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© Copyright 2008, John Crosley, All Rights Reserved

Mirroring of a Different Sort


johncrosley

Nikon D300, Nikkor 70~200 f 2.8 full frame from ACR 4.5, to JPEG. Copyright 2008, All Rights Reserved, John Crosley

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© Copyright 2008, John Crosley, All Rights Reserved

From the category:

Street

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Sometimes in my photography I use the technique I call 'mirroring'

which involves finding 'repetition' between my subject and some other or

more distant object. Here, the street sketch artist has provided his

own 'mirror' in the form of a sketch or drawing pad with a finished portrait

already on it 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

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Do I detect a little attempt at humour in your spelling?

 

I took a lot of photos to get this one just right.

 

This guy was so absorbed in his sketching I just sat on some steps and fired away, especially when he looked up, just to try to get it 'right'. Sometimes, as in a photo posted earlier this weekend, you get it right in 1/8th of a second and other times it takes a bit longer.

 

Best to you, Adan.

 

John (Crosley)

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Some of my work (like this) I would classify as pretty minor, but in some I try to compete with the majors -- only time perhaps ever will tell whether I have succeeded.

 

And that will only happen when I trim out the minor stuff, I think. But I hate to do that, as it's a lot of fun taking just about everything, (and showing it to a mostly appreciative audience, too).

 

Thanks for the nice comment of recognition.

 

John (Crosley)

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It did take some patience to get this one just right -- but this guy wasn't going anywhere and seemed oblivious to being photographed.

 

After all, he was making money, AND doing what I think he loves to do -- sketching people. Afteк all, why would a person sit out on a hot summer's day in a busy square with a sketch pad and advertising inveigling passersby to have their portrait sketched?

 

So, he sketched and I snapped.

 

This was the best of the bunch (by my taste).

 

Yours may have varied.

 

There's a lot of editing going on before anything gets chosen for posting, and who knows what gems get passed over (and also what garbage)?

 

;~)

 

John (Crosley)

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Sometimes what one sees almost every day, just comes in a flash one moment.

 

I passed this guy earlier and he had this or another sketch/portrait on his sketch pad and it never struck me.

 

Then one day, I passed him and he had this particular sketch/portrait there, and I compared it with the coloring of his face and voila!

 

Some things just are meant to be, it seems. Those things, to the photographer, do not seem so very hard at all, or so very unusual. In fact, they almost seem pre-ordained and pedestrian . . . as this feels to me. (not that I didn't put some hard work into it . . . I did, but it just feels workmanlike . . . not inspired, like my previous posting).

 

But I'm the guy on the street with the camera asking for critiques, and far be it from me to turn down or snub my nose at a highly favorable critique. In fact, I liked it so much I took almost 15 shots of this scene to get it right, then spent lots of time working on it to choose the right frame then get the contast/brightness, etc., just right to post it.

 

I guess, then, that speaks for itself about what I really felt about its worth, doesn't it.

 

Thanks for the very nice comment; it's always appreciated.

 

(and pardon my musing response)

 

John (Crosley)

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I don't snub my nose.

 

I just have my own personal favorites. This was one I felt was workmanlike but not my most inspired. I felt most photographers would have seen it and many would have taken it.

 

But I'm happy to have all the accolades I can get and 'just brilliant' is just about as good as they get. Especially coming from you.

 

Maybe I ought to take a better look at this one.

 

Thanks for putting in your two words worth.

 

John (Crosley)

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I took a good look through your highest-rated gallery, especially the photos you rated 7/7, and I was very, very impressed by your wonderful taste in photography. It stands to reason, since you are a wonderful photographer, that you'd also have wonderful taste in the photos of others.

 

Perhaps I really ought to have my head examined about my attitude toward this photo -- this photo just was so obvious to me.

 

Maybe part of the thrill of photography for me is finding something that is not obvious and hunting it down, then making a record of it for all to see -- something that no one else could have seen or recognized, and the issue with this photo is that anybody could have seen it.

 

Remember that H C-B started out as a big game hunter; after he got started he didn't print his own photos, and he just traveled the world with photography perhaps as his raison d'etre to move within and about the epicenter of the affairs of the world.

 

Maybe part of the 'thrill' I get from my photography is what I got the other day when the very first frame I took turned out to be a huge winner with a host of 6/6s and 7/7s and then again today, my very last frame turned out to be a huge success in my eyes.

 

In that photo, I just said to my companion, 'excuse me for a second', and my ever-faithful companion, knew I had something up my sleeve, and forebore, though my companion was exceedingly tired from an hour and a half's sojourn.

 

I returned a few seconds later with three nearly identical, very wonderful frames to complete the day's shooting and so far they've got nothing less than 6/6s (though very few of them, as it's not a 'warm and fuzzy' photo).

 

I'd probably be lost in a portrait studio, and if i did wedding photos, it'd certainly have to be photojournalistic style, of course.

 

Still lifes and macros are for when I get really, really old (I'm no spring chicken now, but I pretend to myself that I'm pretty young and people seem to get fooled sometimes).

 

I enjoy the task of 'seeing', 'framing' 'setting exposure' and sometimes 'changing exposure on the run while focusing or overriding autofocus', 'resetting autofocus points', 'adjusting for nonstandard lighting situations, and adjusting for moving subjects and intervening subjects who pass between me and my intended subject' as well as other things -- and making good photos from all that in less than a few seconds.

 

It may be a shock to you and others, but I really spend very little time actually on the street with a camera; one may suppose I am on the street from morning 'till night' when in actuality I often am not even out every day and those days if I'm out an hour, it's a long day, and I'm always doing something else -- not hunting for photos. The photography is just a way to make the rest of my life interesting.

 

But to find this photo (or any of my photos) featured in your highest-rated gallery is an immense honor, and I want you to know that your gallery is (otherwise) full of impeccably wonderful photos (I'm still working on how much I like this particular one ;~)) (Of course, I do like it very much, and still do not snub it.)

 

My very best to you, Els.

 

John (Crosley)

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Very good, I like the mirroring effect and the portrait within a portrait. I just desaturated it and it looks good in black & white too.

 

Regards,

Miles.

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Hi Miles,

 

So good to hear from you, and to have you add something positive to the discussion.

 

I hope that you are well.

 

Thank you for contributing. Long ago someone noted that my color work was just 'black and white with color' which is true for much of it -- though certainly not all, because much of it is graphically based.

 

I am so happy to hear from you and hope that sometime in the future we can meet again.

 

Best to you.

 

John (Crosley)

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I hope to meet with you again too John. I hugely enjoyed brainstorming the world of photography with you and feel I learned some valuable lessons shooting on the street with you.

 

When I first became interested in photography as a child my father passed me a book and said that in his opinion this photographer was the best in the world. The book in question was "Cartier-Bresson's France" a less well known issue from 1970. I was fascinated by the pictures and it spurred me into going out and capturing life on my Olympus OM 2 (that's the opposite of your story isn't it?.) The book contained a number of colour photographs, would you believe it, and it always occurred to me that they were just like his black & white work but in colour. It's in the style essentially.

 

My Best wishes,

 

Miles.

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Not from a life of studying Henri Cartier-Bresson's work and maybe others.

 

When we met you had just toured SE Asia including Thailand, Cambodia (I think) and Viet Nam, and you had wonderful 'street' photos with you that showed remarkable maturity but never spoke of any precursor photographic education or influence, so I just imagined that you had developed a 'style' out of nothingness - or 'inchoately' as I had.

 

Little did I know that from an early time you had studied Cartier-Bresson.

 

Now Cartier-Bresson was NOT in love with his color work; in fact when the editor of French 'Photo' magazine and others and he met in a restaurant in Paris and the Editor brought Cartier-Bresson earlier color work of his to show him, Cartier-Bresson flew into a rage and tried to destroy the work, and failing that, went around the restaurant denouncing his erstwhile long-time friend to other diners for trying to sully C-B's reputation.

 

No, he didn't like his color work at all.

 

But, as I have written before and others have noted, my color work (and as you noted when you desaturated this), is essentially graphic driven, and this photo for you stood well as a B&W photo as well without the color.

 

Interesting.

 

I developed my style without knowing I had seen Cartier-Bresson's work, and in fact literally 'gave it up' when I did, having toured his giant exhibit at San Francisco's De Young Museum (financing his impending retirement).

 

How could I have known the giant was retiring - it might have affected my decision to go on with writing instead of photography -- after all he filled a museum with wonderful photos and at only a hundred or so dollars apiece (but a small fortune for me then - I earned $145 a week then, before taxes.)

 

So, I suppposed your 'style' just came out of somewhere in your inner brain, since we never discussed it, and was a little envious that your photography was so mature for something that seemed so new-found. Now I know better and your note is instructive.

 

Keep looking for interesting stuff from me; I even took something wonderful in my 30 minute sojourn tonight. Magic images seem to keep flying into my lenses - I can hardly begin to understand why. Many are interesting and sometimes outrageous as well, as tonight's . . . which I hestitate to post, for fear of the numbskulls' reactions before they read the caption. If you see it, you'll understand why. . . .

 

Here's 'till we meet again, perhaps in some hot and exotic place with a beautiful companion or two.

 

John (Crosley)

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I would say that I absorbed rather than studied HC-B's and many other photographers' work at that young age without fully understanding why exactly it worked so well. Only later I learned how to truly 'read' photographs. I shoot instinctively, however, composing mostly subconsciously and then analysing the results later; isn't that how you work?
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My mother, bless her soul, was a distributor for a magazine company, not because she sold magazines to others, but so she could get a major discount on magazines for our household.

 

We had a household full of the country's (and the world's) top magazines, and many of them when I was young included some of the world's top photography including some of the top photojournalism in the world.

 

It may be that when you were younger, those magazines no longer were in existence and/or the photographer then was out of date as you are considerably younger than I.

 

Now, in retrospect, I have figured out that in years of looking at the work of Eisenstadt, Bourke-White, other Life Magazine Photographers, having read about 60 years worth of National Geographic and then looking at Look, Saturday Evening Post and other magazines, as well as Sunday magazines, I absorbed some of the most important and interesting photography of the Century.

 

And, like you, I think I absorbed it into my bones (or my mind), and I call up its lessons inchoately -- which means that at first I didn't have to think about it.

 

If you look in my 'Black and White, Then to Now' folder, you'll see three guys on the Staten Island Ferry. That was taken with my very first roll of film ever. I had just bought a new Nikon that afternoon, went on the ferry boat that early evening, and that photo was taken on the way to Staten Island. I only had two rolls of film to my name (which I talked the dealer out of to make the sale 'work'), and hadn't yet changed rolls when I took that photo. I remember framing it - and spending some considerable time fighting the ferry boat launch vibrations -- quite clearly. I had never known that ferry boats shook so much, and light for my f 2.0 lens was quite low, so there is a little fuzziness in the photo owing to the shakiness (it's shown in the guy's beard, primarily.

 

In other words, I just went out with my very first camera ever and took what I consider a highly developed photo right out of the chute. And wasn't it somewhat ambitious of me to only buy a Nikon right away, rather than the then predominant Yashica cameras or something else. I knew right away, that was the camera for me (although I also have shot with many cameras.) I just prefer Nikons because I know how they work and am familiar with their 'look and feel' - having started with them.

 

But I didn't then know 'how' it was I was capable of taking sometimes really good photos and sometimes pretty awful ones, and that bedevils me still sometimes -- even today, but now I am more knowledgeable about the process.

 

And, I also consider taking some pretty awful photos the result of experimentation. I experiment a lot. The photo I just posted of a little boy looking skyward with nothing visible above was a result of experimentation -- my continual 'stretching' -- even though Cartier-Bresson tried this idea with much greater success in 'Valencia' in the 1930s (little boy looking for a bounced ball, he revealed later).

 

 

You had the advantage of a father who actually told you about a photographer whose work was 'first rank' - my father said nothing of the sort and indicated no taste in photography at all. Same with my mother. Taste was something that was made available for me to develop on my own. They just provided the means.

 

And, alas, I didn't vacation anywhere near Hyeres, as I think I recall you did, during summers (is that right?)

 

I'd have loved that.

 

Yes, I think we both photograph somewhat similarly -- drawing from a wealth of images which we store in our inchoate memories, then improvising as we view through our viewfinders.

 

I think that's the way to go. I think, from personal knowledge, that you agree, and practice this art the same way.

 

Best wishes.

 

John (Crosley)

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