'Here He Is NOW . . . '

'Street' photography sometimes appears to make relationships between

backgrounds and subjects that are interesting but which do not exist

in reality, as here, where the poster man seems to have some

relationship with this pedestrian, perhaps introducing him to an

audience. 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

Nicely captured. Perfect timing too. Congrats!

Great street scene. Funny shot. You got the right moment. A little bit cut at the left ? BR Joerg

Thanks.

 

I saw this coming from a long ways away, hid with my cameras behind a tree or utility pole (probably a tree, as it WAS Vienna and I think utility poles are outlawed), and then when he took his turn (thank God he turned) I fired away.

 

This was a poster waiting for the right juxtaposition.

 

It took two minutes or less, start to finish, but this old guy was far, far away when I first spied him.

 

Thanks again for the kind remark.

 

John (Crosley)

 

This photo is copyright 2008, John Crosley, all rights reserved.

Thanks for the compliment.

 

It's cut at the right on purpose, to avoid the distracting words/letters, all in Austrian German, which I felt would compete with the central theme of the finger pointing 'at' the man -- the play on 'two hands'.

 

In that sense, the Adobe Camera Raw choice for color sliders negated the printing in the 'burst' in the center right and I decided to keep it that way -- so the print really couldn't be read and thus wouldn't compete. I didn't need to manipulate it that way, but probably would have, if given the choice.

 

(Austrian German, like Swiss - Sweitzer Deutch -- sounds quite a bit different than Hoch (high) German, to my untrained ear, which is interesting, and the words on signs are often quite different for the same word and/or meaning, which I am familiar with).

 

Sorry I couldn't get the appropriate emphasis above the 'O' in your first name.

 

John (Crosley)

I'm not sure if it really works as you intended. The man doesn't seem to actually be looking at the picture. But I like it a lot anyway. The idea is good, just maybe not the right man.

 

 

I like the way the old fellow seems to be looking at the finger. Personally, I'd prefer a much tighter crop.

 

Maybe like so...

I like your concept here...just wish you wouldn't have cut off the gentlemans feet. Nice exposure and contrast...interesting theme.

The point isn't that he's looking at the finger; it's that the finger appears to be introducing him. Where he's looking actually is inconsequential (to my way of thinking, but your interpretation is perfectly valid if it holds water for you -- though apparently there it apparently fell somewhat short).

 

Did you notice that this photo seems to apply the famous 'Rule of Thirds' -- the famous 'rule' that I seem to violate more than agree with -- this time on a vertical plane (the edge of the structure containing the billboard seems to fall roughly one-third of the way from the left to the right, dividing this photo into thirds (roughly, again).

 

I always appreciate those who can tell me how they see this photo, whether or not it agrees with my own.

 

My idea is to CREATE the juxtaposition -- sometimes I have a clear or set point of view about what it seems to say or mean -- other times I'm more flexible.

 

Here I just happen to like the juxtaposition and the interpretation is more free-form. Make of it what you like, so long as it works.

 

Why not consider my interpretation, and see if that works better, Ray?

 

John (Crosley)

I like your caption: "God is Waiting".

 

I pride myself on my captions -- many are very good, but yours here is quite good. Few on this service have very enterprising captions -- it's a bone of contention that so few think enough of their photos to put worthy (or even suitable) captions on them, or maybe the members are just a little literately challenged (the English speakers, of course).

 

I dislike cropping generally . . . and figure if it's so good as a crop, why didn't I just put on a different lens or zoom differently and frame the goldarn thing differently?

 

Of course, I had no idea this old gent was gonna turn the corner, and that he did so was just great photographically, so I also have a frame or so of him just before he came to the corner, because he might just have kept walking along the walk towards me.

 

But sometimes the photographic gods just smile a little smirk, and that's the way it goes.

 

I do like your crop, but still dislike playing with full-frame captures that work by themselves. Yours is an alternative effort that is very worthy.

 

Best to you, and glad this one made you think.

 

John (Crosley)

There seems to be a slight resemblance between these two characters. The perspective and background is very interesting. The long hallway behind helps to build visual crescendo culminating in this climatic point when the man turns towards the street where the man on the poster "introduces" him.

This is an ISO 1000 capture -- often my normal cloudy day 'street' setting for the D300 when I'm out and about with it, because 'noise' at that level isn't a major issue, and I get pretty good depth of field.

 

One thing that made rangefinder (read that Leica) photographers' work seem different was that so often they used a large frame with a great depth of field. The reason is that rangefinder focusing is so difficult as to be imposssible, so they just stop down, generally, dispense altogether with focusing and just fire away (their one frame generally unless they have Leicavit or motor drive.)

 

With a smaller depth of field, they hit their ultra-sharp Leica lenses at their sharpest points (the middle aperatures), and so their captures often appear super-sharp. Probably this could be passed off as a Leica capture - someone is free to tell me differently. It's of the appropriate focal length and appropriate depth of field, and looks pretty sharp; you noted its range of tonalities as being pretty good (and it looks decently sharp, an aspect of the 17~55 f 2.8 Nikkor DX lens that is one of its outstanding attributes.

 

Why are the feet cut off?

 

In order to frame the photo properly.

 

I didn't want to include the printing, right, in German, as that would have been distracting to a largely English-speaking viewership, and in general would have been distracting to the photo anyway. And although I generally make it a rule not to cut off words in the middle, I do so when it means I want that word disregarded.

 

But why the feet?

 

This photo has a 2:3 aspect ratio and all other parts of the photo 'work' with the 2:3 aspect ratio. That works out not to an 8 x 10 blowup as that is a 4:5 aspect ratio, but a 8 x 12 blowup. I think it works perfectly that way. To include any more, left or right, means destroying the composition. But that also means that the bottom or top has to be cropped where it is.

 

In other words, with a 2:3 aspect ratio, you can't have it all, and this photo seems destined for a 2:3 aspect ratio. That means cutting off the feet, and since I felt they weren't important (in the huge rush of trying to stop his action anyway, how can I even make such decisions? I really do, however subliminally). I still feel the feet aren't important, and really wanted the intersection of the structure frame (the 'right angle) to be the bottom of the photo, not his feet. In order to include his feet, in that way, too, I would have to destroy a carefully worked out composition.

 

I had preframed this a little bit while waiting, though not much, as I couldn't hold camera to eye, without tipping myself off to the old guy, and instead turned and was seen to be looking in an entirely different direction, whipping around to take this photo (series) only when he got within a foot or so of the structure intersection. That's one of my 'feints' that allows for good street photography, I think, and allows for some inconspicuousness even with large equipment -- here three cameras with large lense hanging from my neck.

 

You can see I have carefully considered your compliment (I accept it) and your criticism. If you look more carefully at the composition in light of the above, you may be able to see my point of view -- his 'feet' had to go to make this work for me. (you may differ, of course.)

 

Thanks for letting me know your constructive evaluation and ideas.

 

John (Crosley)

What you mean, perhaps is that this old guy is at the apex of the two structure sides and with the left side, we can see down to the vanishing point nearly, and our eye thus makes him the focus for being exactly at the opposite end.

 

 

The same works a little bit for the right of the structure, since it is at a little angle, but not nearly so much; he's also headed in the direction of its vanishing point, but that's far out of our range of vision -- something we can contemplate only by visually extending what we can see to the right of the frame, perhaps very, very far to the right.

 

Placing him at the apex of the two planes was done quite on purpose, aside from the point (get the pun?) that he needed to be there to be pointed at.

 

So, this is intended to work on two levels -- one the old guy's at the intersection of two planes, one of which leads to a far-off vanishing point and when our eye follows that back, it leads us to him, as does the second plane.

 

Second, there is a 'story' here, whichever one you want to adopt (-- God is pointing at him--, or --he's just being 'introduced'-- or whatever 'story' you want to make of this juxtaposition).

 

In any event, he almost 'has' to be at this point to make the 'story' work.

 

In other words, this photo either had to work on two levels or not at all, I think. (I have other frames that would prove that point which I am not going to post.)

 

You words 'visual crescendo' were too hifalutin' for me; I am a more simple guy. I once wrote for Associated Press and was told before I wrote my first story (as I had no journalistic training) to write for the 'Kansas City milkman', and if I couldn't express a complicated concept to that prototypical working man, I probably wasn't writing (or thinking) clearly enough.

 

However, you are entitled to your flourishes; you actually do pretty well with them and are almost always on target -- even here. '~)

 

(I hope you don't mind if I poke a little fun your direction, after all, you're now an academic bigwig. Notice, I couldn't even resist a poke a that, too?)

 

John (Crosley)

very good capture

This is not just a photo about a 'story', although it is that, if you can see one in it.

 

It is not just a story about a vanishing point down the street, left, and the intersection of two planes of this structure.

 

It also is about 'mirroring'.

 

But what is the 'mirroring' here, you might ask?

 

Simple, but it takes a moment (it took me a day), to understand it.

 

This is a photo about a face and a hand.

 

I could have processed this photo for more detail in the clothes of each of the men, the poster man and the walking man, but didn't. I felt they should remain black and couldn't explain why I did that, but it seemed 'right' or 'correct', and now I know why.

 

Of course, I did that because it was visually compelling, and to keep separation between the white space of the 'hand' of the poster guy and the 'face', both of which are white, and also to keep separation between the 'hand' of the old guy pedestrian and also his face (also white).

 

And then it became clear to me, this also is a photo about hands and faces.

 

Each man, here, is represented by a hand and a face -- two white (Caucasian) faces -- two hand separated by dark (black) clothes.

 

Mirroring on a minor scale.

 

It adds that extra dimension to this photo; a little bit of sublety that I almost let slip past, but that is one thing that causes raters to rate and commenters to comment -- such things are 'seen' by them, even if not immediately analyzed or written about.

 

To put it just a little more, and this is very minor, the hand of the poster guy is horizontal and making a gesture, but also the hand of the pedestrian, while vertical, makes a similar gesture WITH HIS BIG FINGER POINTING.

 

Mirroring (repetition of visual *or other* elements within a photo)

 

Sometimes it is not always so obvious, and needs to be remarked on.

 

So this is not just about 'faces and hands' it's also about hands with index fingers pointing (even if the old guy's index finger pointing gesture has no meaning at all, and it's just 'fun' to 'point out', if you'll excuse the pun. . . . )

 

John (Crosley)

"Cut at the 'left'".

 

I had misread (or you changed your post) to read 'cut at the right' which I defended.

 

I also defend cutting at the left.

 

This is a photo about (among other things), using a vanishing point to help bring attention (focus in the general sense) to the pedestrian man.

 

So, by placing him at the end of the structure (wall/fence), it heightens his strength as a visual centerpiece.

 

To include more at the left would have included an extraneous street and street traffic.

 

My general rule is to 'leave inside the frame all the interesting stuff and exclude all the uninteresting stuff'. Whatever else was beyond the left of the frame was uninteresting and also distracting -- it pulled away from the visual completeness of this photo.

 

Sorry, if above, I misread you, but I did make a good point about when and when not to cut off text, I think, even if my remark was in-a pro pos to the point you had made. (sorry for confusion if you did not change your post.)

 

John (Crosley)

Thank you for the high compliment.

 

This was not the hardest photo in the world to 'see', but it required some waiting.

 

I didn't just 'turn around' and find the old man walking by. I had to wait for him a little while.

 

But patience was rewarded, AND he turned to our right (his left), which completed the photo.

 

What luck!

 

And his hand is in a fist with his index finger out!

 

But if he hadn't turned, I'd probably have waited and got a different photo, perhaps equally as good or better.

 

Thanks for leaving a thoughtful comment.

 

John (Crosley)

 

P.S. (addendum after posting) I am pleased that this deserved in your mind a 7/7 rating. I cannot 'thank' you for such a rating, as I do not reward high (or punish low) raters, but I feel very good that this photo pleased you so much.

 

I seldom see a ratings before posting a response to a comment (it keeps me neutral in my responses -- and keeps me from pandering, I hope.)

 

JC

This symmetry is very small, not easily noticed, but goes toward the overall pleasing aspect of this capture.

 

Follow me. The portion of the structure in front of the man's legs is the beginning of an elongated (very long) triangle, part of which is obscured. It is formed by perspective as the eye leads to a very distant right vanishing point. Its top is the (contrasting) dark poster; its bottom is the ground.

 

Now, behind the guy, in a more forced perspective leading to a far-off and more easily-imagined vanishing point is a second triangular shape -- this time it's the shape of the entire fence and has both blacks and lights, but its bottom point begins at roughly the same height (in the photo) as the base of the poster in front of the man.

 

Thus, there are corollary triangles both before and behind the man; one, in front of him, is long and whitish, and does not have an end and begins below his waist and below the poster.

 

The second is behind him, it forms a rather oblique triangular structure, and its beginnings are mostly above his waist level (visualize extending the bottom line of the poster around behind the guy and see where the poster line extension ends -- that's the height at which the second triangle begins to be visible).

 

I see those as corollary (not complementary but corollary) triangular shapes, and in my view, they go in some small way towards explaining why this photo is pleasing, in addition to the 'story' of the photo, however one views that 'story'.

 

Compare this photo, in that regard' to 'The Bike Trick' (this folder) which also relies on a 'story' but also has very pleasing geometry working for it, and I think you'll see how each is similar, in a way, to the other in the use of story and geometry -- in a way, they are both of the same 'school' or subgenre of my photography -- perhaps this is a new way of mine of looking at things.

 

Is this explanation coherent enough or does it need to be 'explained' better, as I am not sure I can do better?

 

John (Crosley)

My dear John - perhaps "yours truly" made a faux pas by wearing something bigger than his normal size. After all, one looks better in fitted garments that conform to one's real measurements. ;)

 

Allow me to elaborate further on my interpretation. All I meant was that without the vanishing point perspective on the left this man's climatic turn would not be as effective (at least for me). The long hallway creates a story line and builds anticipation.

 

You are right about the geometric patterns and it is always enlightening to listen to the interpretation of the creator.

I just couldn't resist poking a little fun at you, now that you've advanced academically a little bit and your vocabulary and analysis seems to have gone upscale a little bit.

 

When I attended Columbia, my thoughts often were so complex they were incomprehensible when I attempted to write them; I am sure my professors thought I must have been very bright, but very confused, as I could not seem to write coherent sentences. They always were long and convoluted. They were loaded with major and minor thoughts, and could have used some serious editing. In fact, it may have been that I really didn't know what it was I was writing and I was writing convoluted sentences to mask my own ignorance and to make myself sound important.

 

Sometimes here I write with major and minor thoughts and in the conjunctive and disjunctive, also, with lots and lots of parenthetical expressions -- that harkens back to my free-form way of associating. My thoughts are very discursive at times, especially in this forum.

 

But when I force myself to write in a disciplined manner, I really can boil almost everything down into short, declarative sentences. There are very few ideas I cannot express in simple language, no matter how complex.

 

When I joined Associated Press, they always left writing about developments at nearby Stanford to me, a recent staff member, because of that rare ability to turn the complex into the simple, to turn complex-appearing thoughts into their simple, step-by-step processes and come to logical conclusions. Plus I was blessed by the ability to be able to read complex material, especially scientific material, and be able to distill the essence and also understand how the authors/researchers progressed in their thinking.

 

This turned out to be a valuable skill.

 

Practicing law also drew heavily on my writing skills; as few attorneys spend much time in Court beside criminal attorneys, and most of the rest spend some of their time with clients and most of it writing.

 

Good English skills are a must for good lawyering, (again, unless one is a criminal attorney, which may account for why many foreign-born or others who do not express themselves well in written English become criminal attorneys, since it relieves them of the obligation to do much legal writing. Mostly such attorneys just show up in Court, make appearances, and bill their clients outrageous sums for doing little work. Occasionally they try cases and 'fly by the seat of their pants' in doing so, though their are some notable exceptions.

 

I was a very well prepared attorney -- so well prepared in fact that I seldom got into court, though I was ostensibly a litigator -- nearly all my cases settled -- often for more than I could have got if I had tried them. I used my writing skills to present my cases in writing from the start, first in letters, then in pleadings, and all trials would have done was memorialize what was already stored in my word processors -- and the other side almost always knew that I was prepared so they couldn't bluff me, like they could with some attorneys who weren't so well prepared.

 

Unfortunately, it was not very 'original' in the practice to do it that way, unlike my photography, but I did greatly vary my practice, especially at the beginning so I could continue testing my skills.

 

Frankly, I like photography better (though it is not the least remunerative) because it brings lots of happy people and much acclaim.

 

In law, if you win, you just facilitated 'natural justice'. If you lost (rarely), it was 'all your fault'.'

 

That's the nature of law clients -- never satisifed and seldom complimentary.

 

Worse, in litigation, there always was an 'other side' trying to tear you and your arguments down, so everything always was combative. Lawyers ceased being 'gentlemen' and 'entleladies' long ago, unfortunately, and evereybody was out for each other's throat.

 

The discipline of writing down everything about my clients' cases, good and bad, and analyzing all aspects for myself in writing, forced me to understand the weaknesses of those cases long before any defense attorney could point them out, so I could either 'fix' those weaknesses or move for a settlement before they became known.

 

Verbal skills have some advantages, I have found, but I did not find my verbal 'voice' until I first wrote for the Kansas City milkman in simple declarative sentences after I was hired by the Associated Press and was forced to abandon the convoluted prose that I thought made me sound hifalutin' (there's that word again) when I was at Columbia College, Columbia University.

 

The advantage of going to Columbia wasn't that they taught me how to write (they didn't). They did order my thoughts so that when I was forced to write simply, my mind was ordered so I could do so -- even with the most complex thoughts.

 

It's been a great gift throughout my life.

 

I've attempted in my photo analyses to transfer those verbal skills to communicate the 'how' and 'why' of photography into words that can be understood by my increasingly large viewership -- to share in words the process of how I do what I do with my viewership. (I have little to fear from imitators -- my skill set is pretty unique by now, and often results in unique photos.

 

Don't hang your head, Adan W., -- just understand that I ribbed you a little, just as I needed ribbing when I was a student. I had thought complexity meant expressiveness (and that was encouraged by the faculty of my institution in most cases).

 

The ultimate test came with the California State Bar Examination.

 

I typewrote the examination.

 

While others who crowded the typewriting room studied the questions for long periods, I just looked at each questions and started typing, often ten to twenty minutes before others started typing -- the sole typewriter breaking the silence -- as I first looked at the facts, looked at the question being asked (the call of the question) then began my stream of consciousness analysis, point by point, only coming to a conclusion as I finished each question.

 

I wrote that examination in simple, declarative English.

 

(I passed first try.)

 

Sometimes one has to be smart to write simply.

 

John (Crosley)

Let those who have ears listen. Wise words and a good lesson to be learned by many.

John:

I terrific image, powerful, tells a story, captures your imagination. EVERYTHING A GOOD PHOTOGRAPH SHOULD DO! I lOVE THAT YOU KEPT IT IN B/W. lauren

I'm not sure exactly what this image says, but it says something powerfully.

 

Maybe it's just the pointing, the mirroring of the hands (with pointed fingers), and the geometry of the whole thing which has been discussed extensively above.

 

The 'story' is somewhat ambiguous, and maybe that's 'art' too. Not all great 'art' has to be representational -- maybe not all 'stories' need to be absolutely clear-cut in their meaning, and maybe this story is best left to the viewer to determine his/her own meaning.

 

I do know that for some reason, this is a very appealing photo and refer you to a prior photo 'The Bike Trick' for a photo with similar qualities (good story, appealing geometry) -- found in this folder.

 

And of course, it HAD to be black and white; there was no other choice.

 

This is a photo about blacks and whites and tonalities (well rendered by the D300, even at relatively high ISO, too.)

 

Thanks for the nice compliment and for letting me know your thoughts.

 

John (Crosley)

+++

Nasty Barby,

 

I hope those are good rates.

 

I actually staked out this billboad and just waited, then when this guy came around hit the 5 frames per second 'c' drive and got the best one.

 

It turned out really well, as I had hoped.

 

Thanks for recognizing that and validating my choice; it's been a popular choice with viewers.

 

John (Crosley)