All In the Arm and Hand Motion

'It's All in the Hand and Arm Motion', but it just depends on

which 'subject' and 'hand and arm motion' you're referring to -- the

poster figure or these late night riders on the Paris Metro. Your

ratings and critiques are invited and most welcome. If you rate

harshly or very critically, please submit a helful and constructive

comment; please share your superior photographic knowledge to help

improve my photography. Thanks! Enjoy! John

I think I never could share a photo like this, because I would be afraid of someone saying that I'm violating copyright things or something like that..but it's very nice photo anyway.

I enjoy it John! Smile.

With regards.

I live in Ukraine much of the time.

 

So, they are going to sue me for copyright violations in Ukrainian courts, in a country where you have to go to extraordinary lengths to buy legitimate software instead of pirated versions?

 

Oh well, it's theoretically an issue anyway. Kind of like a law school exam -- identify the issues, and write about them, with no regard given to the practicality of their administration.

 

And, if I'm advised right, it's a new 'work' anyway, since the photo is in a public place and is open to 'fair use'.

 

Even Cartier-Bresson did such things, and copyright hasn't changed much since his time. He even did it with sacrosanct Coke advertisements.

 

Fancy that.

 

See smiling vendor in Uvalde, Texas (very smiling vendor) with a Coke sign, sure to have been not only copyrighted but registered.

 

;~))

 

Thanks for commenting.

 

Glad you like it.

 

John (Crosley)

 

Copyright Notice (possibly dropped from above due to a software error: Copyright 2008, John Crosley, All Rights Reserved)

I've been sitting on this one for a while.

 

I'm glad it gave you a smile.

 

(I'm smiling too.)

 

Good wishes to you; glad you have a sense of humor; it's sometimes hard to take a great poster like this and come up with a good enough juxtaposition to make it work, but I think I made it.

 

Thanks for stopping by and commenting.

 

John (Crosley)

According to the counter under this photo when I posted it, it was the 1004th photo in my portfolio.

 

Now it says that is the 1005th photo in my portfolio.

 

Yet I have been directed to another place in my portfolio where there is a photo counter which states that I have as of today 999 photos in my portfolio as a result of posting this photo (it was 998 photos before I posted this photo).

 

Which just goes to show, as Rose-ann-rose-anna-danna said, (not Emily Litella, but Rose-Ann-rose-anna-danna herself): '

 

'It's always something . . . .'

 

Thanks to late comedienne Gilda Ratner for showing us how to take life's foibles in a lighthearted manner.

 

If it isn't this, it's that, and if it's not that, it's another thing, and if it's not those things it's another thing.

 

It's always something.

 

Thanks Gilda.

 

I owe a personal debt to you and your memory.

 

John (Crosley)

 

So the next photo either will be my 1000th photo or my 1006th photo.

 

Nothing's ever easy, sometimes.

 

JC

Great juxtaposition of ideas. Fighting and surrending comes to mind here. Everyone has an Achille's heel. You are right about the title. The arms do the talking in this picture.

Excellent, succinct critique -- fighting and surrender. Very good.

 

'Arms do the talking' -- nice pun on the Yellow Pages (pages jaunes). After all it's an advertisement for 'Orange' telecom, not far removed from yellow at all.

 

You have an excellent way of cutting beyond the heart of things to their essence.

 

John (Crosley)

after all is said and done...it leaves me with one question: "what is he (the flying man) doing?" ( I know well what the other man is up to...) but the flying man. Is he a goal keeper of a soccer team? or, in his spare time, is he a window washer? Clearly he is spraying something from the bottles in his hands...just imagine the hubbub when he comes down and lands squarely on the couple below !! too frightening to contemplate....Bert (by the way: it's a great shot)

It's a flying housewife.

 

The French are clever enough to make a housewife fly with her window cleaner spray bottles. They didn't have to have a flying nun do it.

 

Any old housewife will do.

 

So it's a woman on top and a girl/woman on the bottom, both with outflung arms.

 

Serendipity, hunh?

 

Sometimes life can be great.

 

Until gravity enters, and, as you said, the flying housewife goes kerplop, right onto the embracing couple.

 

KERPLOP!

 

End of Story.

 

Thanks for your contribution.

 

Gotta look just a little closer though -- the body shape (very thin) and the feet (very small) give this one away, even if other parts of the body are somewhat androgenous. I know men can have pony tails, so I didn't mark you down on that one -- especially it seems, porn stars, for some reason. . . . I've been told.

 

Wouldn't know from personal experience.

 

Never been a porn star.

 

;~)

 

John (Crosley)

The flying housewife's arms end not with hands, and not with spray bottles, but with spray itself -- a diffuse spray that spreads out into nothingness with no clear outline.

 

Now look at the girl/woman below and her arms. They're caught in the act (with a slower shutter speed) of fluttering or waving, so they also end in diffuseness, also with no clear outline.

 

A point of similarity, or, as I like to call it, 'mirroring'?

 

John (Crosley)

I do not consider this a copyright error unless laws in Urkraine are different. If the photo is sold it might be a different thing.

I am not sure what you mean by 'copyright error'. I have stated above I do not believe it a copyright violation since it is a new work.

 

Do you have credentials in this area?

 

John (Crosley)

my comment on copyright was simply a statement that I agree with your position as stated above. As for credentials, the only credential I have is a card in my wallet that says that they think that I know how to drive.

I have maintained through this all residency in the US and also lived for some time, and for long times, (all broken up and not continuously) in Ukraine.

I tend to spend long periods in Ukraine,  but always as a 'tourist', even if I sometimes take a flat there, it's always a 'tourist' flat.

I have not had a visa other than a tourist visa since they started letting Americans in as tourists.  A long time ago, very long ago, I once had a multi-entry visa, which due to constrictions was called something else, but then I had no 'business' in Ukraine, and still don't.

I do like to spend time in Ukraine to take photographs, though, just as I like to spend time in Paris also, which is where I was when I took this photo, above.

I could  count any number of cities worldwide my home, and residents in those cities would greet me with cries of 'where have you been?' since they haven't seen me for quite some time and grasp my hand with firm handshakes (or in the case of Paris with possibly an absurd joke about how a restaurateur had been killed by les flics (cops or gendarmes) during a wild chase through the train station after he robbed it, raped three nuns, stole a taxi, then tried to run over the flics (cops again) and was killed in a fusillade of bullets.  (Seems one things the Parisians like to do is tell tall, a absurd tales about things to people, even not so gullible people to test where their sense of the absurd will cause them to say 'that's not even plausible -- go to Paris, meet the Parisian working people, and find out!).

There's no counting the number of 'old acquaintances' I've been told have been 'run over by the Metro', to the point where I always dismissed such tales as testing my gullibility, except one nice man, an Algerian who ran a panini shop in Central/South Paris actually WAS killed when run over by a Metro train -- his sons and relatives inherited his shop.  (He had the most sonorous voice one could imagine and missed his calling as an actor, singer or voice-over broadcaster.)  C'est dommage.

Sometimes life's jokes are not life's jokes at all.

Instead life is a joke on us in the end.

john

John (Crosley)