'Worth Looking At'

I think this 'street' photo, taken in the last few months in San Francisco,

is 'worth looking at' though very technically flawed, and not relieved (or

maybe relievable) in post processing, without spending tens or more

hours on it. Your ratings and critiques are invited and most welcome,

and 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. (but please know I am

very, very aware of technical flaws, for this nighttime photo). Thanks!

Enjoy! John

It's more complicated than that.

 

After spying this guy, the poster and realizing the potential despite most adverse circumstances,

I drove around the blocks (lots of them as there are one-way streets involved), and then stopped in traffic and at the curb for a long, long time - spending 1/2 hour to get this shot, probably, out of lots of failed attempts where movements were off, the people were 'wrong' or almost everything was 'wrong' to my judgment, including this shot, which I have posted anyway because I love it, -- or at least how it would have been if technically perfect - perhaps taken in daytime instead of well into the night.

 

But . . . .

 

'Luck favors the well prepared'

 

Capiche?

 

Thanks for the comment.

 

John (Crosley)

I'm sorry but I was reediting and rethinking / deleting my comment, comming from "rate images".

 

I understand (I think so) but I think in this case is more important the impact of the image than the very careful treatment...I don't like a street photo seems a studio pic.

 

Best regards,

 

Luis

Thank you for the explanation. For English clarity, I think Luis meant he values 'street' photos MORE THAN studio photos, making up for a lost word in his second comment, or in other words, impact more than technical merit, which is why I had the testicular fortitude to post this at all. ;~))

 

John (Crosley)

 

I 'see' three 'people' represented in this photo.

 

The 'bum' left, and the poster woman right are obvious.

 

But you may have missed the stylized man, running, with the outsized heart, that is the 'artwork' on the woman's dress.

 

How fitting, in some way, I think.

 

(However, the man holding the door is not doing it out of the goodness of his heart alone. See his white, styrofoam cup, for tips of course).

 

This in front of Macy's San Francisco, across from Union Square.

 

John (Crosley)

John, I enjoy your commentary about the scene. If an image strikes me as different and interesting enough, like this one, I will comment on it. Technicalities aren't all they're cracked up to be sometimes. You caught "a moment" - with fascinating details.

I'm a pretty serious guy about noticing 'backgrounds, so when I saw this guy opening doors, and about the second drive around noticed the poster above him (or vice versa, or even simultaneously), and traffic was backed up, I began the task of adjusting cameras/lenses for the capture I hoped I would make, and hoped I would capture him thusly.

 

It was not an easy capture - in effect, I almost willed him into this position, knowing that if I waited long enough he would assume this position in relationship to the poster woman, and then there would be 'mirroring'.

 

Sometimes I can just look up and 'find' a capture like that, and not wait.

 

Other times I can wait a half hour and drive around blocks and blocks and blocks for my turn, then park (legally) and point my camera out a window or through a windshield, with a tele or a wide (I think this is a wide/tele combo).

 

Then I just wait and click at likely scenes.

 

I have more than one like this, but reflections in this case were killers, as here, also. There are extensive Photoshop manipulations to this scene, and not done well, but I posted it just to say "go ahead, give me my 3/3s and I don't care. I like it, and if it were perfect it would be indeed 'perfect.'"

 

But in this instance, I hadn't counted on the photo being SO appealing to the PN audience and raters in general, plus I suppose it helped that I pointed out at the beginning I was awfully aware of its deficiencies (I stole anybody's thunder who would point out the problem with glare, reflections and my terrible photo editing work). This was never really meant to be posted at all. Imagine that after 7 rates it's over 6/6 -- I never would have believed, but there is collective wisdom in raters, and I never totally scoff at ratings.

 

Just as I never disregarded the collective wisdom of juries. Collective knowledge or opinions can be powerful arbiters (not always, of course, but a series of 6s and 7s do not happen to 'ordinary' photos, and even to me this was never 'ordinary' but just drawn back by its very obvious nighttime and editing flaws.

 

I'd love to see it worked up from the original by a real Photoshop Pro, assuming I could even find it in my vast files (oh, I think it is indexed so I could, actually, and if anybody wants the raw of large jpeg file to impress me with (not to post here but maybe as a 'sidecar' or 'attachment' I'd love for them to have a whack at it.

 

Just post a comment here, before sending me an e-mail (I check my PN e-mail very seldom, often very cursorily and will be traveling soon. I'd hate to miss the offer if it is forthcoming from someone with real skills. This is a true test of good photo editing/manipulation with the reflections etc.

 

So, Liz, I literally foresaw this photo and willed the Photo gods into producing the right moment, for when the guy would mirror the photo model's actions, then placed myself in the right place and waited for that moment, ready to capture it.

 

;~))

 

There's the easy way and the hard way. This was the hard way, like in my photo of the guys being 'chased by the jaguar' -- another 'stakeout'.

 

Other cases that happened instantaneously are the woman weeping and bent over beneath a poster that appears to be caressing her head. That all happened in a second or three.

 

All that really matters in the end, is did it produce a viewable photo.

 

This one barely made it, despite tremendous potential, so far as I'm concerned.

 

I love it when you comment, Liz. Come back as often as you wish.

 

John (Crosley)

 

 

 

 

John, you are a master of finding and photographing backgrounds.   Sometimes I think that you must just wander around for hours looking for worthy backgrounds.

--Lannie

I do, or just easily notice them wherever I am.

When I notice one, so often a juxtaposition occurs often immediately.

Occasionally, as with my now older 'Photo of the Week' it was a background in 'mental inventory' which I knew a passerby would soon be passing, then I rushed ahead to make the 'capture'.  I use the word 'make' advisedly' as I created that photo, even though it is candid.

And I used the lessons straight out of my presentation, which you noted elsewhere in another comment.  "Photographers:  Watch Your Background', I think Photo.net's biggest and I believe a text for a certain part of 'street' shooting.

It's really amazing how often I 'see' these things, and something that juxtaposes is about to occur if I just observe and wait even if only a short while. 

[sometimes I must return, occasionally again and again.]

For all its numerous technical flaws, this photo has been very well received.

I might consider having a Photoshop professional take whack at this one; it's beyond my skills with all those reflections.

But then my remedy always has been to just go take something else equally worthwhile and not concentrate on the past.

Thanks, Lannie.

john

John (Crosley)

Nice brunette with a nice smile--well, that is good in and of itself, but you have made it better by putting something else in there with her.  He almost looks like Fidel when he came to NYC in the early 60s to propagandize at the UN. 

Maybe she is just floating over la revolución, or else bringing one of her own.

--Lannie

Please note that the brunette's dress is 'artwork' and on the store window is the copyright sign.

Of course, this is 'fair use' since I've incorporated it into something else, and it was licensed to be seen 'on the street' and you can't copyright a view (although the French government did seek to copyright their new once hourly light arrangment on the Tour Eiffel!)

I took the photo anyway; I don't think international copyright conventions will recognize a view that's copyrighted when it's the most famous symbol of all France (Catherine DeNeuve notwithstanding, remember she was on a coin and on stamps?)

Ah, the French.

Not afraid to go with their feelings.

Or even to name a car after Picasso, who is somewhat of a national hero, at least among the more educated, and despite Pablo's being Spanish.

(Oh, to be more exact about that famous artist who invented Cubism: Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso).  

Just for the record. 

I like comments to try to be interesting as well as photos.

john

John (Crosley)

He gets his coffee cup from Starbucks where a cup of 'designer coffee' often costs over $3.00.

Wonder if he takes a laptop if/when he visits?

john

John (Crosley)