Parallelism -- Heads in Hands

Sometimes in life themes repeat -- here it is parallelism of heads in

hands. 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

... very good work ...

I think it is a geat photo, well seen and well captured

John, I do not have "superior photographic knowledge ' to share. I rated this excellent. There is however something about the geometry of the image that does not see quite right. He seems to be crowded into a space where he does not belong, ie. too close to the mouth where there is no room for him. I do not know where else to put him. My two cents or shekels.

Thank you so much. I strive for excellence.

 

(Many times I miss, but I keep trying ; ~))

 

John (Crosley)

 

This Photo is Copyright 2008, John Crosley, All Rights Reserved.)

This photo is almost a complete surprise for me.

 

I just took it, and several like it of this poster and this man and pretty much figured I'd do something with it. I had trouble with text at the bottom and a logo.

 

(A little cloning took care of that problem, but really very, very little, and that is uncharacteristic of me).

 

The colors were not so apparent on the street, but since this is a raw (NEF) capture, I was able to convert it to a .PSD capture in Adobe Raw Converter and play with the contrast and the exposure levels a little bit to add some saturation that was not immediately evident.

 

(NOTE: I almost NEVER add saturation by using the saturation slider: I leave that to the landscapers and others who try to 'jam' some color into their photos. I prefer usually 'natural' color. However, by judicious use of lightness/darkness it sometimes works out that colors become more intense, but the colors are there to begin with.)

 

I remember I had a conversation with a postcard photographer in San Francisco that was very instructive. I asked him whether he 'manipulated' his photos (and was ready to cast aspersions on him if he said 'yes').

 

In fact, his reply was most helpful to my understanding. He said to me that no photo will match what the eye sees; the eye is constantly adjusting and readjusting as it scans a scene, opening and closing its own aperture through the iris and adjusting through the brain the 'white balance' so that no camera could ever come close to more than approximating the input of what the eyeball sends to the brain -- the best a photographer could do is to send an approximation to the eyeball that is not too strained from what it sees in nature or otherwise is not too stressful to the eyeball and brain -- and in fact, the eyeball IS part of the brain -- a fact that few know. Yes, the eyeball is the outward manifestation of the brain -- a sense organ that is directly attached to human's largest processor of biological information.

 

So, what we photographers can do, is cease worrying about 'manipulation' of a scene and being 'natural' other than sending the eyeball (and by extension . . . literally and figuratively . . . the brain) an image that it can process without trouble as being within its experience. Another sort of image that it sees as 'not natural' it will process as being 'unnatural' or 'manipulated' whether or not it is.

 

For instance, an underexposed image, even if it depicts reality as the camera saw it, will be seen by the eye-brain combination as being unnatural and perhaps the photographer is best advised to recreate the natural effect the eye-brain expects by bringing that exposure back into the reality the eye-brain expects.

 

(a surprising analysis from a surprising source, I thought, and I haven't forgot it).

 

So, if you saw this scene, with his reflections and as the camera underexposed it, you would not recognize it, but I brought it back into the realm of what it could be within that realm of naturalness. I did not (other than using a minor clone to eliminate small text/logo) 'manipulate' the photo, which the instructions on 'manipulation' tell us is used for 'selections' -- or in other words to work specifically on one are or another in a photo much as a darkroom tech in a 'wet darkroom' would enhance an image by 'burning' or 'dodging' an image. All adjustments were applied to all parts of this image.

 

In reality, however, with today's sophisticated digital darkroom tools -- with 'curves', shadow/highlight filter, brightness/contrast filter, levels, etc., many of such overall adjustments however do 'select' only offending portions of a photo, and have the same effect as 'wet darkroom' manipulation, but need not be labeled as such, under the Photo.net guidelines, because those effects are applied to the image universally, even if they affect only one small part. (Get it? If not, save this, or bookmark it, and re-read it a month or so from now and it may make more sense.)

 

In any case, I'm glad you appreciate this photo. Frankly I had little hope for it, except for the man's posture, which I found intriguing, and the workup frankly took me less than five minutes, soup to nuts, and literally this is a 'Cinderella photo' for me.

 

I take many photos that for me are much more wonderful but simply don't grab as well as this one, but often those for me have much more meaning as they are truly 'wonderful' captures in my aesthetics.

 

On the other hand, maybe it was the ease with which I achieved this effect that makes me tend to dismiss it more easily.

 

But I assure you, since it is a 'crop' and because it did require some Photoshopping that was supremely important, you might have seen the same image and passed right over it -- and never understood that it could have been the high rater that it is. This photo's high ratings are a triumph of Photoshopping, AND the fact that I started with a very good underlying 'idea' (the two hands cradling two heads).

 

I was motivated by the composition, and when I saw it, I started to work on it, and as I worked, I was intrigued by how good it became.

 

I'm sure that's more than you ever wanted to know about this photo; but many times amateurs who are true beginners read about these things and they look to these comments for guidance and wonder 'how did he do that?'

 

When I joined Photo.net, I saw wondrous images and said the same to myself, yet there almost universally was no guidance at all. There was plenty of guidance about what camera to buy or what lens or flash to purchase, but precious little on how to choose and work up a specific image that already had high scores.

 

So, if this seems discursive, consider that it is written for the newbies -- the person who sees this and says 'how did he do that?' and this is for him/her. (her/him?)

 

Best wishes, Milena, and thanks for the flattering comment.

 

John (Crosley)

 

You have a good point about the spacing. This is a crop, because there were distracting elements of the billboard, behind that were best cropped out, so I did.

 

I tried to keep in the best elements and keep spacing proper. I am a slave to people's placement. I am not a stage director; I have no walkie-talkie with an earpiece in actors' ears to tell them to 'move left one step' or 'move forward one step' or maybe 'rotate your head about 30 degrees clockwise' or I'd maybe be more like a cinematographer.

 

In other words, I take my subjects as I find them, and although I can position myself, in various ways, I also have to deal with the exigencies of self-positioning that take into account several factors. (1) where candid capture is important, not to reveal myself by making myself conspicuous as here; (2) where there are other people, by not shoving them out of the way (Cartier-Bresson was once filmed actually shoving people out of the way so he could get his capture, according to a friend who saw the film, taken by others studying his technique). I don't do such things. (3). shooting by, over, under, through and around natural barriers and intervening people, cars, bushes, trees, etc., which can move through auto propulsion or being windblown, etc., and those things can interfere with captures, and frequently do. I throw away (and often delete) a good number of captures that are interfered with by passing traffic, where I have used a zoom telephoto across a street or other distance, where there's intervening traffic and/or pedestrians or both, as well as blowing tree branches, etc.

 

A passing car usually does not add to a scene; I cannot remember one such scene where one has. Sometimes, however, a passing pedestrian actually DOES add to a scene, and in fact some scenes are enhanced by passing pedestrians or actually 'made better or are dependant' on passing pedestrians'. I've posted on such on Photocritiq.com if you want to see it. I don't expect to post it here.

 

So, you take what you can get.

 

In one case, in the middle of a town pedestrian mall, with an old lady, I dropped to my aching knees to get the right upward angle and stayed there for several minutes as she wandered back and forth in front of interesting posters -- so I could juxtapose her and them (and then was roundly criticized in what has become one of PN's most immortal flame wars, which remains still posted, and taken in front of this same building, across the street from the flat where I'm staying currently.

 

Imogen Cunningham, for all her fame, said the true test of a photographer was to be able to go into one's own yard and take a good photo.

 

This was taken outside my window, but regrettably there was no front door, so I had to go around the building to get here.

 

Go figure.

 

Another thing you didn't comment on is the 'aspect ratio' which is not true to a 2:3 or a 4:5 aspect or even a 1:1. That's because of cropping. A former mentor who printed for Helmut Newton told me that because Newton shot primarily in medium format (square I think with maybe a Hasselblad) he figured every shot would have to be cropped.

 

I am a fan of Cartier-Bresson who had his famous 'no crop' rule, more out of stubbornness and cussedness, I think, and also to keep newspapers and magazines from chopping up his carefully laid out 'compositions' into 'head shots' or 'one column' or 'two column' shots than anything. He insisted not only that the photo be printed, but also the frame be printed also, even if he misloaded the cassette and the sprocket holes showed on the film. (He was born rich and could afford such eccentricities, just to make a point).

 

Your point is well taken, but overall, it seems a pleasing photo nevertheless, for reasons I just cannot put my finger on. Some photos are like that. You like them despite some flaw, while more ambitious and even better executed photos just never will score as high as this. Again, go figure.

 

Life's like that.

 

Thanks for commenting. All comments are treated seriously here if they come from a good place, and yours obviously was.

 

John (Crosley)

Amazing...

Thank you for the kind compliment.

 

John (Crosley)

First of all, this is a remarkable shot. Knowing your approach (and style) it represents your ability to produce particularly original street photos just watching, seeing and releasing.

No manipulation, no "direction", no technical post-processing.

That said, what strikes me is that the background seems not plane in respect to the picture plane. In other words it seems that the right part of the poster is drifting farer away. Another thing is the missing elbow.

 

But this is just nitpicking on a photo difficult by itself.

Best,

Luca

good photography well done.

The elbow's there, but it's buried in text -- Cryllic text, and that was too much of a distraction. It just wasn't worth the effort of trying to clone out the elbow from that text -- I saw it as tedious work, and I seldom do much Photoshopping, preferring just to take a photo of something new.

 

There is a line of white shampoo text advertising text beneath the guy's elbow that I cropped first with my camera in many shots and in some I just left it in but figured I'd just crop it out where it showed if I had to post-process the shots, as it not only was distracting, but it was not parallel to the base of the photo, so it would have made a somewhat diagonal line of text to the photo, ascending from lower left slightly to upper right (again, only slightly).

 

So, you also are right about the right part of the photo being farther away, (as the above should reveal).

 

This might have been an easy photo to take and process if it hadn't been for the text, and I took many versions of it, and maybe with more than one person (I forget, but I think I took one or more with a girl in front of it the day before).

 

But somehow I liked the idea of the hand cradling the guy's chin and the woman's hand cradling her cheek for the parallelism pointed to in the caption.

 

I don't regard this photo as any particular feat -- in fact it was for me ridiculously simple -- it's just particularly attractive.

 

I regard many of my B&W photos as far more worthy (not some of my most recent ones, taken in the US) but some of my B&W are truly 'gems' in my own view, while this one is very attractive because of parallelism -- or 'mirroring' of subject and background (in my style of course, but I can do far more than 'my style' and that runs the risk of becoming hackneyed.

 

I have far more in me than just this, as you obviously are aware. For me, this was just an opportunity that presented itself, but no real accomplishment. It just looks good, and as such seems to score high.

 

My 'really good' captures seem in some cases to go unheralded, but I know personally which ones they are -- the ones which I think only I could have seen, and many of them keep showing up on web blogs.

 

I have recently googled myself in Russian and find that running my name in Russian (it changes every few hours so this is not the last word) brings up ten of ten listings under 'john crosley' as listings of mine and my photographs, often from photo sites and even more from blogs that feature my 'stolen' photos.)

 

I told a friend, who is a Russian-speaking Ukrainian the other day that I may indeed be the most recognizable 'street' photographer in the Russian speaking world, and I may not be wrong. (and pretty recognizable elsewhere as well, these days, which has me hoping for gallery representation.)

 

Regrettably Russians don't lust after original things but steal everything, it seems, and an 'original' is seldom sought after when they can get a stolen 'copy' -- just like all copies of Adobe's Photoshop in Russia seem to be pirated (and they now work with Vista -- wonder of wonders -- something that had every Russian and Ukrainian swearing a blue streak about Vista until recently.)

 

Of course, there are ample reasons to swear a blue streak about Vista in any case, as a poor attempt to clone apple's elegant 'look and feel' without its elegance and just cludging up the operating system and making it slower and slower and slower.

 

This one did work out very well because of the colors, which I forced somewhat, but they are true -- no 'stepping on' saturation, though I did enhance the 'contrast' which has a similar effect, since lighting was very flat under cloudy skies.

 

Thanks always for your thoughtful comments. Every word you write is taken to heart -- your words have great weight here.

 

John (Crosley)

Thank you so much for such a kind comment.

 

John (Crosley)

Uncanny coincidence amazingly capture. While the face in the background seems to think about the future (or past), the one in the foreground is concerned with something more pressing in the present.

Adan W.

 

Here are the secrets of making such a photograph.

 

Walk down the street across from rental flat -- spy billboard (on same building that has same billboard/illustration that has Photo of the Week from last October).

 

See new billboard for shampoo.

 

Notice guy standing there drinking a beer.

 

Notice that he is drinking his beer and just standing there.

 

Find a fountain to stand on, as it is a long/broad pedestrian plaza.

 

Then, sit down on a circular bench next to people and turn around so the camera is aimed at guy and take a bunch of 70~200 telephoto photos. Show interested bystanders the photos (vertical orientation since he's farther away than this). Enjoy their smiles.

 

When space on the circular bench (surrounding planter trees which are interfering somewhat), opens up on the other side nearer the guy, move to the side nearer him.

 

Continue focusing on him, this time in a horizontal aspect.

 

Worry about the line of text in Cryllic at the bottom and the logo for shampoo at the right, which is cloned out here (and pretty well, actually (surprises me, for sure).

 

Move camera angle up slightly to eliminate the Cryllic text -- no white lettering to interfere with the photo and to have to crop out later, as it does NOT fit in with the envisioned photo, or which of several might be envisioned -- no telling which one might 'make it' and that depends on his movements and expressions.

 

Hope for a GREAT expression on his face.

 

No 'GREAT' expression comes, but notice in review that his hand reverse mirrors the hand of the poster model and decide that's 'good enough'.

 

Now, look at the photo and realize that the capture is WAY TOO LIGHT and applying auto levels and auto contrast just keeps it light or lightens it.

 

'Step on' the contrast which has the effect of saturating it (see discussion above about the effect of the eye's iris on what we see, and decide that there is no 'natural' capture).

 

When the photo appears sufficiently attractive, simply dream up a good enough caption so people will 'get it'. Without a good caption, many people will not 'get it' and pass over such a photo, or rate it wrongly because they miss the key element. Proper captioning sometimes can be a key element.

 

Final step: Be surprised at high ratings.

 

Reason: Many of my much better b&w works are far, far better and get much lower ratings. Some in my view are masterpieces but score nowhere near as high as this.

 

Ah Well, that's the ratings system -- it rates popularity, but it also is pretty good at doing just that, and overall, it does seem to work pretty well.

 

Nevertheless, some of the bloggers who steal my copyrighted photos happen to be pretty good judges of what is good in photography -- I have to hand it to them. Some of them have impeccable taste for 'street' genre photos, and they have chosen some of the best (available at the time). (I don't condone it, however.)

 

But I noticed one comment under a blog, written in Russian by a Ukrainian 'critic'.

 

He/she noted that 'anyone with a camera phone in Ukraine could have done just as well as I.'

 

The great put down.

 

That's my photography in a nutshell.

 

What anyone in ukraine could do with a camera phone.

 

(however only 5 of about 25 of that blog's photos were from Ukraine and others were from Thailand, Paris, Poland and Los Angeles, so I wonder how one is going to use a Ukrainian camera phone to record things in the LA ghetto?)

 

Anyway, live and learn.

 

At least they spelled my name right.

 

One guy on the Internet claims to have taken ALL the photos he has on display that he's stolen from me.

 

He'd better watch out if he meets me; and there are so many examples of photos with my name properly on them, he obviously is a self-aggrandizing thief and charlatan. Probably some skinny nerd with a pocket protector and a computer who doesn't have a clue about how to interact with real people, thinks he has a 'real' relationship with his computer, and thinks that's how 'life' is -- maybe he's just autistic, Down's Syndrome or otherwise deficient intellectually and/or emotionally.

 

(I know, I know, it's Asperger's Syndrome for the politically correct, but guys who steal photos and put their name on my photos don't get political correctness.)

 

If you see my point.

 

Nice to see you here.

 

John (Crosley)

 

We have been through this before. You are 100% wrong. Imagine if Leonardo Da Vinci called the Mona Lisa "enigmatic expression". I cannot think off hand of a master photographer who needed a caption to sell the photo. I guess there are some exceptions. Most on photo.net put up stupid titles like 'dreaming' or "sadness" etc. so so dumb. I used to put up subjective titles too. I looked at your photo. I did not even read the title. "Street Scene Odessa Shopping Center" that is a good title.

As for "stealing" photos... I'd be flattered and excited if someone wanted to cop one of mine :-) ...

I think you may be an exception -- you have a certain education and intelligence that is not always common among PN members -- especially the more beginning members.

 

You may not understand it, but many beginning members think the crowning glory of photography is to put up a photo of a squirrel 'SEE HERE"S A SQUIRREL I SHOT'!!!! -- and it's 1/50th of a frame from somewhere out in a park somewhere or a plaza eating a nut that you can barely see for all the other, extraneous stuff, like bare concrete.

 

Such types dearly need an explanatory caption or a photo like this would go entirely over their head.

 

And surely they might need 'Enigmatic Expression' as a caption on one of L da V's finest! As the great circus master said 'there's a sucker born every minute -- no, no, that's not the one. "Never overestimate the intelligence of the common man' (that may be more like it), though that may in fact be unattributed.

 

Fact is a jury of 12 people has almost total recall for what has happened in a courtroom -- what one person forgets or doesn't understand, almost someone recalls and/or understands in its entirety - such is the beauty of the jury system when it uses 12 people (civil juries often use 8, which can be more problematic).

 

But when it comes to newer PN members, one has to leave some room for the learning process -- they may develop into the finest photographers with the finest sensibilities and abilities, but often that can be a long ways coming, and in the meantime we're treated to the 'see the squirrel' shot. or the 'see my girlfriend without clothes' and so 'I'm a nude and/or glamour photographer' by virtue of that . . . sort of post.

 

Your caption says 'good caption' but the text seems to denigrate from that -- and explain what you think is a 'good caption' which is to say basically (for you) none at all.

 

I am forever confused by nonexplanatory captions . . . such as 'Dreaming' or 'Wishful Thinking' accompanying a photo of someone's cat or their mother-in-law who is not obviously doing that and I wonder how someone came to the conclusion posited by their caption when it is not postulated by the post's 'story'.

 

So, Meir, forgive me if I 'talk down' to you, in my general effort to reach the 'lowest common denominator' - the newbie who does not understand all that goes on here or why they even should appreciate a photo like this -- and would never think to compare the 'two hands in heads' (if it weren't for the explanatory signpost I have given them.)

 

For you, signposts may be entirely irrelevant, and for me also.

 

But for the newbie they can be useful crutches until they get their photorgraphic/artistic/compositional sensibilities firmly established, so I think I'll continue to include them where the reference is not so obvious (to some).

 

Perhaps you can excuse that; this is a 'survey' course, not a post-doctoral level seminar, and it has to cater to all levels.

 

In any case, I have found that even simple things like spelling out what may seem like 'common' acronyms' has its fans - there are some who never had those acronyms explained to them. And, for what it's worth (FWIW, if you get my drift (IFYGMD) and Laughing Out Loud (LOL), some of the acronyms used by people who make posts are totally senseless (especially the last one -- LOL, which is way overused and mostly used in the wrong situations -- times when people in conversation would NOT be laughing -- let alone 'out loud'.

 

I'm a communicator, and a one-time journalist, and I long ago was taught to write for that now extinct species -- the Kansas City Milkman. I learned long ago that if I could make that fictious individual understand what I wrote, I could write at almost any level -- even very high -- even up to post-doctoral level -- so long as I kept my sentences short and my words from being too long. It just required precise reasoning and presentation without skipping any precise logical steps.

 

And I learned that also in the practice of law where often in order to explain to my clients the worth and/or value of their case and the risks and exigencies of their situation, I often would essentially have to give them what amounted to a year's course in law school maybe in Tort or Contracts all in an hour or so -- which I mostly could do if given time, a blackboard and some feedback from the client about what parts they were getting (understanding) and what was going over their head(s).

 

People ARE capable of understanding a great deal, so the idea is not to 'talk down' to them but to help lift their understanding to a higher level by not assuming they know much of anything until they show otherwise, and once they show that higher level of understanding not to revert to a more juvenile level of discourse.

 

In your case, all this seems irrelevant -- you can skip to the educated ranks and then just ignore the captions; it won't bother me, but please suffer me to write them, as I feel it does serve a purpose (and my folders and portfolio are punctuated with remarks thanking me for explaining some things that to you may seem rather elementary).

 

Can we agree on this?

 

John (Crosley)

Not only the Russians, but the Koreans (they have huge presentations set to music -rather good music), the Poles, the French (at one time), some techno blog, the Chinese, a US poetry magazine, and blogs of lots of other nationalities, some now taken down.

 

Fact is, Russia (and Ukraine too) is a still a kleptocracy. If you can't afford it (and almost no one can) you steal it. And if it's something you can carry off, it's fair game.

 

That's why most Adobe software does not come in Russian language (as I recall). If someone's going to use a pirated Adobe program (and it's all pirated -- I tried to buy a legit program in Ukraine and couldn't), then one has to use the English or other languages that it offered. They may offer a true Russian program, but that program is not 'cracked' like the programs that offer 'English' as one of their language offerings.

 

Corruption was endemic under Communism, with bribes being paid -- whether in cash or in kind -- maybe a 'good job' with access to meat on a regular basis or even 'Dior gowns' for the wife' being traded for good flats (did you know the Soviets bought large amounts of Parisian designer gowns, but the party boss's wives got most of them or all of them?)

 

A onetime girlfriend had a former husband, and he reputedly had a very good job under the Soviets -- he worked at the fish market. Why good? They had fish every night or fish to trade for meat or other things.

 

That's the way things worked under Communism, and before Communism when the Tsars ran everything, corruption was even worse. Then, peasants gleaned the fields for enough to eat,and just gleaning rights could spell the right to live or die over the harsh Russian winter.

 

Civil rights?

 

I am sure they didn't exist, let alone children's rights or women's rights.

 

The Soviets changed that -- somewhat and at least paid lip service to the ideas of civil rights -- and 'equal' rights, but for the Soviets 'some were more equal than others' -- despite professed equality.

 

And one of these days, someone's gonna rip off your photos, (do a Google.com search under my name and you'll see what I put up with) and you may have some reckoning to do, especially if they're selling advertising based on YOUR hard work.

 

Or putting their name to your 'babies' and calling them their own, as one site here in Ukraine is doing.

 

Be sure to file the copyright for all your photographs, even though you may not intend to enforce them -- before six months has lapsed after posting, pay the ridiculously small fee to the Copyright Office, send in your disk with captions and get the right to sue for attorney's fees, punitive damages as well as regular damages.

 

There's a relatively thin lay book on 'Law for Photographers' or some such I recommend, which outlines the relatively easy process, where and how much to send in -- you can send in your photos on DVD, it explains - and probably you need to send in more than one and get one send back to you (as 'filed, endorsed), and send with return receipt proof so you can prove they got there, in case they can't find them after delivery,and you need to prove that fact). There are international conventions that govern copyrights filed in one country and for practical purposes they are regarded mostly as being filed in another -- but the laws are particular and depend on residency -- for instance, am I a resident of Ukraine or the US for this purpose? (I ain't telling . . . for it someday might determine the outcome).

 

Watermarking your photos may not be a bad idea either/I'm considering it for mine -- the whole portfolio.

 

Judges don't like the claim that infringement was 'innocent' when a watermark clearly shows the fact of copyright. However, that being said, your photos are copyright to you the minute you take them, but your remedies are much, much better if you register them with the US Copyright Office.

 

And don't forget to put near the caption in its field the copyright symbol, the year, your name plus the words 'All rights reserved' with all copyrights, to satisfy the Buenos Aires Convention which governs some South American usage -- you never know and it's only a few added keystrokes.

 

(of course, you may also know all this and it may be surplusage, and in that case you can disregard it ;~)) )

 

Be careful what you wish for.

 

John (Crosley)

Among other beginner's mistakes and little knowledge of the features offered by the site, unused follow-up of my comments definitely is one of the most important. So I apologize for being so late with the answer. As you write, a beginner does have a problem to find on the site the information he/she needs. Manipulation/non-manipulation of images is one of the issues I think about quite often. And how the relationships between the eye, our brain, the light captured in images work is the very essence of photography. I rated your photograph totally intuitively, I simply liked it. One should more think about why and what is behind the photo. Thanks for your reply and for interesting things I have learned. Best regards

Thank you for returning and expressing yourself rather eloquently.

 

Many viewers come to the photos and the discussions under the photos on these pages just for the sort of colloquy you write about -- and I get a steady flow of congratulations from those who say they learn a lot from reading these comments and those who comment and the replies.

 

When I came to Photo.net four+ years ago, such things did not happen, and I resolved to do it differently. Others have followed this style, so there is more than one photographer on this service who practices the style of answering comments, comment by comment, and encourages meaningful comments (now).

 

Before I started doing this, comments often were a confused jumble of rants, praise (often from friends) one-liners, and irrelevancies that did not get to the meat of what was being commented on. (not in all cases of course). My standard Request for Comment makes it clear that is not what is sought, and it has stood me well. This is the 20th (or 21st) comment on this photo, and most are meaty ones; many read these comments to learn and never contribute, but one day I get an e-mail message or a comment elsewhere that thanks me for the 'wonderful service' for helping teach someone I never knew existed (or at the least I never knew were reading the comments or viewing my photos, since they never rated).

 

That's a very rewarding experience, and one I'm thankful for.

 

Thanks for stopping by; there's a wealth of prior comments and also a sort of tutorial about this type of photo called a 'Presentation'. It's called 'Photographers: Watch Your Background' or some such -- Photo.net's largest, and if PN ever gets appropriate software, this will be placed with it.

 

I encourage you to work your way through that (still unfinished) Presentation when and if you get time. Comments in that have been distilled to one or two (usually) pithy paragraphs thanks to extensive reader feedback which has been incorporated.

 

Best to you, Milena and no need ever to apologize for 'tardiness' -- after all, this for most is a hobby, and your 'reply' is an 'honor' to me.

 

John (Crosley)