LisaImmarco

Fabulous photograph. Love the way you're experimenting with light and dark.Not specious here. The  way the light falls on the watermelon and the face is dark emphasizes the lusciousness of the moment.  Almost ambrosiacal.

Hi Nebjosa,

One of the best street photos I've ever seen.  The wonderful composition, the way the photo lead the eye completely around the scene, the sheer absurdity of it, including the wicked commentary by Mr. Crazy Eye on the self-involved young woman, the priceless expression on the dog's face,...award worthy.

I wouldn't crop a thing, although there are some superb alternate crops. I've seen a lot of these 'kinds' of photos in competitions and on photographic websites, i.e., some weird character (human sized smiley faces, chickens, etc) in a crowd/market type scene. This is the best ever, because of the layers of commentary. Not just the absurdity. Any, that's my opinion.

Best regards,

Lisa

Thanks you, everyone. Stuart, before I respond, may I ask what you see in this picture, how it affects you?

Thanks in advance,

Lisa

Absolutely beautiful, and mysterious.

Might burn out everything but the figure...Also, technical problem

with edge of subject so close to edge. Don't want to crop into subject,

so might burn edge of elbow a bit. Would like some thoughts here.

Thank you in advance

Thanks for the comments, everyone. Donna, Ned is brilliant, glad you found his stuff. :)

Meditating on a myriad of ways to edit this one. This is one of the

directions of which I am thinking. Thinking of alternatives that are

more high contrast and also sharper.

Thanks in advance.

Thanks for the most excellent comments. Frode, that was great advice. It is more like death than like dementia. I am going to try to take some pictures that convey dementia, more, especially sundowning, in which people with dementia get very agitated when the sun goes down. I think the slow shutter speed will be useful.

Marie, yes I should have taken different kinds of shots. New cameritis, I think.

David, You're right also. The eye needs something to settle on it's stressful.  I am going to look again at photographers who specialize in this techniques and see if they give you a focal point, along with the blur.

Actually what I think I will do is burn in the eye pits so they are black, and no blur. More unsettling, but conveys what I want. I can try some attempts at sharpening too.

Tony, welcome to the dark side, lol.

Much, much, better in color.

I hate digital, period.  Carlos, come over to the dark side and get a film camera.

That banana makes the whole photograph. Classic.

Marie said it first (B&W).

Think I might increase contrast a little and darken his eye area for the 'raging bull' effect, just a bit. Thanks for the comments, I was very unsure as to crop, and they persuaded me not to.

Experimenting with fill flash and slow shutter speeds, also pushing in

development, in trying to capture the 'feeling' of dementia.

I find the dark window on the left abrasive, but it might work for

same, a feeling of darkness encroaching. But still, might have been

better with all white pillows surrounding the subject, who has

dementia. Maybe there is a way I can simulate that in PS?

Thoughts welcomed. I am thinking of entering a contest with a series

on this subject, so don't be gentle. I can take it.

Tony, now it's your turn. Go look at some of Fukase's pictures. Then get a flash, and go take pictures of the ravens by you. Stop down in the daylight and use the flash.

Marie, I can't. I've moved and I live in the country now. However, I'm in redneck territory now-real bible belt, a lot of American Indian/Irish too, and I am collecting phone numbers of people for study. I'm trying to figure out a medium format my friend just gave me, a Mamiya C330 pro. I can't figure out head or tail of it.

 One day I woke up early in the morning, and the pasture was misted over up to height of about 3 feet above the ground. Through mist in the pasture, a whole flock of about 30 or 40 pheasants were running quietly through the ground.

LOL. I can't. Trust me, I can't. I'll make it up to you, somehow, I promise.

lolololo....that really would have been a great shot, though.

Speaking of birds, I have two stories of my own. I used to have very thick hair, and I used to twist it up in a bun on the top of my head. One day I felt something grabbing at my hair, and I gave a shriek, and I heard an answering shriek, and I looked up, and this bird had thought my bun was a nest! It was batting at me and I was batting at it/her/him/whatever...and we were screaming at each other.

The second is awesome. When I first moved to to the town in which I live now, I stayed in this apartment building, on the thirteenth floor.  There was a big bird conservatory nearby. I had a balcony, and on my second week there I saw a huge crowd of geese raucously gathering in a crowd in the sky over the building and circling randomly above the building. As I watched, more and more joined them. There had to be at least two or three hundred.  After a while they started circling more orderly, and then suddenly, they went up, and up...and up, got into V formation (a huge, double V) and then they started flying north!.  It seemed very quiet after that, and all of a sudden the whole process started again! Right above my apartment building. Hundreds of birds gathered, squawking and crying, slowly organized themselves and disappeared north. The whole process took place about three times above my head for about 2 hours.

It happened every day for a week, and didn't happen the next year. It never happened again.  I didn't realize how lucky I had been.

Hello Vlad,

Great capture. My background is art, not photography, and I tend to look at pictures through a painterly 'lens'. 

I think there is another picture there with a crop just at the bottom of the male's neck. It maintains the subject object theme of two people in front of a painting, but also becomes even more abstract, almost as if the two heads are part of the painting. Just a thought.

OK, so I know I'm not supposed to say anything and be mystious, and let you figure it out. But I have to here. 

This is, well, I can't say her name, but she is an amazing woman.  She keeps a pelican in her bathtub with a broken wing that badly healed, and she tied herself to an very old, big,  tree on the sidewalk for three days in her yard so zoning couldn't cut it down. And she won. When you go to her house she says, "Oh, I'd invite you in, but I don't think the pelican would like it!" 

But I have a feeling it's really because she's a bit of a hoarder.

Thanks folks. You really are too generous to me. You are bodhisattvas of compassion. I'm in awe of your generosity of spirit.  Tot take time out of your precious schedules and write such beautifully composed comments.

Always be honest with me though, if you see something that needs to be improved!

Has any of you looked at 'Solitude of Ravens' by Fukase, on the web? It's unbelievable and one of the most haunting photographic essays of birds, his photographic infatuation with wife and other things, I have ever seen.

Thanks, everyone. You can see my clumsy, first attempts at dodging and burning. Hope to get better at that, when I learn 'masks'. Marie, Arbus did stuff like this? Didn't know that.

I would love to see it in black and white. The curve of heads, the variation of expressions, the last child's  expression almost of horror.

Fantastic.

 I wish you would photograph and post, more.

Is that black object in the background another cat? It looks like an upside down kittie, but then the tail would be sticking out of it's head?

You know, you might have a point there. Not about the doggie breath, the other thing.

I think I'm going to crop it some more.