This is great... I'm getting really great input here. So while we're at it...

This is a documentary type photo... maybe weak but I like it. The girl in front is slightly (but not objectionably) out of focus however, the scene is a little busy? Although the tracks lead the eye from lower left to upper mid right.

Keep those comments (praise and flame) coming. Lovin' it.

-- John Chan (ouroboros_2001@yahoo.com), November 27, 2001

Answers

John,

looks nice, I like it. The only problem with this picture is that there is no distinct sharp centre in the picture: Since you focused on the playing children in the middle of the picture and used a middle aperture (4-5.6 I guess), both the foreground (the girl on the left) as well as the people in the back are only a bit fuzzy. It would help the picture if they would be either sharp or definitely out of focus, but this way my eyes become a bit distracted from the theme and cannot focus properly on one subject (ok, I admit I'm also a bit short-sighted). But this would at least help me much to concentrate on the theme.

Kai

-- Kai Blanke (Kai.Blanke@iname.com), November 27, 2001.

John, its a fine photo that documents an event. I think it would benefit from cropping the asphault pavement off of the right side, making it a square picture. That would make the RR tracks dominate the surface of the environment and make it a neater documentary shot, IMHO.

-- Dan Brown (brpatent@swbell.net), November 27, 2001.

I like this very much - it's faults are also part of its charm - the fact that the eye keeps being pulled to the woman who is drinking(?) and who is in relatively sharp focus means that I keep see- sawing between the appealing little girl at the front and the possibly slightly worrying (I know I'm projecting but what the heck) woman with the drink problem (!). I also love the chalk arrows and the business. To be absolutely frank, I would probably like it more if the sharp focus covered the girl at the front and also if the sky were a little cropped/ burned in but it nevertheless gives me a real sense of life and involvement when sometimes classically composed shots can seem a little formal and distant...

-- stephen jones (stephenjjones@btopenworld.com), November 27, 2001.

I donīt mind the out of focus in the girl, actualy I like it very much, and the kids on the street make a good composition, again the croud in the foreground and that brigth ligth of sky calls my atention to no where, wish you hsd croped that and frame on the kids and drowings on the floor, and use the rail lines as a stronger desing element, just my own O.

But I like very much what this little girl is expresing with her hand and the way she is moving, great body expresion; even it is out of focus.

-- r watson (al1231234@hotmail.com), November 27, 2001.

i think this picture would have benefited much from a lower viewpoint. it is taken very much from an adult point of view. shooting from the hip is difficult with an all manual camera, but one can practise it. especially with children it is useful to go down on your knees. first it is easier to communicate with them and especially such a playful scene would benefit from a child's perspective. this is why the rollei tlr is so excellent for photographing kids

-- stefan randlkofer (geesbert@yahoo.com), November 27, 2001.

John:

The "IMO" om your style... From what I've noticed on your last few posts, you tend to avoid filling the right-hand side of the image with any significant subjects -- curious, but perhaps just an anomolie... I'll restate, and second Stephan here, that with children it is generall better to drop to one knee and get them at eye- level... The combination of guy drinking coffee in the background with the kids drawing makes this shot... SO, if you could do it again, I would crop out most of the right-hand background, step forward a few steps thus placiing the coffee drinker at a mean, drop to my knee, frame the little girl at the left edge while keeping the "line" with the other kids, and shoot. But that is just me ;-)

This shot is improved with a crop off the right that leaves it square.

Cheers,

-- Jack Flesher (jbflesher@msn.com), November 27, 2001.

I enjoyed this snapshot quite a bit. The girl's face being out of focus is rather pleasant and has a pleasing effect because it doesn't appropriate all of the attention. I probably would have liked a tighter shot in terms of the broad overall composition considering that there is a lot of dispersion of the subjects.

For example, I like the use of the tracks to frame the shot in a diagonal pattern. On the other hand, the crowds at the end of the tracks are sort of distracting yet attractive in a different sense. I just like the line/cordon which frames the background and runs perpendicular to the tracks. The person drinking the coffee/beer(?) is a little bit too much action/stuff going on because it seems like you were focusing on the adult (it looks a little bit more clearer than the young gal). Instead, I enjoyed the circle of kids on the pavement drawing the graf instead which is rather nice.

Conclusions and questions: Were you trying in the photograph to provide a contrast between the adult's self-preoccupations/mental infertility and introverted selves vs. the kids' innocence/action/artistic creativity and extroverted expression symbolized by the drawings on the sidewalks? Lots of symbols I guess?

My question is: Did you use a Leica R camera for the shot?

-- Alfie Wang (leica_phile@hotmail.com), November 27, 2001.

shows what I fool I am - I didn't even notice the chalk in the girl's hand til I read R Watson's response! It's amazing how that detail has changed the way I look at the picture - nice one.

-- stephen jones (stephenjjones@btopenworld.com), November 27, 2001.

To answer your two questions Albert...

1) No, I wasn't trying to juxtapose the innocence of childhood with the temperance of adulthood in the shot. To me, this shot reminds me of Dublin... maybe its the angle of the shot but to me it epitomizes the quintessential "reportage" type photography that I try to incorporate as an element in my style. I think the interpretation of this shot in my archives...

is more in line with what you've stated in the above.

2) No, I have mediocre eyesight (+3 diopter in both eyes, -1.5 cylinder in right eye) so my photography greatly benefits from using the M rangefinders which I have owned and enjoyed for the last 2 years.

Regards, (and please share some images of your princess with us)

-- John Chan (ouroboros_2001@yahoo.com), November 27, 2001.

John,

Your use of space is wonderful and you capture of an everyday street scene is both interesting and timeless. Your use of space in the picture is interesting as the subjects are placed in all focal areas. I wonder about the tint to the picture. I feel as though I have taken a few too many viagra.

Keep up the good work.

Jim

-- Jim Larsen (jimmylarsoni@yahoo.com), November 27, 2001.

Sorry to be a spoil-sport, but you really should study composition a bit more. All I see is random clutter and indecisiveness. Want to photograph the kids drawing on the pavement in shot #1? Then photograph them and leave everything else out of the frame. Ditto with shot #2. Just clipping on a wide-angle lens, pointing the camera in the general direction of the subject(s) and hitting the button without even bothering to frame the shot does not a photograph make.

"documentary type"? Er, no. Just laziness.

Although I admire your use of colour for this kind of work (hooray, everyone else seems to be stuck in the 60s and monochrome!) your colour balances are out. Way too much magenta in the mids and shadows.

Sorry to be so negative, but wanted to inject a little reality into the love-in.

-- Andrew Nemeth (azn@nemeng.com), November 27, 2001.

There is absolutely nothing to be sorry about. If your passionate about your art you will probably feel strongly about that of others. The only thing that I would find completely insulting is absolute indifference.

Besides... excessive praise (warranted or not) can result in a condition known as HUBRIS.

Wouldn't want that to happen... it would mean the death of my evolution as a photographer.

-- John Chan (ouroboros_2001@yahoo.com), November 27, 2001.

The comment that you made about too much magenta... actually, I think its color space compression of the JPEG when I shrink it down to manageable size. I've noticed this with all my other shots because the colors are quite vivid with no cast in the original 1.36 meg Photoshop files.

I guess there's a quality tradeoff from 1.26 megs to 126 k. You don't lose alot of pixels but the bit depth of the image suffers.

My suspicion is that it is contributing to the "magenta cast"

-- John Chan (ouroboros_2001@yahoo.com), November 27, 2001.

Magenta cast due to JPEG'ing?

No. Have a look at the colour-space preferences in Photoshop and make sure you switch these OFF. This is often a trap: what looks fine in PShop ends up looking weird when you save it to TIFF or JPEG

Saving to JPEG or down-scaling an image has no effect on the colour balance. (Eg - all the images on my 4020.net are from 6 Megapixel (or larger) masters.)

-- Andrew Nemeth (azn@nemeng.com), November 27, 2001.

John,

I think this photo works alright. The space on the right bothers me. It doesn't add any information or composition to the photo. Cropping in on the right helps, but it may have been better if you just turned a bit to your left to include more of the kids on the left while getting rid of the wasted space. There is a magenta cast, but nothing a little photoshop cant fix :)

I seems, looking at all of the photos you have posted, that you are thinking about composition, but it's just not quite there (except for the "broken rule of thirds" shot which I like.)

What I like is how you are using different depths of the frame (foreground, background, and middle) to add more information. Sometimes this can get a bit busy, but the key is to really emphasize it. Perhaps by moving in a bit you could get the forground girls really close to emphasize the foreground and give the feeling of kids all over the place drawing on the sidewalk.

What I liked about the previous shot was how there was a focus of the picture - the girl with a nice expression who immediatly catches your eye. but you then included enough of the background to give a sense of place to tell what was going on.

I might as well comment on the first shot also. I didn't really notice the ballons until i read that that was what you were concentrating on. Oftentimes it helps to have a longer lens to help compress the scene to really emphasize the row of ballons. Or even to get in closer. I did think it was a nice photo, though.

Keep on shooting, John I would like to see some more.

good luck, john locher

-- john locher (locherjohn@hotmail.com), November 27, 2001.

John: the little girl in the foreground captured me so much that I almost didn't notice anything else, save for the kids playing in the center of the frame. All the rest is simply background/environment to set the stage. My eye barely wandered from this charming child.

-- Bob Fleischman (RFXMAIL@prodigy.net), November 27, 2001.

If the child in the foreground in the first photo is the subject of interest, and the group of three children in the second one is, I find it unfortunate that in both cases their legs are cut off, as, incidentally, are the legs of the man beside the children in the second one. I call attention to it because it happens in both photos.

Margaret

-- Margaret (fitz@neptune.fr), November 28, 2001.

I wish you you would go to the library and take a look at the work of Henri Cartier Bresson. The best book is called the Decisive Moment, It's a classic, long out of print--but his images are available. To me, what you are not getting is the moment when the pieces contrast (or parallel); the frame where everything comes together. This picture is not the right moment. Do you work the situation, talk to the people? Some folks feel this isn't the right way to do things, but I feel you owe them the courtesy afterwards of letting them know what gives. I'm not suggesting posing, but you may want to try it....

-- R. Lightfoot (rmlcd@avenew.com), February 09, 2002.