'Exact Weight'

Kyiv, Ukraine's most fashionable shopping street and esplanade is a

mix of the modern and the older; this woman has placed what

Westerners would call a 'bathroom scale' on the park/walkway with her

homemade signs and would charge what then was the equivalent of 20

American cents to weigh themselves. (In the approximately one month

since this photo was taken, the currency has devalued so much that the

price now is worth no more than 13 US cents, as the Ukrainian currency

has entered freefall.) Your ratings and critiques are invited and are 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 photograpy. Thanks! Enjoy! John

Fantastic Capture!!! Outstanding tones, lighting and contrast... Well Composed B&W Street Shot!!! (you have captured the concept you have expressed in writing, Perfectly!!!) VERY Well Done!

Would that any of my photos were as well taken or constructed as any of yours.

 

Thanks for the high compliment -- I have not seen your name in my portfolio or photo comments and welcome you.

 

This is just one of many 'street' captures that depict 'life' upon this particular street, upon which I often have taken a daily stroll with cameras -- a destination for a large number of Ukrainians (and foreigners) because of all the places in Ukraine (besides its famous Black Sea beaches), it is one of the very few urban 'nice places' there.

 

Armani suits are sold just down the street, and all sorts of other designer clothing are easily had nearby, all at 'world prices,' but right in front here, is this babushka (or maybe she's too young to be a babushka - just looking prematurely old), is this lone woman, trying to make her living 20 cents at a time, by enticing passersby to weigh themselves (in a land where young people seldom are overweight, though the older folks often are very large).

 

It was hard to get those 'tonalities' that you refer to -- this was a typical gray day in a gray fall/winter in Kyiv . . . . as are most such days . . . Ukraine remains 'socked in' much of the winter months with cloud cover most years, except with its occasionally exceptional coldness, and then the sum comes out, but without warmth.

 

I took this photo because of the pleasing geometric arrangement of the scale and signs, her peasant dress, the youths behind enjoying themselves -- all drinking alcohol, of course -- something that almost everyone in Ukraine (and neighboring Russia) does vigorously and to be 'social'.

 

But then 'society' is very big in Ukrainian culture, and unlike the US, in Ukraine, one tends to have a large number of friends and also really close personal friends whom one can trust with one's secrets and maybe with one's life.

 

This is life in Ukraine's capital, all in a microcosm . . . . . . maybe besides photographic values, that's what has attracted you?

 

Thank for the visit -- you are welcome here anytime.

 

John (Crosley)

Another your beautiful B&W!Another photo that tells a story as you use to do!A very good composition with many characters...Best regards and merry Xmas and Happy 2009..

One day, after walking in from outside, I introduced myself by appointment to a master printer who had won a 'Lucie Award' as 'best in the world' for a prior year for printing photography.

 

He later told me he had 15 minutes set aside for our appointment, then he would have found an excuse to put his arm on my back, shake my hand, then gently lead me out of the door of his office in that prestigious and world reknowned photo printing firm.

 

Instead, on his own initiative, he spent the next five or six hours with me, and I had brought nothing to show him. I just said: 'Go to Google.com, look up my name and look at the photos there. Later he spent six months mentoring me and my photography, eventually 'curating' all of my then-available work to the start of this year.'

 

[i had worried about this meeting for several months, especially what photos to show him, but finally gave up in despair . . . and just decided to throw things 'to the winds' and if that displeased him, so much the worse ('tant pis', as the French would say].

 

The following night he took me to a gallery opening attended by the glitterati, and introduced me to a gallery owner who promised to look over my work when it was ready for presentation - the gallery owner had sold $75 million worth of photographs.

 

He promised to make further important introductions.

 

The printer on his initiative then gave me a wonderful gift -- he spent the next six months advising me, meeting with me (when I was in the U.S.), literally holding 'master's classes' in 'art', 'photography' and the relationship of the two as they related to museums and galleries, right over his dinner table as we ate together -- a heady experience.

 

He was usually great company and incredibly charming besides. He had reviewed every capture I ever took and both 'criticized' certain of them and 'curated' the lot with an eye towards those promised introductions.

 

He did it, he said, out of the goodness of his heart, and I believe that was genuine.

 

Why?

 

He said to me, something I did not then understand and he said it immediately:

 

'Almost all of your photos tell a story!'

 

Frankly I was flabbergasted, as I had not thought in those terms before. I did not imagine myself a 'storyteller' with photos.

 

I had, however, long ago, been a writer, and my job as a writer was literally to 'tell stories' in the most interesting possible way, consistent with the complete truth -- no fabrications allowed. If you fabricated anything, you got fired, right then and there -- as truth was an important commodity -- in fact, basically besides the stories that told it, the 'truth' was the only commodity, or at least accurate quotations of what others said, for they were the 'truth' about what was spoken, if not of the content thereof.

 

So, now I have just read a book, 'On Looking at Photographs' by David Hurn (of Magnum Photography Agency) and Bill Jay, which was recommended to me by the cerebral Giuseppe Pasquale, who actually thinks academically about photography.

 

In theory, if I understand what this book seem to say, I am doing the highly unlikely or even the near impossible. But is that really true? And if so, what is that?

 

In their chapter 'Meaning, and Why It Is So Slippery', we find this passage:

 

'One of the most common problems is the (incorrect) assumption which

arises from the communicative power of photography that the image

can be read, like a story. It is difficult to understand how this misconception

arose, yet it is certainly prevalent. Most viewers expect a photograph

to be narrative, in the sense that it imparts a message, and then

feel frustrated and somehow excluded from the circle of initiates, if the

story cannot be deciphered'

 

There is a long, and learned discussion about what a photograph 'can do' and 'cannot do'.

 

It seems that a fair reading of what they write is that basically a photograph is ill-suited, without accompanying words, to 'tell a story'.

 

Thus, they write, that the photo-story that was prevalent in a variety of magazines in the post WWII era was popular because photos were a good medium to explain the accompanying text, but without text, the photos generally failed as 'story-tellers'.

 

Similarly they noted the instance of one very famous photographer who took wonderful, emotive photographs, who was given full editorial control over the words to accompany his powerful photographs in an essay, but literally almost no one would publish the resulting illustrated tome, because his writing was so awful (my version arises from sources other than Hurn and Jay) and the turgid text denigrated from his photos. He insisted the words be published with his photos, and that was the terms under which he had been hired.

 

That photographer made wonderful, emotive photographs, but alone or with his own text, they failed as a communications medium for 'telling a story'.

 

Photos, the co-authors suggest, are especially good in bringing forth emotive and other responses' and depicting 'detail' but they appear to tell the reader that in almost all circumstances, one cannot 'read' a photograph without accompanying text to decipher its meaning . . . . and that 'meanings appear to be relative' (my quotes). They give examples [omitted].

 

My 'Lucie Award' winner mentor praised my photography as 'fantastic' (numerous times) precisely because of its story-telling ability, yet I read this morning in Hurn and Jay's book, that basically this medium of photography is ill-suited for doing what the 'Lucie Award' winner said I seem to be doing.

 

Perhaps the famous printer simply was wrong -- my photos don't tell stories without my accompanying text, but, I refer you to this photo:

 

http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=5442703

 

(sorry it's not a hot link; you have to copy and paste into your browser to see it)

 

Today it has 116,000 'views', while my most-viewed photo ever has 119,000+ views. This photo had 7 rates with 4.0 for aesthetics and about a 5.5 or 5.6 for originality. A couple of months ago it had 70,000+ views.

 

Although posted a couple of years ago, it now gets almost 500 clicks a day.

 

Does it tell a story?

 

I think it does, although a fictitious one, and also one that is both sexual and humorous.

 

[i think someone on the web has linked a blog to this photo, but don't know from where, (or if they spelled my name correctly or even attributed it to me).]

 

That photo is definitely 'out-of-focus' and was posted only because it did 'tell a story' -- at least in my eyes.

 

I have a much sharper photo without the 'woman' on the left, giving her disapproving gaze, but that 'sharp' photo does not tell such an interesting story and has not been posted.

 

I chose 'fuzzy' over 'sharp' because of the 'narrative power' of the fuzzy photo, thinking I was being 'unprofessional' but since I found the photo interesting and humorous, I basically just posted it for fun and amusement of my viewers.

 

I now feel somewhat vindicated - I go with my judgment, and if I'm wrong, so be it. This is a 'social site' - not the 'World Cup of Photography.'

 

So, now, Giuseppe Pietrantonio, you tell me that my posted photo above is very good - it 'tells a story'.

 

Do my photos tell stories?

 

Or do they need accompanying text as Jay and Hurn seem to suggest. (Jay and Hurn's book really is extraordinary and a wonderful read for photographers; it's highly recommended by me.)

 

Is my ability maybe to 'tell a story' through my photos, then something that explains why I get so many views on this service and elsewhere -- something I had not previously considered much because I am too busy taking photographs (and certainly not all of them tell stories)?

 

Consider, (and I won't provide a link) the photo of the bride in her white wedding gown, on an overlook atop the harbor of Odessa, Ukraine, kissing the groom, and at the same time in the photo the groom is clearly seen to be holding a mobile telephone in his right hand nearest the camera and the groom obviously is either reading or sending a text message during that important kiss.

 

The photo's title: 'The Wedding Kiss'.

 

What does that tell the viewer about those events?

 

(That photo -- like 98% of mine -- was not staged; it's completely 'candid', and of the few that are posed, nearly all are simply a subject's being asked to 'do what you just did', and my photographing that -- such photos comprise only a handful out of 1150+ in my portfolio.)

 

I guess, having never really dissected the question of 'photo story telling' to this degree before, or understood that it is not considered 'normal' that photos tell stories (without accompanying text), that if mine do tell stories, then they may indeed be different.

 

Is that so, or do I misunderstand Hurn and Jay (or Jay and Hurn)?

 

I always thought a photo could 'tell a story' - just as I was taught at Columbia College in 'art appreciation' class (it was really Art 101 or something like that, but we called it something like 'Art for Poets' and was a required course -- I am sure even Barack Obama had to take it when he attended, as the core curriculum was designed never to be changed.

 

We 'poets' were taught that old Medieval and Renaissance paintings often 'told stories', and one classic painting of such for illustration purposes was Brueghel's 'The Wedding' (or similar name), which we carefully dissected for its 'story', as we did for numerous other subsequent, famous paintings.

 

Isn't story-telling, just part of 'classical art' as practiced in the Medieval through Renaissance periods - and possibly beyond?

 

Why were various brides and grooms depicted in full wedding regalia before all the vast families with their attendant wealth on display in so many paintings, if not to literally make 'documents' of the weddings -- to literally make formal imprimaturs of the alliances between what often w

She is in there to as a subject to intitiate the photo as a foreground. The real photo is in the background. And what about Hannuka? No wishes there?

That is your personal view, and you are entitled to that interpretation.

 

Seasons's greeetings.

 

John (Crosley)