Street Scene From LA's Brobdingnagian Community

The Brobdingnag's were creatures of the French comic epic novelist

Rabelais who imagined a mythical land of giants -- in fact he coined the

term Brobdingnag and Bromdignagian for giants and Lilliputs and

Lilliputians for little people. 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

It was Jonathan Swift in 'Gulliver's Travels' who coined the names Liliput and Brogdingag for respectively small and large people.

 

Nevertheless, Rabelais wrote of giants, such as Pantagruel, who if I recall was one of two giants (the other was Gargantua) who urinated to put out a fire in old Paris (which was crowded and very unlike the more modern Paris created and designed by Baron Haussmann today. Rabelais wrote the twin comic epics about giants, Gargantua and Pantagruel, which are fun reading.

 

So, while I admit my mythology is wrong -- the origin of the words depicting small and large people above is entirely wrong, these two characters would indeed be Rabelaisian as they are like his mythological giants, I think, at least if they had large, somewhat obscene and outrageous exploits, since they are indeed about the size of the twin giants Gargantua and Pantagruel who 'ruled' the mythology of ancient Paris.

 

[it pays to consult Google.com before pussting things in posts that cannot be edited out, as in this request for critique, say I] Humble John.

 

 

John (Crosley) eating a little humble pie.

Great idea John! I like the composition and (in my opinion) perhaps it could be better (with a wide-angle lens) with a Lilliputian in the image, I mean, real people on the ground. It's true that the windows and man on the "roof" shows the real scale but some citizen on the ground could be more impressive. I like the b&w too. In any case great shot. Kind regards, Luis

The reason is that a 'normal' or Lilliput (small) person would be impossible to frame close to the lens as I was pointing up to maybe the tenth or much higher floors of these high rises and so far away that a Lilliput at comparable distance (or a normal person) would look like an ant.

 

So, for those reasons, no juxtaposition, and if I put a Lilliput in the foreground, say on a platform, the juxtaposition would probably not work because the Lilliput would appear 'large' if near the lens. I just can't work out your scene in my mind, though intellectually it sounds 'interesting'.

 

Thanks for thinking about it and working with it as a problem; I couldn't' resolve it, and in any case this is one of my five to ten second photos -- taken on a whim from a street out my car window, risking holding up traffic and no good foreground - just vacant lots and fences.

 

So, that's how it is here in Brobdingnag City, the portion of LA where fashionably dressed people can wear women's clothes AND sport a small 'beard' (see leftmost person at high magnification' -- apparently the work of fearless graffiti workers.)

 

If I got it right.

 

Best to you, and thank you.

 

John (Crosley)