A Theme From an Earlier Time

This photo echoes a theme from an earlier time in photography. Caught

this summer in Kyiv, Ukraine. 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 folder is one of your best john...a feast for the eyes :-)) just needed to get this out of my system :-)

This folder has my heart and soul in it. I've been working on it with everything I have, and it literally represents the culmination of the best work of my life.

 

It's where I look first and last when I think of my photography.

 

Strangely, I long ago put it way down the list of folders so it didn't get so many views for about the first three years of membership, and only brought it to the top this last year, and just now the views are way off (summer perhaps) though it now leads off my portfolio.

 

I have some work George Barr called 'superb' (he's the photo blogger who gets respect) that mainly are in this folder, though there is some of my best work scattered elsewhere too. (Gotta keep viewers guessing and reward them for continued looking.)

 

I'm aiming for galleries, as you may have read, and the photos in this (as well as some in other folders -- say 'single photo, color' and 'faces' also will be presented, but this is where most of my best stuff goes).

 

Do you get the point of what 'photo' theme this photo's subject echoes?

 

If you don't right now, you'll slap your forehead when you learn, and then see how pedestrian this photo really is.

 

Thanks Again, Billy.

 

(I needed some uplifting)

 

John (Crosley)

The homage, which you well noticed, is only something I saw when I looked at the image and noticed its simplicity, saw the resemblance, and compared it to the complexity of the master's incomparable Gare St. Lazare photo. (I won't say who the master was . . . we'll let others do some guessing . . . it's easy for you and me.)

 

We well know THAT photo was among the greatest photos of all time . . . a completely 'surreal' photo, which required no words.

 

This photo also requires no words, but it's simple beyond belief, especially compared to le maitre's.

 

And I took it without reference to making une homage (silent 'h' in French). It's just that when I looked at it, I wondered if anyone here would give it any credence when they recalled THAT particular photo -- this doesn't even hold a candle to that.

 

It is an homage, but not a pre-planned one. It's one I noticed after I looked at my captures, but then again, I was taking some photos like le maitre even before I knew who he was, and just about gave up photography when I saw his work on tour in a museum in San Francisco in 1969.

 

And, who knows, I have known about THAT photo almost all my adult life, so its theme is deeply ingrained in my psyche. So, who can tell, except I had no conscious motivation of recreation; just to capture some kids in a fountain.

 

He'd done it all, I reasoned -- a whole museum full -- and I should really do something else rather than try to re-invent his wheel, I reasoned, and did just that.

 

But here I am, nearing his retirement age, now with a camera fresh in hand, actually re-inventing his wheel, or maybe carrying his candle (sometimes), but having to answer to no one, and not really 'of the school' of anyone but myself (I hope).

 

How envious I was of that man's skills when I saw his giant traveling exhibition -- I just knew his talents were 'great' -- and 'world class' even though I had never heard his name before.

 

(A fellow worker of mine at AP was a former friend of his from China, and urged me to go to the exhibit . . . newsman Jimmy White, who must have covered the Shanghai gold riots with Henri).

 

Life's short, ain't it?

 

Thanks Lex.

 

Don't see too much of you around here . . . it's been about three or four years, and I celebrate when you stop by because you always add something particularly sage.

 

John (Crosley)

this is one very good homage and you developed the theme in a sober, balanced way: it's isn't banal nor pretentious, it's like a photo-letter sent to your audience, and says more than a million words. We are not far from behind the Gare Saint Lazare, thank you, thank you, Giuseppe

No guessing needed! You caught this at the perfect moment. I love the sparkle on the water. I'm curious - what are the faint lines that I see under the back foot and then towards the left corner? Fantastic Work!

And, true to the original, it's also a 'crop'.

 

;~))

 

The original (my original, for clarty) was OK, but this is much better.

 

Even Henri had to crop his, even if it's the only crop he ever acknowledged doing.

 

Thank you for words of high praise.

 

I think this sort of image is burned into my consciousness -- even if I didn't MEAN to take it, it sort of 'took itself', if you understand what I mean?

 

John (Crosley)

Are you sure you get the reference? You didn't explain it or refer to it . . . . ? I'm tweaking you, of course.

 

This is a fountain and the lines are a fountain drain/grill or maybe the grill of a light which shines upward from the fountain at night and directs the light to keep it from scattering (it wasn't on and wasn't dark, and I haven't seen that light, but I've seen photos of lights in that fountain, so I can only make an educated guess).

 

Can you name the photo this is an homage to and describe it and name the photographer?

 

All in good fun, of course; don't be embarrassed if you can't . . .

 

This particular 'scene' is iconic to many generations of 'street' photographers, but to hundreds of millions of people or even billions, it means nothing at all other than its own unique composition (well not exactly unique, as it's somewhat of a repeat).

 

;~)

 

Thanks for kind words of praise.

 

John (Crosley)

I think you would be surprised how many non photographer's would recognize the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson even if they wouldn't know the name. There are images that have become part of the culture - photos that everyone knows. Afgan Girl by Steve McCurry, The man in front of the tanks in Tiananmen Square by Jeff Widener, Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange's, John & Yoko by Leibovitz... Well I could go on with the help of the internet forever. I suppose the associations would come faster to photographers but some images are timeless.

Big Smile!

 

John (Crosley)

An enthralling image that is a testimony of your artistry and skills as a great photographer. Congratulations John.

Your comment humbles me, or it would humble me if it weren't for the repetition of the same theme in the famous 'Gare St. Lazare' photo by Henri Cartier-Bresson, complete with hazy background, replete with detail and an older, rotund guy, hand behind back, I think, making his inexplicable jump across (into) a very large puddle for which he has no chance of jumping over.

 

Now that's worthy of being 'world class', while this has a chance at being a copy of a 'detail' of that photo (the feet of the guy jumping over the water) which is why the colloquy above about the 'homage' or 'tribute' -- as this truly is a tribute to that photo -- albeit not intentionally taken with that in mind.

 

The young Cartier-Bresson's photo was a masterwork and seen as such from the beginning, while this is just another photo -- good, but not great, and certainly not as great as you'd make it seem (alas, but truthfully).

 

I do appreciate the praise, however, and you needn't stop . . . we all can use a little flattery now and again.

 

And I do keep trying . . . some of my absolutely best work sometimes gets overlooked or unrecognized, to be appreciated by 'o solo mio', I'm afraid, but I keep posting, and I'm often surprised at the results.

 

I just put another one up for critique, taken in your fair city three years ago and posted in color for so long, but it's not shown on the critique queue (risque? or could be seen as such?).

 

I'm waiting for it to appear past the censors.

 

I'm sure you'll recognize it -- a B&W rendering of 'I LOVE my dog', which even has been in blogs on the net. (No keeping a good photo down.)

 

(members loved it as a color photo, though it wasn't worked up properly, and if it ever breaches security here, we'll see about the B&W version, taken from a thumbnail jpeg.)

 

Best wishes to you.

 

(Oh, send me your e-mail, I have a PDF book you might find VERY interesting about photography . . . it's a very well-written text that explains many very basic things in a wonderful way, together with absolutely stunning illustrations, and if your e-mail attachments allowed are large enough it may get through as an attachment.)

 

(you know my e-mail addy. my name @ this service dot net, all lower case.)

 

NOTICE ELIMINATION OF .COM FROM ADDRESS AND CHANGE TO.NET!!!

 

John (Crosley)

Wow. John! I´m a big fan of your work.. but with this picture I just got speechless. This is "THE" picture! I just couldn´t believe my eyes. Amazing! Amazing.... Thanks for sharing.

Adriana.

If I'd known this picture was as good as you say it is, I wouldn't have sat on it in my unposted folder for two or three weeks, wondering if . . . I should or should not post it . . . because it seems to be . . . . so . . . . simple.

 

I guess that's the magic of posting photos when one is close to them -- one gets an education about not only popularity but about aesthetics. I have seen lots of photos in my lifetime -- perhaps millions of them (onetime photo editor for a year and a fraction with hundreds of photos crossing my desk daily, thousands weekly), and I grew tired of seeing new photos.

 

And I've seen a variation on this theme before, but didn't consciously set out to recreate anything when I hit the shutter release'; it was entirely spontaneous.

 

And this is a crop; I guess part of the 'magic' of this goes to my cropping abilities, which cannot be said for very many of my photos, as I crop a very, very few (there was another child in the fountain to the right, running, but not jumping like this, and I cropped just like this, with precise symmetry for best looks.)

 

So, this is a rare 'Crosley crop' -- there aren't too many in existence, and since it's from a very large file size, it doesn't suffer at all from being a partial frame.

 

And most other Crosley crops are merely to adjust frame sizes to fit the subject, rather than to crop out secondary subjects I prefer not to have in a frame. They might, for instance, crop out an offending utility pole, building side, sign, arm or other appendage of a bystander rushing by, etc., and not so major as this particular crop.

 

But this guy was surrounded by LOTS of space, so cropping really was quite easy and transformed an ordinary capture into something you have stated is remarkable.

 

In fact, I was shooting, knowing I might have to crop an interesting part of one frame or another -- the action was just too fast and interesting with too many things going on at the same time to capture it all. Because of strong light (backlighting), I was well stopped down, for great depth of field, so really, focusing was not so big an issue as merely framing likely action.

 

Shooting 'against the sun' or 'against the sun's reflection' is an unusual skill in itself -- as a child moves back and forth, the photographer has to move sideways, back and forth too, to preserve the outline, or one is left with an ordinary capture -- not a silhouette. The area of silhouette was not here so very wide and to go left or right a few feet would have destroyed the capture. I am sure the bystanders wondered why I skittered left and right with my telephoto extended, as the faraway kids dashed through the water -- they never would see and enjoy this result, unfortunately.

 

Still, I think I got lucky on this one; don't you?

 

Still, luck is a certain part of 'perspiration' followed by another part of 'inspiration'. I'll spare you the exact quote.

 

Thanks for the enthusiastic words of praise.

 

Thanks, thanks, thanks.

 

John (Crosley)

is that not what all of us are doing?