'The Final Planting'

I went to take photos of a small parade after being ina small town 5

minutes. It turned toward me and I continued photographying, realizing

only later it was a small funeral cortege with hearse and body in tow

just outside the very crowded graveyard I had been photographing, in

Eastern Europe with just one more 'dear departed. Your ratings and

critiques are invited and most welcome. fyou rate harshly or very

negatively, please submit a constructive comment to help improve my

photograhy. Thanks! Enjoy! John

This one grabbed my attention immediately. A funeral is not the sort of thing I would consider photographing, and after reading your explanation I understand that you did not either. It is however a very powerful image that was well captured. 6/6 anon

Neil

Very good. I am thinking if the colour image would maybe emphasize the normality of the moment we all consider as a dramatic..I mean it would not be the same if one came to the funeral dressed up as a clown..

My standard advice to young photographers who are shy is to get in front of parade and start shooting, so I felt no compunction when I saw this parade-like group moving down the highway toward me to move my car and me nearly in front of them after photographing a nearby overcrowded Catholic cemetery.

 

Then they turned right, down the road to the cemetery as I photographed them and I shot some shots before I realized they were part of a funeral -- the hearse is not clearly visible in this shot unless one looks in the center rear of the cortege, one will then see a small part of it, which missed my gaze.

 

I apologize to these folks if my presence added to their grief; it was inadvertent, but the photo is a lasting memory to the sincerity of their grief, and a good photo for its time and place and memorializes Catholic funeral processions in Poland. (yes, it's Poland -- in the East).

 

Thanks for a good comment.

 

John (Crosley)

I get your reasoning about the color image . . . . and it looks quite good also . . . and also worthy of National Geographic, if I do say so., but I do not follow what you say about coming dressed as a clown. Perhaps words got dropped from your critique taking away your meaning?

 

Best to you (you always write well, and it is an exception where I have to hunt to understand something you write.)

 

John (Crosley)

where clear visual guidelines, cross pattern repetition and a very good use of negative space (meaningful one) cooperate to balance the shot. Thank you, Giuseppe

This photo takes me back to early days of photography, just months or weeks after I purchased my first camera.

 

Students had taken over Columbia University, and there were protests, complete with flags -- only in that case the flags were often red or shades near red, indicating sympathy with Communism, a failed philosophy.

 

Now, it is years and years later, and again, I am taking photos of people bearing flags and they are in a country of former Communists, only a country which literally overthrew the Communists, and has turned into a remarkably livable country, unlike the more impoverished Ukraine next door, which also is free from Communism but for a less long period, and with less clear leadership -- also less clear religious values.

 

I was photographying, on a rest stop, a lovely, flower-bedecked, and very overcrowded Catholic cemetery at highway-side, and a woman drove by and stopped, dressed rather nicely and surveyed the scene and my photographing, and I said 'dobre' to her, and continued taking five or six photographs. Then prepared to move on.

 

As I drove up the side road, I saw this procession walking down the side of the highway, and thought 'how strange, a local parade', and because I was 'below grade' (looking upward from below) I could not see how long it was -- it could have been very long for all I knew.

 

So, I pulled my car to the intersection of the side road and the highway, pulled my camera to my driver's window and began firing just as the procession turned down the side road. One of the men later began to speak to me, and I replied in Russian that I didn't speak Polish (Russian is very similar to Polish for those who don't know and many older Poles speak Russian, having been educated with Russian in school by the Soviets).

 

In any case, I stepped on the accelerator, embarrassed to have discovered I had been intruding on their funeral and just drove down the road. I would have apologized profusely, but there was a language difference, and they had their procession. If any read this, I do apologize for any interference with their mourning -- it was inadvertent.

 

Publication of this photograph is not. It is genuine 'art' and 'documentary' and not to publish it would be like wearing a hair shirt. -- an act of self torture to punish myself for intruding when I had no reason not to intrude. And of course, it was in public. Finally, I feel it is a very good photograph and well memorializes the very fine sendoff they gave to the deceased -- their devotion to their departed (as well as a memorialization that Poland was and remains an overwhelmingly Catholic nation.)

 

Giuseppe, you are right on about the analysis of this photo, especially about repetition and about the angles/triangles. One would be hard pressed to analyze just exactly how many express and implied triangles are in this photo, with its various straight lines at angles (and its flags) -- surely no less than five.

 

There is a saying that 'luck favors the well-prepared. I always travel with a two cameras on the passenger seat next to me, settings already adjusted for the light and zoom preadjusted for likely scenes, so if I see something, I need only reach over to grab a camera. That was the case here. Just lower the window and fire away. Focal point had already been chosen, the aperture already was stopped down anyway for sufficient depth of field, and a wide angle had been chosen --- although I manipulated it a little to 'frame' the subject.

 

This is about the third or fourth shot, and the last before I left. These men were right next to me and my car, and in less than 15 seconds, I was gone.

 

I could have waited all month or a season for a capture like this if I set out to get one such, but instead, I am open to just about anything interesting, so I get all sorts of unusual or interesting captures such as this, since I am not reconciled to getting one particular subject.

 

(but I do well when I do concentrate on one subject . . . . )

 

G., I liked your concise analysis.

 

I write at length not so much from hubris, but so those who read these things can understand HOW such a photo came into being, since I take so many photos and so many different photos, one might wonder how possibly I could do so much. . . . and the answer is 'just travel a little, take a camera (or two) always, and keep those cameras preset, ready for the 'moment'.

 

With respect.

 

John (Crosley)

This is how I like to take such a photo -- full frame and no cropping.

 

It takes a little more work to take an 'action' photo in which all the parameters 'work out' without leaving any 'extra room' at the margins, but that is part of framing tightly as I almost always do. I seldom, if ever, leave extra margin around my photographs; it's just against my style of shooting.

 

As a result, very often my photos require little or no cropping.

 

There may, in some few photos be a little 'dead space' at one side or another, or an intruding hand or arm here or there which may need to be cropped out to keep all the photo's subject together, and I will crop for that reason. Or If my lens was not 'long' enough for a subject, I'll crop for that.

 

And if I 'see' a photo within a photo I didn't realize was there, I might also crop for that, although I won't feel good about that.

 

But in general, what you see in a photo is what I saw in the viewfinder, and sometimes even more, for often my view of my own viewfinder is obscured, sometimes by an errant camera strap, cloudiness from moisture, from having to take the photo while the camera is not to my eye exactly or partly away from my eye, and for various other reasons. For those reasons (and more) I may shoot partly 'blindly', but guesstimating part of the bounds of my image. Unless I'm shooting from my waist, in which cases misses are common, usually I hit my mark.

 

For the record.

 

John (Crosley)