'The Brood'

This is 'the brood' walking late at night along an arterial

thoroughfare in a Las Vegas, Nevada residential district. 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

There is something comical about this starting with the shapely imposing matron. The ornament on her head conjures up the image of a peacock in my mind. The colors of the garments are curiously combined. The kids wear black on top and blue in the bottom while the opposite is seen on the woman. Our subjects are wonderfully captured against this golden background.

 

The postures are quite engaging. The boy on the left looks like a hunchback with his shadow enhancing his burdensome feel. The one in the middle seems content while drinking something or sucking on his thumb. We don't see the lady's other arm but is she carrying a bag as well, or are the boys the only ones carrying the bags?

This is the sort of photo that others might call 'fine art', I think, though I haven't reviewed it with any 'patron' or 'mentor'. I just know in my heart of hearts that it is very painterly and leaves the viewer guessing while the tones are very wonderful.

 

In actuality the boys are carrying plastic bags and I don't think momma is. That truly is some unusual and very low class ornamentation on her head. Look at their physiques! This truly is not a parade of geniuses. They might just have spent the month's food stamps. (I saw them up close, as this was fired from a filling station, and they were no prizes).

 

But I do not make judgments about my fellow humans; I just happen to have been born 'luckier' in the brains department, but they may be happier in the 'happiness' department.

 

In any case, look at how the lead boy is bending over . . . that kind of posture of a walking child is not what one would expect, and helps define this photograph . . . which is unique.

 

I like this photogtaph . . . which was certain NOT to be a hit with raters . . . (yourself excluded and one other), but that's not what I am 'about'. I have finally hit No. 1 in 'yearly' folder views, on this service, however briefly, and that alone is vindication for having posted whatever, however, over the years without regard for ratings.

 

I am interested in how you saw this. In the end, I posted a very blurry shot, and would do so again, because it appealed to me, and I won't take it down, low ratings or not.

 

It represents my finest of the day or week.

 

Thanks for your views, as always. They are held in high regard.

 

John (Crosley)

 

Addendum 11-21-08

 

This finally has high rates aided by some new and unexpected raters and a high number of comments; it seems that even though it differs from much of my 'mainstream' work, some critics have a taste even for this very different work. Thank you critics and raters for being patient and understanding.

 

JC

I really like this one, it is so open ended. I get a feeling I am witnessing some bizarre cattle drive across the urban landscape.

You are.

 

Moooooooooowwwwwwww.

 

;~)

 

John (Crosley)

Very nice work, John, a bit of a feeling of Edward Hopper. The colors and blur in the well-constructed, impressionist composition give the viewers' imagination free reign to participate in and complete the picture.

I'm not a formulaic type of shooter. If it looks like an interesting composition in the viewfinder I shoot it. If it looks good overall or has some outstanding feature I'll post it.

 

I have another that has a Hopper look; can you find it (if you are so inclined. . . .)?

 

I think you will see why I so value the Renaissance ideal that a Columbia College education prepared me to face the world with -- I did not have to be a Renaissance man, but why not?

 

I would like to be a 'photographer for all seasons'.

 

This is a prime exhibit.

 

As I think you guessed.

 

And just when people think think they've got me pegged, I go and post something like this.

 

I think it drove the man who was curating my work crazy (oh, he already is, as he announces to everybody he meets, but they just aren't believers as I am).

 

:~)

 

 

John (Crosley)

People can rise from their circumstances, and sometimes it takes a generation of more.

 

Governor Huckabee says he's hindered in his presidential bid because he has a 'hick name'.

 

And, he says, he ate squirrels cooked in a popcorn popper.

 

Yummmm.

 

Well, I think these kids are NOT gonna be presidential contenders, and maybe not their kids' kids.

 

Somehow.

 

It's just a feeling I have.

 

And if Las Vegas has any squirrels, I'd keep them away from this group.

 

Especially if their popcorn popper is not filled with popcorn in a bag.

 

Get what I mean?

 

Life has all classes; these are not the sort one sees in much of California -- one generally has to go to the Deep South or maybe parts of rural Oregon or Washington to see such people -- even Nevada doesn't have too many such people.

 

This is NOT a value judgment on their character, however.

 

Just that they are life's marginal people - those proposed $800 'tax rebates' (how can they be rebates for people who never are taxed?), will represent a huge rise in earnings, I think, for this woman.

 

I was impressed by the difference between the 'low class' line in California and how it separates from that in Las Vegas -- it was quite a difference, and I've lived in both states.

 

Perhaps I needed a reminder.

 

What can drive home a lesson more than actually taking a photograph (and I saw them up close - they walked up to the store where I was filling up my car.)?

 

John (Crosley)

My goodness, swallow. Yes this is one hell of a good shot! And yes it likes a Edward Hopper. It is a piece of art and it is a typical great shot of how "some" families live there life now a days.

I love it!

With regards.

Wonderful photo that leaves plenty of space for your own imagination. Like mom is wearing a gold-coloured crown, she is the furious queen who drives her subjects deeper into hell. Meet mr. Devil, you two!!! The first boy knows what to expect, that is the reason walking bend over, the second boy too young to realize ......

"What can drive home a lesson more than actually taking a photograph?" Let me add to this - a photograph taken by a talented teacher. After all, how can we learn if the classroom does not have an instructor?

 

My first impression of this was eloquently stated in your previous comment. I agree with what you have said. However, I don't like to judge the character of my fellow human beings by their outer appearance. That is callous and shortsighted. People should be judged on an individual basis.

 

I think that the more we travel the more reminders we get.

 

when I posed this for critique, I got one response -- one rate. Yet I moved it to my highest-rated folder.

 

That folder currently is the highest-viewed on Photo.net. That's how strongly I feel about this. If someone is browsing highest-rated folders, by year, this is the first photo they'll see. That's how strongly I feel about it, and have from the moment I shot it.

 

I stand behind what I shoot and post, even though I have been told sometimes I'm an idiot and sometimes I wonder myself when the rates come in.

 

Comments like yours however make me feel vindicated.

 

I'm very glad you like it.

 

It took a time to catch on.

 

I agree, it is very 'Hopper-esque' (paraphrasing)

 

I am happy you commented.

 

John (Crosley)

That is your interpretation; I didn't see anything that suggests a correletion betweeen her station in life and any 'child abuse' and I have seen someone of that station 'abuse' a defenseless child across the head with the sweep of a outstretched arm - 'WHAM' -- when I was on an escalator going somewhere and unable to contact the cops.

 

But I saw nothing that said she was 'unfit'. She even appeared loving.

 

But yours is an interesting interpretation; it's just in your mind. And interesting.

 

I did see them up close and no hint of anything inappropriate, however, though.

 

I think the lead boy was just playing around; perhaps stumbling along as boys will do,and I caught a special moment of his (consider his posture).

 

In all, the highly unusual posture of the lead boy and and interesting dispersal of the three plus agreeable color is why I posted this.

 

I'm glad you liked it well enough to leave a critique.

 

John (Crosley)

 

(and I went to Las Vegas to go to the 'porn' convention -- look at how easily I get diverted)

 

jc

Americans got a rude shock in World War II when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

 

American aviators later examined the Zero fighters and found all the rivets were flush with the skin (countersunk), whereas throughout the war, US rivets were not -- assemblers just put in the rivets and they dragged air - compared to the better quality countersunk Japanese type.

 

Even then the 'yellow' people were making better quality planes -- we just made more planes and had good quality pilots who were brave.

 

Americans learned to salute the bravery of Japenese aviators, but still disrepected them as being 'yellow people' -- something I saw in comic books when I was a youth, and after there were World War II comics (with Jap snipers in trees, always drawn in characature -- with exaggerated Oriental features).

 

It is a mistake to judge people by even their accents; remember Sam Erwin, the laid-back Senator with a country drawl who said 'I'm just a country lawyuh . . . ' in a disarming drawl. His mind was a steel trap, and he helped bring down the Nixon White House, with Nixon in it. Too bad we didn't have someone like him for President Bush and an opposite party in control of the house and a vetoproof house and senate.

 

So, one can draw judgments about one's subjects' intellectual capabilities, but one draws judgments about their character with great difficulty and danger, as you so note.

 

And I make none.

 

But don't let these guys near the squirrels.

 

John (Crosley)

My almost six months of mentoring with photo/printing guru Michel Karman have given me the effrontery to post this photo, as unclear and amorphous as it is

 

In looking through my terabytes of captures, Karman kept emphasizing that in addition to my story-telling and 'representational' photos, there was an entirely different thread -- those photos that qualified in his opinion as 'art', rather than photography, per se, and just happened to be expressed in the photographic medium.

 

After our many sessions, and even living together for a while, I understood that I must incorporate his lessons into my own aesthetic.

 

One result is this photo taken the day after I moved from his residence.

 

Whether Michel would approve or not is beyond my ken; but the expanded horizon I have to post such a work, challenging as it does some of the commonly held notions of traditional photography, is something I owe to Michel.

 

I hope he approves; he didn't spend all that time with me to have me throw my talents away or to use bad judgment in photographs I select for gallery presentation. Whether this photo hits his high mark or not, it hits my newly expanded aesthetic. He has given me the permanent gift to look beyond traditional horizons in my photography, and that has been a great gift indeed.

 

John (Crosley)