What's Goin' On?

'What's Goin' On' is different example of 'mirroring' in photography,

with the 'mirroring' this time being the repetition of puzzlement by

the graffito (correct) and the pedestrian. 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

This photo is Copyright 2008, John Crosley, All Rights Reserved.

When last I saw this photo it had about a 4.25 average for originality and aesthetics with a 3/3 and a bunch of 4/4s and an occasional 4/5.

 

Then came the 6/6s -- about 6 of them and a 7/7.

 

And what strikes me is that no one left a comment and it seems each one of the new raters was an 'anonymous' rater who actually 'understood' the photo -- the 'mirroring' of the quizzical woman and the graffito with the question mark behind her.

 

And what amazes me is that anyone at all even 'found' this low-rated photo to rate it, when it appeared so low on the Top Rated Photo list -- after all, who rates photos when they have a 4/4 average? Oh, I guess they didn't find it there, they were going through the queue, as these are all 'anonymous' rates.

 

So, one wonders, just how do such things happen, that early raters do not like a photo at all, and later raters consider it very very good?

 

It's one of the small wonders of exposing work to the rating system, and why I keep doing so. I learn a little bit new every time. It's a 'system' that cannot be 'figured out' or guessed. (It is what it is.)

 

John (Crosley)

For one moment, the real world and the fictional one were synchronized along the same thought. Perfect timing.

Exactly.

 

And I got it.

 

There was a good to excellent photo there, and I got it.

 

I had second thoughts when the early ratings came in at 4/4, but feel much better now.

 

This one I liked and it was the second one I processed after the one of the black and white poster man pointing (at the man passing in front) posted in B&W Then to Now, recently to large success.

 

I only had about two hours daylight in Vienna, and I had a very productive late afternoon (I got stranded there by my airline which misconnected me because they had not made proper arrangements for me at the airport -- sometimes they have to have an attendant waiting for me if I don't feel up to sprinting for a short connect as I have musculoskeletal problems, and that was one of those days, so I ended up at the airline's expense stranded in a downtown Vienna hotel -- Vienna's a place I had been, but I saw places I never really had seen before and in a way I had never seen before (got a whole new look at a small part of Vienna, and I'd go back in an instant.)

 

Lots of good graffiti in Vienna (as you can tell). Austrians are educated, and it shows in their graffiti (compare Ukrainian graffiti, for instance from old color captures e.g. stick figure people, for instance in downtown Odessa courtyard from photos of boys drinking beer and laughing - single photo, color, folder.)

 

Life is what one makes of small disasters like this 24-hour overnight misconnect (separated from clothes, shaving utensils, medicines, etc. and with almost no money.)

 

I've always been able to turn lemons into . . . well you understand . . . .

 

Maybe there's a lesson in that.

 

Best to you, Adan.

 

John (Crosley)

Improvisation is a skill that every human should have. You have a healthy attitude John. Why cry over spilled milk? after all, the cat might enjoy it. ;)

I've fretted over 'spilled milk' far too much in my lifetime, and seen way too much milk spilled.

 

It was either 'get with the program' and learn to accommodate it or be done in by it.

 

That's why they make planes wings flex; to avoid breaking when the plane hits turbulence.

 

I don't know if you are aware, but at Boeing (and at other companies surely), when they first build a plane and attach the wings, then outfit it, they set out to destroy the plane.

 

There is one of the first two planes assembled just for the purpose of being destroyed, but under controlled conditions.

 

Engineers and workmen attach heavy-duty winches and pulleys to the wings, secure then, anchor them as secure as humanly possible, then they start jacking those wings out of a straight line.

 

Last I heard, with the 777, (the last plane I followed the development of), the wings flexed to about 45 or more degrees before they finally snapped.

 

That's precious assurance for someone who's flying in one of those hurricane-strength storms, as I have, where you see the plane's wing tips going up and down six to ten feet at a time, in a matter of seconds.

 

I had not known that when the lightning struck the nose of the 777 I was flying into SFO from Hong Kong in an early morning thunder/hurrican force storm, and as we approached the airport runway (toward freeway 101), those wing tips were jumping up and down and people really were frightened the plane might break apart.

 

Fat chance.

 

And the lightning strike made a loud 'snap (boom) throughout the whole plane, but I remembered basic physics, and it told me that electricity always travels along the 'outside' of a body it strikes or which conducts it. So the skin of the plane was tens or hundreds of thousands of volts, but we were safe inside -- just a little scared (imagine the pilot, as the bolt had hit the nose cone right in front of him and his co-pilot as they were on approach for a landing -- temporarily blinding them in the early morning gloom (I think we did a go-around so they could get their senses back again, but they weren't telling).

 

Go arounds are 'fun' -- 'oh, the pilot will drone on in his fake test pilot drawl, we just about landed back there in St Louis, but as we turn around over Lambert Field there, you'll see that big DC-10 on the runway just where we were going to land -- it would have been a bit 'uncomfortable' trying to fit two of us into one space, so we 'went around'.

 

That's also happened at SFO and a couple of other places -- I say 'hoooray' for go-arounds, rather than a pilot who's sure everything's working 'great' and finds out he's wrong.

 

In life, one has to be as flexible sometimes as that plane wing (see I did work this all in -- in my discursive way), because things (and personalities) that are too rigid, tend to snap too easily.

 

The CIA advertises for candidates who are 'morally flexible' which interprets to mean those who won't be too upset over waterboarding alleged enemies who it later turns out were just brothers-in-law of the rival faction who were being used for revenge, and not Taligan fighters.

 

(Did you see the news, Guantanamo detainees are being allowed 'normal' telephone calls?)

 

So much for 'tough on terrorism' or is it that we just don't have all the right men (for sure some of them are dangerous as hell, but for sure, some of them are innocent as hell, too, and so far haven't had a fair chance to prove it -- outside of what we would call 'kangaroo courts'.

 

Bush is getting ready to enter civilian life; if I were he, I wouldn't ever plan on flying into any foreign countries during his post-presidency; he'll surely be arrested and tried as a war criminal like Augusto Pinochet of Chile, and just as Henri Kissinger dare not visit certain countries for fear of arrest over his violations of international law during the Viet Nam conflict (it was less clear then with all the government's obfuscation, but after defense secretary McNamara went around the last part of his life apologizing for starting and maintaing an 'unjust war' it finally became clear even to me.

 

Iraq is a little easier, though Sadam was no angel.

 

But why was that our business -- and besides - we 'won' that war after a few weeks, but we're not 'occupying' the country, according to the Adminstration . . . . things get funnier and funnier when one looks into the looking glass.

 

One has to allow one's sense of fairness and one's sense of rectitude a little 'moral latitude' when examining the US government's interpretation of certain of its own actions relating to certain hostile acts against others, less one become stark raving lunatic because one's rational mind identifies things that 'cannot compute' and it threatens one's psyche.

 

Follow that?

 

I didn't for the longest time; and at my more advanced age, it's all so much clearer how my anti-war compatriots were so dead on correct, while I was 'evaluating things'. Well, I've evaluated and I am on the side of history's judgment.

 

In the Bush case, history's judgment is going to precede him as he exits the presidency.

 

(Oh, and did you see that one part of the Caryle Group -- Caryle Capital -- that seemingly invincible Caryle Group which hired Tony Blair for the first decent salary he ever made (millions just for joining and doing very little except add his name and contacts to the Carlyle group), has just had a meltdown.

 

It borrowed millions upon millions to buy financial instruments secured by investments in subprime loans.

 

The loans are defaulting and those investments are essentially worthless. Carlyle Capital says it has no more cash and those who are owed the money are taking back the securities (repossessing them).

 

It looks like even the invincible Caryle Group is 'vincible' after all.

 

But they're still making bombs and bullets, i think, a growth industry, in other parts of the group.

 

I was never in the right business.

 

I should have invested in bullets and bombs.

 

So I could vacation on my 300' yacht off St. Tropez.

 

And the size of my bank account would guarantee entree into 'high society' (ugh).

 

I'd rather get famous the way I'm doing it -- through photos like this.

 

This'll last a small lifetime - and always get a smile (a small smile, albeit).

 

John (Crosley)

 

 

Awesome. Congrats John !

Thanks so much.

 

John

This is an instance of picking an interesting background, deciding on the framing, knowing there would be passersby, and then just trusting to instinct and some considerable luck.

 

Frames where this woman was farther along to the left showed her face blurred, but this one showed her face sharp (and very inquisitive).

 

You cannot start out with the idea 'I'm going to take a photo in which a passerby mirrors the expression of the most interesting background by looking quizzical -- you start with an interesting background, and as each passerby comes by, you 'play it by ear' -- not calling to anyone to draw attention to yourself (across the street) or doing anything else to upset life's natural rhythms, so the capture will be as natural as possible (considering there were three cameras and some big lenses around my neck -- I had two hours in Vienna that trip before nightfall -- that's all, and got two portfolio topping shots within a city block of each other.

 

There's a considerable amount of skill (and dumb luck) in being able to bring home two good captures in such a short distance. (But, you might ask, what about all the rest of the time, -- why don't I get stunning captures all the rest of the time? I plead no contest -- foggy brain being one of the impediments. Sometimes the brain just works better at some times than others, plus new surroundings usually trigger good captures.)

 

;~)

 

John (Crosley)