black and white: then to now 'Making Memories' (Japanese Style)

Long, hard-won experience with Japanese tourists trying to interest

them in 'interesting photography' without success, I have found that they

often take photographs to 'prove' to their fellow workers, friends, and

relatives that they actually were 'there' at a specific place on their

holiday or vacation, kind of like a sort of vacation forensics in case there

are doubters among the viewers. So when once I was voluntarily taking

the photo of a large group of Japanese tourists in Honolulu and tried

tricks to make these happy but suddenly stern-faced people smile and

laugh (as they had been), it was explained to me, that the purpose of a

Japanese tourist photo was to 'make memories' or better to 'prove

memories' with no art involved for sure. 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 (Photo taken on a world famous pier, featured in numerous

movies,in the Los Angeles Area.)

Low rates or no, this is in my view among my very best.

 

One high mark: the couple's flash illuminating their faces while my camera shutter is open - all unplanned. [edit -- well, actually planned, but not something the photographer can 'count on' as a 'flash' or 'strobe' is so fleeting. I was 'trying' to capture the flash. Explanation added later for clarity].

 

Rate as you will; I know its worth to me.

 

John (Crosley)

John, I like this one a lot.It stands on its own without any explaination.The horizon and rail perspective leading to the other couples on the deck adds a nice element.The flash on the couples face makes this shot.Some may say that luck had a lot to do with it but luck always favours the prepared. You had all the other compositional elements in place and the gods of SP smiled and presented you with a gift.This is rare and keeps us searching.

When I looked at my captures a little later as I walked away, I was delighted to see this as I showed them to another photographer - I felt this capture was as good as I could do.

 

In fact, my post above may have been a little bit misleading. In fact, I did indeed plan on capturing the flash which you see in this Japanese tourist couple's face. There are numerous times when I attempt to take photos of people taking photos of themselves, but this is the apotheosis.

 

When I take such photos, I place my camera on 'C' (continuous servo) drive, similar to 'motor drive' with a film camera, and hope for the best. So, when flash fires on their camera, I'm likely to capture it.

 

But until one reviews captures one cannot know for sure how they'll turn out, and I had forgotten immediately to review them and only did it later, at which point I was very excited.

 

Partly that was born by the flash pattern in the faces, which was entirely fortuitous and not predictable at all in its aesthetic.

 

I very much liked it and was very, very disappointed in those who rated low,and frankly did not understand the ratings at all -- I was dumbfounded.

 

Your rating makes sense to me, but I respect those who do not 'understand' the worth I see (or you also) in this photo, and I call no one names or put them down.

 

(and no, horizons do not always have to be perfectly level -- go look at the work of Doisneau, who was very,very famous, and see that he often photographed with a cockeyed horizon, just so long as he got the photo.)

 

Thanks for the informed comment.

 

John (Crosley)

Fine capture, like the compo, b/w, mood.

I am not deterred by an onslaught of low raters or apparent disinterest that first appeared.

 

I think highly of this photo.

 

I write my contrary thoughts sometimes when I get 'high rates' for photos I do not think so highly of, also, so I am not perpetually a 'booster' of my own photos.

 

Your remark embodies just what I see in this photo, and I thank you for your comment.

 

I stand by what I post, and don't live for 'rates'.

 

A favorable comment by you is far more highly regarded than anyone's anonymous rating that I cannot find justification for.

 

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

 

As I noted above, of my recent captures, it's a favorite and 'one of my best', just for the qualities you mentioned, but the anonymous averages did not even break a 4.0 average, and I was astonished. That's raters' loss, however, and I was undeterred.. I almost never remove a photo; I post what I believe in.

 

john

 

John (Crosley)

As a long-time resident of Japan I second your remarks. Your conclusions are right on the money. I don't mind that they take photos to "make memories" but I'll be damned if I want to sit through all 200 of them "Me in front of the Eiffel Tower"; "My wife in front of the Eiffel Tower"; "Me and my wife in front of the Eiffel Tower"; "Our guide in front of the Eiffel Tower"; "Me, my wife and our guide in front of the Eiffel Tower". There's only so long you can feign interest. It's like they've never discovered the delete button. As for this picture, it's a beaut! You've caught just the right amont of light on the faces of the young couple.

You hit what were my thoughts right on the money. Those had been my private thoughts, but you have exposed them publicly, though I hold the Japanese tourists no grudge - it's just a totally different mind set.

 

When you ask Americans and other Westerners to describe a fishbowl, they will describe the individual parts and especially the behaviors of individual fish, the Japanese will make an effort to integrate all into some harmonious 'whole' disregarding the 'individuality' of the parts.

 

That's the Japanese mind set and Japanese cultural difference exemplified in a paragraph.

 

This photo does it too, I think, as it is emblematic of a culture, though it is a little different, as it does not capture the 'pier' itself, but the setting sun (right), if shown in color. I captured the elements in black and white and semi-silhouette.

 

The flash on the faces was indeed fortuitous. I took the 'raw' capture and put it into my 'raw converter' and couldn't get the same effect as I could just by taking my in-camera conversion straight from color to b&w - so good were the internal algorithms for the conversions, and there is not one finger or control put to this photo -- it's posted WITHOUT ANY ADJUSTMENTS AT ALL, DIRECT FROM THE DIGITAL CAMERA - a rarity for any digital capture, as I could not improve on it (a complete rarity).

 

Some day that may be the 'rule' rather than the exception.

 

I remember one day at the south entrance to Yellowstone National Park (a rather uninteresting place) but with a gate and a big low sign naming the place, a bunch of Japanese tourists gathered there for the longest time taking photos of themselves with the sign.

 

That's their way. I take photos of hot pools, dying trees, shapes, silhouettes, photos of 'scale', walkway patterns, and so forth, when I go there, or even of the animals (elk, etc.,) but not of signs and my friends (if any).

 

So, I always am surprised a little, though now more or less I expect it.

 

I remember that day on Waikiki a large group of Japanese tourists in front of the famous park Banyan and, I think, an old overhead sign (in metal?) which was historic (my memory is dim on details).

 

They all were laughing, smiling and happy - wonderfully spontaneous and a great chance for a fine capture.

 

After one took a photo, I was asked to take a photo and did something to distract these suddenly stern-faced people -- all unsmiling and wooden -- seeking to turn it into a 'Crosley photo' that I hoped would delight.

 

No such luck.

 

I did so, took the photo, and a Japanese man yelled at me angrily.

 

'No memories.' 'No memories,' he repeated over and over, scolding me. Others said the same, scowling at me and muttering the same words. I was suddenly very unpopular.

 

I got taught a lesson in Japanese photography.

 

Perhaps that's why there are few Japanese members of Photo.net or for that matter 'great' Japanese photographers?

 

(The Koreans are quite different, and great aficionados of classic and world class photography, which may be little known).

 

There is no room in crowded Japan for the 'nail that sticks up' or for that matter in a 'permanent record' such as a 'memory photo' for anyone to be seen with any 'individuality', I guess.

 

Thanks again for a very enlightening story and a comment that wonderfully completes my point so well.

 

Kudos to you.

 

John (Crosley)

A great shot John that works on so many levels! Beyond the excellent composition and magical fill in flash you have caught a familiar scene that is repeated at any and all the tourist locations around the World. This is one of those classic shots for posterity, one that in perhaps just 50 years will be instantly recognized as a "turn of the millenium scene". Then there is the fascinating Japanese cultural aspect, one can only wonder that a country with such basic photographic demands produces some of the finest cameras. But what I find most interesting is the impression that the photographer seems totally absorbed in taking a picture of himself and yet the young lady appears to be posing for you! May be it is just the angle of her head and the relection of the flash in her sun glasses, but this probably false impression results in a strange disconnect between the couple and powerful draw for the viewer.

 

I have long been an admirer of your photography (much different from mine) and I agree that this is one of your best - a classic! Cheers, RickDB

I was reviewing captures nearby with a fellow photographer who was trying to do 'street' from very far away because he was too 'shy' to get up close and showing him that he was doing no one any favors, and to illustrate my point started to review my captures for him.

 

At that time, I first saw that I not only had caught the flash as I had hoped, but that its light distribution was stunning -- it highlighted just the faces mainly and caused reflection pinpoints in the glasses for an 'otherworldly' look -- making glasses/eyes combinations look something like the eyes of insects with the bright pinpoints of reflected flash near the glasses' centers.

 

I already had shown one other capture to the couple, and they were pleased, but had not yet seen this one.

 

I spoke with them and in turn learned their story, which is fairly irrelevant to this photo, except to know for sure they are Japanese and tourists, though one had lived a while in the US, so there had been some US cultural assimilation, which may be why they were not in a group, as is so common.

 

Also, being young brings a different dynamic, I think but they both remain 'true' to their cultural roots. (Also very nice people in my estimation.)

 

After I saw this and then almost instantly desaturated it in camera which did a fantastic job, (not equalled by doing the same in 'raw' which is why the 'in camera' desaturation' here is posted with NO ADJUSTMENTS'), I said to myself 'This is fantastic -- really one of my best.'

 

But after four rates, the averages were in the mid 3s, and my heart sank, because there was little indication of more ratings, and I wondered if I had seriously misjudged the appeal of what I had thought to be close to superb for me.

 

Recall, I sometimes downplay many of my higher-rated photos that are cliched or otherwise I don't feel are worthy of the high ratings they get -- I am not an ardent booster of just any old photo I post, and I am the first to acknowledge that some of the photos I post are only for aficionados' or 'specialty tastes' or posted mostly to judge how they will 'fit in' because they are 'good enough' but 'hard to judge', and I am interested in how they will fare with raters and critics. Some are more 'arty' and may have very limited appeal, but are serious work -- others are entirely frivolous. (for me this is 'fun' stuff -- ego does not depend on posting any photo that gets all '6s or all '7s. or being the 'best photographer here' though I do hope to be one of the 'most interesting' just because it is more fun, so long as it is truthful and tries to harm no one.

 

Rating and critics do fill a valuable function here, but sometimes those two go awry, particularly ratings, especially because ratings often are done by newcomers, rather than those necessarily with high skills. If raters rate on whether they 'like it' rather than by any other standard, those who like 'bug photos' only are free to downgrade 'people photos', and the Administration says 'that's good enough for them'. Same with 'blur photos for those raters who insist on razor sharpness and so forth.

 

I live by that system, flawed or not. I seldom rate.

 

If someone likes sharpness in both eyes, they may down rate a portrait in which only one eye is sharp (because of narrow depth of field) even though that was part of artistic intention.

 

So what?

 

But I felt I had taken a very, very good photo -- one to be very proud of, and there was a major disconnect between the ratings (well under 4/4), and my personal estimation.

 

What was wrong?

 

I understand that even established members on seeing such very low ratings may remove a photo, but I almost never do so (only if a good photo gets NO ratings and no comments,indicating a possible problem with the distribution network or that a photo needs additional 'work' revealed at posting, generally will I consider reposting.

 

So, I made the easy decision, as I almost always do, that this photo will stay, and I'm happy with it, given subsequent acceptance.

 

Your comment is specially heartening to me.

 

You saw that the photo was 'multi-level' - something that as a photographer who shoots almost on instinct, I am subliminally aware of until someone (or even me) begins to deconstruct my photos, as you have. I am told and now understand that my photos 'tell stories' but they do not always start out with a conscious story - it just seems that many still end up that way.

 

And yes, it is a 'familiar scene' - increasingly familiar since the advent of the digital point and shoot.

 

There is a similar photo (taken on a party boat in Ukraine) in a folder from 2004, my first year of shooting after decades of almost no shooting at all, and it is a precursor not only to this, but to a cultural shift in photography - lovers 'shooting themselves' - the dual auto portrait as a form of portraiture (and amusement).

 

I almost always try for good composition, in ways that are instinctive, (though more studied now, after having looked at hundreds of thousands of my own photographs, analyzed them, and compared them to my own internal data bank of hundreds of thousands or millions of photos I've seen - many of them by the photo greats (and a while spent photo editing for a world wide photo service long, long ago, which included some time examining and editing work shot by those who had Pulitzer prizes in photography, as well as those who might or should have had that prize.)

 

[And I could have been one of them just for raising my hand and saying 'I want to change my job, and be the photographer you hired me for', but the job had no future, and I knew it. Even Cartier-Bresson, I later learned, had put down his cameras, as had many of the greats -- most for lack of work, as major buyers (pictorial magazines) failed and television prospered. I also could have done otherwise and been an investigative reporter for my news service in Washington, D.C., just before Watergate 'came down', also just for raising my hand and asking for it -- I had been approached about that possibility, but I quit - my giant employer was just too stingy, I was recently married. I needed money to live on and then lived in NYC which was VERY expensive and could not live on peanuts they paid.

 

One job move and I quadrupled my hourly wage.

 

My young wife didn't care much for photography, especially if I took a photo of a pretty woman (which threatened her greatly), so to please her, I mostly gave it up, even as an amateur, mostly for decades, taking out cameras a little bit occasionally just before divorce in the late '80s for a short period and then a little in the early 90s again and only a few times in between, just to see 'if I still had it'.

 

I did.

 

I think I still do.

 

Only it's easier and my work is more variegated as well as being both 'intuitive' and 'elaborately constructed' all at once - if you can understand that.

 

No longer does my brow and body get sweaty as I try to 'make' or 'craft' (often almost instantly) a good photo, - it just relaxes me greatly - for me a paradigm shift.

 

What before was intensive, driven, extremely hard work, suddenly five years ago, became fairly simple, and even more so as the years here and the feedback from critics and raters has given me greater confidence and experience along with a worldwide critical audience (and a mentor of world wide fame and great skill who began introducing me to higher levels of photography, art exhibition, galleries and museums and teaching me his knowledge - which is acknowledged to be highest level and 'world class'.)

 

Rick, I am indebted to you for noticing what you term the 'strange disconnect' between the young woman you feel appears to be 'posing' for me while her boyfriend appears to be posing for their mutual camera. Of course 'in real life' she may have just been distracted, or it may be a false reading, but that's the photo - whatever appears 'is' regardless of what was 'meant' in her heart of hearts.

 

We don't ask photo subjects their innermost feelings or thoughts.

 

Cartier-Bresson took a famous photo of a boy next to a wall in Spain, the boy's eyes rolled upward.

 

It exemplified the 'surrealism' to which Cartier-Bresson strived and held dear.

 

Later, he explained, the boy was playing and bouncing a ball -- nothing magical at all, but the ball was out of frame.

 

But the viewer knows nothing of that, only what is captured, which illustrates the point well, I think.

 

I do hope that 50 years from now this photo will be 'iconic' as often I shoot with hopes that my photo will capture 'life' -- and exemplify life now for 50, 10o and 150 or more years ahead.

 

I already am looking at photos from my early '20s and find that some already are 'icons' of the times (Anti-War, Then, Fixed Bayonet, -- Berkeley People's Park demonstration, Nixon on Powell Street, Pat Nixon clutching his waist as Dick Nixon actually reaches and touches me to get to a bystanders' hand (taken with camera held over my head - a very 'universal' and interesting shot' plus a variety of others 'from the time' of the '60s - very early '70s.

 

There's even one from my very first roll of film ever (passengers on the Staten Island Ferry) taken within the hour after I bought my first camera ever, and it's frequently reproduced by blogs -- e;g., meaning 'stolen' which is a perverse form of flattery.

 

Your comment today is very heartening; I thought when I saw the early rates and lack of comments, I never would see a comment like yours about this photo.

 

Thank you so much for taking the time to tell me your thoughts. I am so happy this pleases you so much.

 

John (Crosley)

the flash on the faces makes the photo imo. The horizon is a little distractring but perhaps it is just the pitch of the boat.

You've captured the essence of Japanese travel photography. It would be perfect if instead of having a cup in her hand, she was holding her hand up with the index and middle fingers forming a V.

 

My own favorite moment photographing the Japanese was standing in front of the high rise train station in Osaka on a a mid-November evening several years ago. There were hundreds of Japanese standing in front of the station waiting for the Christmas lights to be turned on. Moments before the lights came on, they all extended their right arms up into the air, holding their cellphones set to the camera function. I got the shot but botched the settings and it very blurred. Oh well.

 

I can't recall having seen many Japanese photographers on photo.net. Am I just not paying attention or are they really scarace here?

 

Great shot. GJ

Great Story and Telling Observation.

 

Your story is very illustrative of the Japanese photographic 'memory' mentality - which this photo tries to make emblematic. I hope it becomes 'historic', as suggested above, or just is seen as a good photograph regardless.

 

I can only imagine your wonderment at the circumstance - I once was a photo editor for Associated Press and in addition to wire photos that came in from Viet Nam we also got air express packages of film from our photographers there, and certain numbers of them were film that was not caught by the take-up sprocket and thus was not exposed at all.

 

Corollary: Even the best of them, including Pulitzer winners or eventual Pulitzer winners, have made simple mistakes that ruined possibly great captures.

 

Don't feel bad or ever worry about a missed capture. Unless you're on assignment, or, say, a wedding photographer, and you miss the exchange of rings or the cutting of the cake (or smashing the cake into the new spouse's mouth), all of which may be grounds for suit.

 

It's your entire body of work that will be telling of your abilities, not just 'one' photo, generally.

 

Tere is one photographer on Photo.net, who has taken one - just one -- stunning photograph. I rated his photo tops a long time ago, and have watched his work ever since, and all the rest he has posted since then has been very mediocre work. All he had in him was one good photo, and that appears to have been it, but that photographer (unnamed) appears to be the exception.

 

Good photographers come up with good photographs time and time again -- see the work of many of PN's greats, and especially a man who shoots in a place I would consider pretty barren photographically by my standards but who gets wonderful capture after wonderful capture - Tim Holte, who gets my prize for coming in regularly with great captures as though he were literally 'creating' or 'willing' them into being on a regular basis, mostly because he 'sees good captures all around him, where I am sure I would see little.

 

Remember, Edie Adams would almost not acknowledge the photo that got him the Pulitzer -- the Saigon Police Chief blowing the brains out of a Viet Cong prisoner, with bullet exiting the prisoner's head, taken with Adams' Nikon F on Motor Drive that appeared on the cover of 'Life Magazine'.

 

That one photo, amazingly famous, sucked away all interest in Adams' other work and diverted attention from what he felt was his 'important' work.

 

His other work seemed 'unimportant' to others by comparison.

 

He was known mainly for one photo rather than his whole life's work, and he hated that and by consequence the photo which gave him such fame.

 

As a result, by time of his death, he refused to even show that photo at his Brooklyn Gallery.

 

He was near ground zero on 9-11-01 and could famously have documented that tragedy, BUT HE HAD NO FILM.

 

End of story of Adams and a saving comeback -- a chance at a second Pulitzer, possibly eclipsing the first.

 

Then in 1994, I think, he died.

 

Life is like that.

 

I saw him from time to time when he came to NYC AP headquarters where I worked as a Photo Editor in the early 1970s, and occasionally talked with him, as I did with some other Pulitzer greats.

 

One Pulitzer winner, Sal Vader, of San Francisco, I feel, was instrumental in getting AP to hire me in the first place - as he liked me and my photography, but I became a writer - after seeing the fabulous work of Henri Cartier-Bresson (urged to a museum showing that work by a writer and former Cartier-Bresson friend and fellow 'China Hand' from the days of the fall of the Kuomintang -- an older staff writer I worked with.

 

Mistakes can happen, and so what?

 

We all have our horror stories of the missed shot.

 

I have hundreds or more of such stories, but still have a 'body of work'.

 

So, I little regret those failed shots. It's part of getting those memorable shots.

 

This photo is one that worked out absolutely as well as I could ever have hoped -- perhaps even better.

 

For which I am rewarded for those hundreds or even thousands of shots for which I had high hopes but which failed to produce anything really worthy, despite best efforts.

 

Which proves, you just gotta go out, keep observing, keep shooting, keep at it, and sooner or later, if you're tenacious, you'll get the worthy shots, whether consciously or unconsciously -- planned absolutely or sometimes more by 'chance'.

 

Getting the 'flash' in this photo was 'planned' but not certain and discovering that I had captured it and the 'flash's' coverage area was wonderful and unpredictable, so there was an element of chance, not only in getting the 'flash firing at all' but in the 'flash pattern' being so appealing.

 

You might even get a great photo somewhat akin to the risse of 'Chauncey Gardener' in the movie 'Being There', if you get my reference, a man who rose to great prominence, just by (you guessed it) 'being there', even though he was nearlhy an imbecile. Remember, Elliott Erwitt said to a woman who inquired how he set his camera: 'F8 and be there'.

 

At least the above experience I relate about shooting 'street' is mine (and I suspect nearly everybody else who shoots 'street' regularly and somewhat successfully).

 

My very best to you - you are always welcome here.

 

(Now I'll see if you rated, and if so, what, as I almost never look at rates before I finish commenting, which keeps my comments untainted and I think even-handed.)

 

john

 

John (Crosley)

Go to 'community' and scroll down the membership list.

 

There's hardly a Japanese name on the list.

 

Language difficulties may have something to do with it, of course.

 

But I feel the 'memory photo' mentality is more to blame.

 

Now, the Koreans have a very healthy and active interest in most of the world's good photography, and I find that my work has great recognition in Korea - at one time there was a huge theft of my black and white and a separate theft of my color work, each set to wonderful music, and displayed on a Korean service and viewed by countless numbers of Koreans - that service, it turns out, was owned by Yahoo, which owns Flickr, of which I am not a member. It was 'illegal' but instructive - I had been told by my 'mentor' who knows the gallery/museum world very well, to seek out foreign exposure - he mentioned China and Asian capitals specifically as well as other places not seen particularly as bastions now of great photographic sales.

 

"Your work has universal appeal' he urged me. It will sell everywhere, he said, and so far blogs on almost every country (except Japan) have reproduced it, (albeit without permission).

 

He was guiding me to try to get my work into galleries others might 'pass over' - a path interrupted by sickness and to which I am not finally committed, but seems more and more an eventuality.

 

No, there are precious few Japanese photographers on Photo.net, though some may click in, even if only to see John Peri's nudes ;~))

 

Or the nudes of others, as so many do.

 

After all, everyone's human, especially since most photographers are guys.

 

And guys are hard wired.

 

I have chosen a more difficult route than taking glamour or more than a minimal number of 'female' photos (though a critic says that is my strength, if you can believe it).

 

And just because the Japanese don't join, doesn't mean they don't look, is my guess.

 

Just not too many, I'm also guessing, compared to their neighbor Koreans, for instance.

'

[The Japanese do not take too well to 'social comment' either. Look at how long it took them to acknowledge the 'Rape of Nanking' where Japanese soldiers -- to save bullets -- beheaded a large part of the Nanking, China population from horseback with their swords, or their role in making Korean women prostitutes and calling them euphemistically 'comfort women'.

 

[it is not characteristically 'Japanese' to take a good hard look at things that are 'uncomfortable' as I do regularly with my cameras.]

 

Is that helpful to your analysis and guessing?

 

john

 

John (Crosley)

I just love it

Thank you so much.

 

This is one of my very favorites recently.

 

John (Crosley)

 

This is a photography that not only speaks about Japanese tourists and their photographic habits but also speaks about photography itself. There's a photograph inside a photograph, there is an explicit pov (the one of the Photographer "outside the frame) and an "implicit" one (the tourist's camera pov). So, and please pardon me if I do not express my personal thoughts about this work in a correct English, this photography has quite an interesting narrative structure. It narrates a story (and poses as well some intelligent, almost ironic questions) about "why do we press the shutter?". Under this interpretative light this work is a classic one; one that cannot be considered only as a mere "documentary" shot but will also remain in the future as another good statement about this passion called photography. Thank you for sharing, Giuseppe P.

Until I heard the term was 'in vogue', and famously Stanford and other students of elite schools were saying (in rhyme with the famous similar song lyrics) 'Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Meta', I thought of myself as a metatheoretician -- able to figure out the theory of the theory, and thus able to figure out just about why and how anything works.

 

['Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better', in case you didn't get the reference]

 

So, I now have given up the claim; it never was my wish to be popular or cliched, and until I heard that, I never had considered that term was in general use by any group or subgroup.

 

I thought it described my thought processes, which while somewhat intuitive, also are fairly complex.

 

I just do as I will, and 'to construct a narrative within a narrative', just seems 'second nature' to me, and hardly requires any special thought at all.

 

I guess I'm just a naif -- no special high level thought required to do such things on my part, so I'll give up any claim to the anything 'meta' about my thought processes.

 

Giuseppe, thank you for such an intelligent comment.

 

Perhaps it is wasted on such a naif, but I do appreciate it nonetheless.

 

John (Crosley)

If one looks at this photo in thumbnail and tries to evaluate it, the bright coverage field of the just-fired flash, which I captured, looks when one views a 'thumbnail only' as though I had attempted to brighten the faces of the two individuals, but done a VERY BAD PHOTOSHOP job of dodging the faces and all that was around them.

 

In fact, an insufferably bad job - something that might have been done by an absolute neophyte in a great hurry, with no standards.

 

If that were the case, this photo would have deserved ratings of 3/3 which it got initially.

 

And I think that may be what happened -- some first raters, (usually beginners at the craft try their hand at rating first), just whacked away at this photo, rating if from thumbnail, and did not get that the 'glow' was from the just-fired flash.

 

Is that reasonable?

 

To me, it seems a likely explanation . . . . Or, maybe those who intially rated, just could not see that a photo of someone taking a photo of themselves (now a very common occurrence) could rise to the level of something that might be 'important'.

 

This photo is 'growing' on me the more and more I see it, and I liked it very much initially.

 

John (Crosley)