My Whimsy (II)

Sometimes a photo need only have a little 'whimsy' and no message or

story at all, like the above without other details. 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! Please Enjoy/! John ;~)))

This is not a project or commercial shoot; it's pure street, with a 'found' background and a great passerby who started to mug a little. His hat fit the 'spaceman'-'science fiction' theme and made this irresistable to capture. My great thanks to this wonderful, cooperative passerby with the contortionist face.

John (Crosley)

This is the photo exactly as taken, with no lightening, darkening, enhancement, or cropping, full frame, all from raw to jpeg with literally no adjustments.

This photo was taken after several shots were taken nearby of this passerby because of his unusual hat which he wore to attract attention 'to make people smile'.

It worked; people smiled.

He had a plastic face, worthy of a skilled thespian,

I saw this 'background' nearby, and he took his plastic face and for a minute or two, we had a kick making this and about a dozen other such photos on 'C' drive for posterity. This is just one of a number of wonderful photos, taken on C' drive, but chosen because 'framing' was best and his expression was particularly zany,

Total time for this photo -- about 1/20th of a second, as part of a sequence.

John (Crosley)

John;

" Zany " is the perfect word for this guy and in fact this entire scene. How wonderful that such an appropriate backdrop was nearby. The mural alone seems worthy of shooting as does the guy with his zany hat, however the combination takes it all over the top. Thanks for the morning smile.

'A wunerful, wunerful, wunderful, and now Myron Florin on the accordion and the lovely Lennon Sisters' . . . . Yes, zany. I have a little 'zany' in me, too.

It made my day to take this photograph and thereafter when people saw me and asked the inevitable question 'Are you a photographer?' and its companion 'What sort of photos do you take?'

I just moved this one up this digital queue and illuminated it for them. It stunned viewers who were expecting nothing of the sort.

Yes, 'a wunerful, wunerful' (for those foreigners and younger folks, bandleader Lawrence Welk continually praised the work of his band and his own musicians, with that phrase . . . . and though he was born in America, he had a German-American regional accent throughout his very long life.

I'll take praise for this one. and you're welcome for the morning smile, Gordon.

It's my pleasure, for sure.

John (Crosley)

Fabulous, everything about this is wacky. The colours suit it perfectly.

Simon

Sometimes I just see something 'wacky' and it suits me fine. I have a 'wacky' side too.

Oh, and it's not just the colors, but it's also subject 'modeling' from sidelighting -- they are inside a walkway with light only from the street, to their right . . . . perfect light in my view. I LOVE sidelight.

Thanks for letting me know your approval.

John (Crosley)

There are six eyes -- three pairs, all lined up.

The color of the jet/rocket engine matches very nearly the man's shirt colors, except the shirt is darkened by shadow.

The rocket is bluish/his shirt is a jeans shirt, also blue.

The 'Alien' creature atop the jet/rocket has very large pupils/so does the figure in the hat worn by our cooperative passerby with the contortionist face.

Little things like these are things that I 'see' only peripherally when I'm moving around rather quickly, bobbing and weaving and my subject is moving and mugging and the camera is firing at five or eight frames a second on 'C' drive in bursts, but somehow I 'see' them, and they come out.

One could 'plan' such a shot, but it would take forever, but not me. I'd never be able to plan such a shot, except on the spot. If I made films, I'd always be ready for improvisation, if there was room in the script for it and I had capable actors with ready minds.

'Street' shooting requires making superfast decisions -- I sometimes shoot birds, which move faster than anything, when I'm not able to shoot people or 'street'.

Birds will form a pattern in an instant, or fly away just as fast.

You just gotta be ready to press that shutter and not be shy in doing so.

I learned early on that compared to a good capture, 'film's cheap, kid' (though it wasn't exactly for me in college where I was pretty poor, and I bought 100 foot folls of Tri-X in a large cannister and loaded 'load-your-own' film cannisters in a changing bag - sometimes with 40 to 48 frames on a tightly-wound roll, which certainly flummoxed the darkroom techs at the New York Times the first time I showed up with film there:

'What the Hell you load in those cannisters kid? I got a 36-frame spool loaded all the way up and there's a foot and a half of film that is left over that I can't load -- I'm gonna have to cut your film in two to develop it.'

Film was cheap, but loading your own was cheaper, and besides, sometimes you got 48 frames on a roll, before you had to change rolls!

John (Crosley)

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