Incredible!

Any comments, critiques or advice welcome. Thank you.

Funny!! 6/6

Great perspective! Warm and endearing image! Very nice work Linda...congrats...LJ

Charming shot!

Nice Moment Linda :)

Regards

Rosa maria, Lesa, Joseph, Janusz,

 

Thank you all for your kind words, I appreciate it.

 

 

He has so much to learn and this is certainly a good way to start the process. I am sure that he enjoyed it just as much as the viewers. Nice shot.

What an adorable child. I love how you captured such a fun expression. Great image. Take care

 

Pure joy! GJ

Thank you all for commenting.

 

 

You captured fun. I like the composition of the boy forefront and center, enjoying life, and bits and signs of movement of everyday life almost oblivious to a magic moment.

Very well cropped and composed and great timing Linda. well converted to B/W as well, a fan shot! I like the two levels connected by the water.

The main subject and his expression with the fountain would be good enough, but including the legs and feet of the older folks walking by adds dimension and significance to this. It's more than a cute kid picture. It has spontaneity, wonder, composition, life, energy. Well done.

Donna, thank you. The little boy's enraptured expression in the midst of oblivious hustle and bustle is exactly what I liked about the image.

 

Pnina, thank you. I'm glad you like it.

 

Thanks for your thoughts Fred! I had thought about cropping and burning out the other people in this shot, and having it just be about the little boy's moment of delight and wonder. I decided the others really belonged there. The main subject is spellbound, enthralled and totally in the moment, as if he is experiencing an epiphany. Everyone in this shot is in and preoccupied with their own world, some mondune, one not.

 

It's great. While people are going about on their boring and pointless errands, the kid is in pure ecstasy.

His face really tells me that he is living completly and blissfully in the moment. Many spiritual teachers tell us this is the way to enlightenment.

 

 

 

 

"While people are going about on their boring and pointless errands"

 

Ray, I'd be curious to know what, in the photo, suggests "boring and pointless" to you regarding the background people. There does seem to be a contrast between the child's playfulness and the adult intentionality of pace, but couldn't the adults be on their way to very important meetings, etc.? I, myself, would need more significant or symbolic information to get to "boring and pointless." It can't be that everything that is not childlike wonder is automatically mundane. I was a little surprised when Linda used the word "mundane" to describe the rest of the scene because, to me, the scene taken as a whole has an air of the sublime and the people, in what I consider their utter naturalness, add to rather than contrast to that sublimeness. While I could possibly experience "mundane" in the sense of "ordinary" here, I have a hard time seeing "boring" or "pointless" in the image itself.

 

Linda, regarding enlightenment, I wonder if that may be different from this sort of bliss. Paths to enlightenment often include hard work, sacrifice, and even the performance of mundane tasks in fostering the good. It's often only through a very worldly existence that true enlightenment is found. Is enlightenment found in the blissful state of meditation and wonder, for example, or in the repetitious hammering of nails to rebuild homes for the poor of New Orleans?

Take the kid out of the picture and what do you have?

 

It's a picture of a kid having the time of his life on a hot day. OK, yes, all the people in the background have important and fulfilling things to do and are probably off to save the world. They're looking forward to exciting meetings where work gets passed out along with blame and criticism from the last project. You're reading in a lot of information into people walking around with shorts on.

My point was NOT to read anything into the people in the background. That's why I questioned your use of the words "pointless" and "boring" to describe them. I posed my scenario as one possibility of MANY that would not be pointless or boring. I wasn't suggesting that ANYTHING in particular was there for certain. I'm here to learn about photography, and for me photography uses visual cues and clues, symbols and significant images in order to convey meaning. I simply didn't see anything in the photo itself that conveyed the "pointless" and "boring" that you were talking about. That doesn't mean I think you're wrong for feeling those things or reading into it. I honestly thought you might have picked up on some gestures or characteristics that would actually convey what you were talking about. It was meant to discuss how photography communicates and not to start an altercation.

There are many routes to enlightment I'm told, I certainly don't know from personal experience. I was thinking of the Four Paths of Creation Spiritualitly, Via Positiva, Via Negativa, Via Creativa, and Via Transformativa. I think most of us relate to the hard, painful route, but there are those who can take the joyful route. I think that blissful meditation and the hammering of nails are both condusive to spiritual transformation. The bible says that "good works alone will not bring us to kingdom of heaven" and I suspect there may be something to that. Many spiritual teachers today believe that the key is to "be here now" completly and totally in the moment, leaving ego, brain chatter behind to live in peace, awe and wonder. When I see a little child like this one, I wonder if perhaps they have found that same portal.

 

 

 

Well, we digress, don't we!

 

We've proven something here, that an image even of a happy little kid can bring out an emotional response in people. That's what it's all about, and if it becomes a high spirited conversation, than it was well worth the effort.

 

And it shows that we bring our own emotions and experiences when we look at that image. That's why I like this site. You can focus on one picture and think about it and share some ideas.

 

Have a better day than those people on their boring and pointless errands! ;-)

Yes, I agree. I love all the variety of responses to different images. It is always interesting to realize how differently we see things. I appreciate your thoughts, thank you.

 

 

 

 

Thanks.

 

Linda, I imagine there are many paths to enlightenment, as you say. I remain hopeful that mature enlightenment is very different from the innocent bliss of a child, each of which would be of course precious. I think there are similarities between the two, to be sure, but at the core I assume great differences. Photographically, I would consider it a challenge to myself to visually capture, if I could, the difference I understand between the two. I've been thinking about how to do that all day and will continue to do so. Thanks for the stimulation.

 

Ray, I am happy to allow any photo to provide the jumping-off point to what may seem like tangential discussions. I find myself sometimes learning as much from people's reactions to photographs as I do from the photographs themselves. Thanks for your responses.

....following this discussion that I have found interesting, I liked a lot your :

 

" the Four Paths of Creation Spiritualitly, Via Positiva, Via Negativa, Via Creativa, and Via Transformativa. "

 

Great! we learn all the time...

 

Each of us brings to the evaluation of a photo, or any other art form his cultural

" cargo". and therfor evaluation, feelings, attachment, childhood and adult experiences which built our grown up personality, vary. Adding our life experience will be a part of our path to creation, as well as evaluation.

 

As I wrote you before, I like the composition between the enjoying child and the grown ups on the BG, connected by the water, but connected as well metaphoricaly between childhood and adulthood.

 

( thanks for your comment that brought me to this photo that I like a lot , and discussion....;-))

 

(and your files).

Fred, you are ambitous! What an interesting concept. I look forward to seeing what you come up with. I think you are often the one who stimulates these philosophical conversations.

 

Pnina, the idea of the four paths comes from Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality by Matthew Fox. This is something that I have found very interesting. It has been floating around in my head recently, but I don't want of go on a tangent.

 

Thank you for your thoughts on cultural cargo and creation, very interesting point.

 

Warm regards