'The Transoceanic Flight'

This is the scene aboard just one-third of a very large aircraft on a

Transoceanic flight . . . with special attention to the two passengers,

foreground. One-sixth second exposure, handheld, no V.R. Your

ratings and critiques are invited and most welcome. If you rate harshly,

very critically or just wish to state an opinion, please submit a helpful

and constructive comment; please share your photographic knowledge

to help improve my photography. Thanks! Enjoy! John

I might have taken 20 flights and taken thousands of photos, and never have equaled this, I think, and never could have staged this; I lack imagination . . . and would never be much of a cinematographer unless for a documentary.

 

It's that way with many photos I post. They get posted because they 'succeed' or I think they do, regardless of subject, subject matter, or geography, and also regardless of number of efforts, but most do not take many. I often get what I want almost immediately now, then move on.

 

The main reason is I shoot for myself and not for someone else, so if I am not successful at capturing a subject or scene, I just file it away and never show it, then move on quickly, with no investment lost except the time, reusable pixels, and minimal hard drive space for archiving (I try to keep 'failed' or unsuccessful shots, too, though some get 'lost' by attrition, alas, despite 'best efforts'.)

 

I just looked at this for analysis purposes, viewed the 'lines' of the cabin and subjects, then easily understood why I took, processed. and posted it. Can you see why?

 

John (Crosley)

As you say, you could never have staged this. This was one "decisive moment" shot as I'd like to see it. The timing of the shot ensured the child's face lit up perfectly. A second this or that side and you'd have lost it. This story in one corner of the bigger shot actually makes the shot for me.

 

It is a coincidence that you have posted two "divine" shots within a small space of time. Look at it this way: while the world sleeps, something special is taking place (mother, father and the child)....and this would in a way link the two photos. Have you thought about it in this way as well?

 

{To get carried away a bit more...the bird in Lufthansa's logo is not a stork, is it? :-)}

 

Regards.

I once worked for Associated Press, hired as a photographer, but they needed a newsmen, and a colleague immediately (first day) sent me to the huge exhibit of his 'friend' Henry (Henri Cartier-Bresson), and I returned (having met the great man, I minimally recall, never having before heard his name) so greatly discouraged, I was ready to give up photography and my career plans to be a 'world great' in photography -- for all time.

 

Just to 'quit', and the opportunity presented itself.

 

AP was short-staffed in San Francisco, where I was hired, for news writers/newsmen, and they asked me to 'fill in' saying any day I could return to photography, but on day two my stories were published including a couple that went world wide.

 

I never had any training -- no journalism school; nothing but just sat down, interviewed (mostly by telephone but also went to an 'event') then wrote, and my stories were edited and put on the wire, some for the whole world. They were hugely successful and so was I. I then had become in two days a newsman, which didn't bother me.

 

I could not compete with this guy Henry (Henri Cartier-Bresson) who filled the De Young Museum on Van Ness Ave., in San Francisco with print after majestic print - room after f**ing room -- full of fabulous works, and since they were 'near' my style at the time, I was hugely discouraged - and mostly I did give up photography for nearly forty years until I came to Photo.net and posted some early work which no one had seen.

 

Well, AP had a 24-hour news cycle.

 

I was told somewhere in the world a newspaper was 'on deadline' or a section of a newspaper that might print a story I was working on was 'on deadline' every moment of every day, except parts of late Saturday and early Sunday.

 

Well, when you write that I got a photo while others slept, that reminded me of that.

 

And it reminded me of all the GREAT photos I've missed.

 

But no longer does that bother me, because I've found out there are great photos everywhere. You don't have to go to Ethiopia to get a great photo, though they are there in abundance whenever there's drought . . . or Rwanda when there's beheadings, or Somalia when the war lords are killing or raping (if you can avoid getting killed or mained . . . . which weighs heavily).

 

As a 'street photographer' I know that a trip down a main street, side street, alley, into a restaurant, shop, mall or even a bus or airplane (or just about anyplace) can have potential for a world class photo -- you just have to be there and SEE - AND have a suitable camera and lens.

 

I usually have two cameras with zoom lens with large aperatures at all times - just for those moments, and I seldom let one slip away, unless I'm driving and it's for my safety or in a store where I'll get kicked out, AND I want to return. (very real consideratios as there are cameras and store detectives everywhere, and although EVERYBODY nowadays has a telephone camera or video phone with them, I get singled out with my large gear for a warning (which is stupid, because insurance adjusters and competitors will use large megapixel but small digicams and go unnoticed, or Leicas, etc., and these 'warnings' are totally stupid and ill-informed.

 

Well, anyway, it's 24-hours a day that great photo potentials are going unnoticred all around the world and I am not there. They're escaping - slipping away into the chronosymplastic infindibulum, BUT I do not feel it's my responsibility.

 

I only feel it's my responsibility if I let a good one slip away that I want and I have seen.

 

Otherwise, I'm retired (and disabled at that, so shooting time and mobility also is limited).

 

On this flight, I was boarded with a wheelchair, though I do and can walk, but in airports with gear it's very, very difficult. (I had three digital cameras, 15 lenses, two laptops, four terabytes or larger hard drives and two video cameras -- all around my rebuilt and broken neck, which itself disables me.

 

I will (as you can see) put up with almost any amount of pain and inconvenience to go after a GREAT capture, whether or not I get it.

 

Again, though my tolerance is limited, I shoot fast and true, usually and often for a few seconds at a time, which also helps keep attention off me me and angering people (Did he take my photo? No, dear, I don't think so, he only had the camera to his eye for about 1/2 second. Hah!)

 

I got five photos in that time, with my focus preset or my focus point preset, my framing predetermined and only slight zoom adjustments to be made while I am shooting a 'series' on 'C' drive.

 

As here.

 

I only took a few this episode, but I caught the moment, then averted my glance and turned my camera an entirely other direction to make it appear I was 'setting up' a shot in the other direction, knowing I had taken THE SHOT already.

 

It's that way.

 

It's little different than basketball where the forward who's being 'screened' falls away as the player passes to try to make the referee and fans think he's been fouled. It's all 'appearances' sometimes and how to make them work to your advantage.

 

If by 'divine' you mean this shot and the one of 'Jesus' then I understand the post, rather than the shot of 'Tim' the Meth guy, who also likes motorcycles and mechanics, posted just after this. (a nice guy, but freakish looking a little, and 'who knows where he's been?', but still, I shook his hand and enjoyed a long talk with him and a friend., equally 'down and out'.)

 

I'm always glad to see your posts - they're almost always 'right on' and always interesting to read; they show great familiarity with my work as well as great understanding not only of my work but of its place within photography.

 

I'm pleased you stopped by to comment.

 

john

 

John (Crosley)

I suppose I should no longer curse at teenage kids who, upon boarding a flight, walk down the aisle with their video camera rolling. Well done. GJ

I stood demurely by a cabin divider, curtain partly drawn, raised my camera, started a short series, saw this develop, framed and shot for it, then put my camera down.

 

Total elapsed time; less than a minute and few were aware. I don't think I stand for a whole class of boors.

 

Photography is fun, and I try not to be too great a nuisance. There always will be some who think my behavior, however, to be boorish; it comes with the territory or bringing you a shot like this, or my many other telling shots. (Though many, many of the 'closer ones' are invited, even solicited by subjects.)

 

Thanks for the fine compliment.

 

John (Crosley)

Hee Hee,

 

 

Love this shot - it's never going to feature in an airline's publicity brochure, oh the horrors of "cattle class"! I'm drawn to the sleeping man in the second row, though,he does appear comfortable.

 

I presume/hope you just happened towards the back of the 'plane to take this shot.

 

 

Best Regards,

Adey

I am disabled and I pre board, this time from a wheelchair, so I have plenty of time and space to stow, and thusI avoid TSA (I go to the head of the line) and the boarding nightmare.

 

The airline's station chief loaded my arms with magazines and newspapers ('for the very long flight -- over 11 hours', because I think he knew that even as a lowly COACH customer I fly the route frequently and I LOVE this particular station's handling of me with my cameras, laptops and carry on.

 

They even blocked the seat next to me. I was 'ahead' of this section, but also in coach class, but this long-haul aircraft's seats in coach are 'very comfortable' and very well designed - among the best in the business.

 

'Cattle class' is what you make of it. My idea of the nightmare flight is sitting next to the 500 pound woman from India loaded with a sweater just taken out of mothballs (no need for sweaters in most of India most of the time. (I have asthma and react badly) and also loaded with perfume (I am allergic and it also triggers asthma) with her corpulent body spilling over the armrest into my seat, her elbow poking into my tender and irritable right kidney/and/or gall bladder (I know they are supposed to be in the front center and back) and her fat over the armrest spilling into my seat and my seating area. ('m also a wide body but I am very respectful of the person next to me).

 

I can walk aboard, but with heavy carry-on, it's best to get all the aid I can, especially walking huge expanses in airports. In an emergency I can handle the emergency door OK, but I just would HURT horribly, and do when I have to walk long distances.

 

I am a 'street' photographer and the JOY of taking a great 'street' shot is the world's greatest analgesic - it has a pain-killing effect that's hard to describe and accounts why in part why I love shooting so much (the joy of shooting a great shot can never be overestimated).

 

TMI?

 

Not all airlines or aircraft are 'cattle class'.

 

I once flew as a 'spouse' of an airline employee and flew each year enough miles (mostly in business and first class) as a standby 'employee spouse' to generate a 'phony invoice' for bookkeeping purposes that represented the 'value of my travel' at airline rates and usually equalled $175,000 per year or so, just on that travel and I also flew paid travel over 100,000 miles yearly on the same airline and EVERY PAID FLIGHT WAS UPGRADED COMPLIMENTARILY because I made friends by telephone only with the airline's sales department and its sales person (whom I never met in person and who now has retired did it for 'good will' and my big business which his airline got.

 

I'm a multi-million mile flier, just on this airline group, as well as others.

 

Little bothers me except when the agent at the 'other end' which failed my wheelchair' said 'WE ARE NOT GOING TO HELP YOU' with a wheelchair because she was busy with someone else when I asked for help and was going to miss my onward connection (because the wheelchair/cart was overly late, and she was GERMAN which values formalism over getting it correct.

 

I took her photo which offended her and which is going to the airline's chairman as 'worst' employee of the year. I told her and she was apopletic - claimed it was 'illega' (I know German law - had it researched - and it is not).

 

Life has its great moments and its poor moments, often within minutes of each other, and I just don't let stuff eat my liver too much.

 

Getting a photo like this lasts forever, and the rest of the stuff eventually melts away.

 

It galls me, but temporarily, if someone crosses me, like that airline counter person. They may pay, but I don't live my life for revenge.

 

My life is directed toward captures like this one and the 50 new friends I meet nearly every day when I go out with my cameras (photoapparat).

 

;~))

 

You may meet me some day on the street, and never know any of this and would be surprised at any of it if you saw me - few believe it, however truthful it is because I do not advertise any disability - it's unsafe to do so 'on the street'.

 

(See my prior post on the Dnepropetrovsk Maniac, indexed under Wikipedia.org, about mass murderers in a city in Ukraine where i was shooting who murdered and stole from those they viewed as a little 'weak' and who surely had seen me and maybe 'marked' me or at least thought of me as a 'mark', as with two cameras of large size I was quite visible there during the two-month time they were killing about 20-21 people by bludgeoning them on the street.

 

(Ref. WIkipedia.org, index Dnepropetrovsk Maniac(s). then compare posting dates of photos from same city in my folder.)

 

Best to you.

 

I'm glad you like the photo; it's fuzzy a little at 1/6th of a second, but a very good capture, in my view, and hand-held with no V.R. at that!!!.

 

I'm a steady holder -- almost rock solid even on a bouncy aircraft and about 'retirement age'.

 

John (Crosley)