed McDonald's (see 'art' on the wall) in some major city (no good 'art' on walls in minor city McDonald's generally)?

 

It's 'just like' a teenager, and in some ways 'just like' everyone everywhere' -- a universal view of the human condition, I think, and I hope an interesting one.

 

That's why I keep taking these things; because just to approach capturing the vast range of human attitudes and expressions, much less capturing them in their milieu, is a job that could take hundreds or thousands of years - everything is so changeable and the range of expressions and situations seems nearly infinite.

 

Maybe it's just that I find interesting the 'slightly abnormal' and judge it also to be rather 'normal' and am engaged in a search of the further ranges of that normality in photos such as this --- sometimes to capture just those unguarded moments when we take our masks off, twist our arms around our head, put our head down somewhat wrap our limbs around our heads, and look away emptily, our minds engrossed in private thoughts.

 

This is 'rare' attitude, at least outside the closeness and familiarity of one's house; it's an unguarded moment (forever enshrined).

 

Best to you Adan; thanks.

 

John (Crosley)

John - great photographers understand the language of emotions and you are very eloquent at that.

Maybe you confuse my prolix writing with 'eloquence'.

 

It appears clear that the vast majority of photographers are rather inarticulate people, though there are some standouts on Photo.net from time to time (you probably know who they are too), since PN draws not only from those in the manual fields and non-academic fields to doctors, lawyers, physicists, businessmen including executives, etc., who must be highly educated and skilled with words.

 

But overall, as a mentor has told me clearly, photographers are as a 'class' the most inarticulate and particularly the most unknowledgeable about other 'arts' than their own. Whereas a musician might very well know not only about his/her music, opera, etc., that person very well may also be educated in unrelated art fields such as theater, graphic/fine art., sculpture, etc.

 

Only photographers, it was noted, seem to have the least breadth of knowledge of corollary 'arts' - perhaps it just is the nature of the medium or is it in the mindset of those who take up photography, which generally is a 'solo' hobby, and does not necessarily call for much reflection?

 

And with lack of need for reflection by its practitioners, also seems to come a certain inarticulateness; so anyone (myself included), who appears at all knowledgeable about photography, and can say so and why with some articulateness may indeed appear 'eloquent', but in other 'art' worlds, those who can do so may be legion. Thus any appearance of superior knowledge or understanding may be because the standard for our 'art' in that way is so low.

 

In shorter words; I got a camera, I want to take interesting photos, and 'ordinary' and 'common' is hard to make 'interesting' -- a lesson I learned as a journalist, though I already knew it instinctively.

 

So, I look for the offbest within the ordinary -- it's usually more interesting.

 

John (Crosley)