The best from today...

thoth

Number one is "eh" I think but I felt like I should post two pictures.

1)


2)


Thanks for looking!

craig_d

#2 is a nice scene, but my eyes keep wanting to look at the woman in front who is looking off to the left, and she's practically the only thing in the shot that's OOF.

thoth

craig_d wrote:

#2 is a nice scene, but my eyes keep wanting to look at the woman in front who is looking off to the left, and she's practically the only thing in the shot that's OOF.

Thanks for the comment, Craig. I have half a dozen versions of this shot in which that OOF woman is not there but this is the one I kept coming back to. For me she gave the eye some foundation I think. Is her presence a bad thing for you or just an observation?

craig_d

thoth wrote:

Thanks for the comment, Craig. I have half a dozen versions of this shot in which that OOF woman is not there but this is the one I kept coming back to. For me she gave the eye some foundation I think. Is her presence a bad thing for you or just an observation?

I think her presence is a plus. The way she's up front and near-center, looking off to the side like that, seems to imply a story in a way that nobody else in the shot does. Without her it's just a street full of people, none of them really strong enough to focus on. She gives it human interest. The picture seems to want to be about her. I just wish she were in focus, but this is one of those split-second things where you need incredible luck to capture it just right unless your name is Cartier-Bresson.

tortillatorture

craig_d wrote:

The picture seems to want to be about her.

bdcolen

craig_d wrote:

#2 is a nice scene, but my eyes keep wanting to look at the woman in front who is looking off to the left, and she's practically the only thing in the shot that's OOF.

And you can't look at something out of focus...why?

Two good images, Travis - both of which beg for close scrutiny.

thoth

Craig, thanks for the further explanation.

Thanks, tortilla and B.D., for the support!

craig_d

bdcolen wrote:

And you can't look at something out of focus...why?

In other words, it's better this way? Hmm. Well, one can certainly point to examples of great photographs where there is an artistic reason for the focal point of interest not to be in sharp focus. And the fact that she's the only thing OOF in the whole picture does set her off from the background. You could be right. But once my attention is drawn to her, I want to see her more clearly than is possible in this shot. Maybe if I could, I'd be disappointed?

I just now notice that while the OOF woman may be black (I think she is, but it's hard to be sure since her face is shadowed and her features do not seem to be strongly African), everyone else whose face can be seen is white, and overall the picture has a lot of light tones (the sky, the buildings, the awnings, etc.). That, together with her being the only thing OOF in the picture, could be taken to suggest a social commentary, though perhaps a somewhat outdated one at this point.

Another thing that I realize I haven't mentioned about this shot is that I really like that it's in B&W. The featureless white sky makes me think of early photos shot with emulsions that were only sensitive to blue, where the photographer had to blow out the sky to get a good exposure of the ground. (Being sensitive to only one color could be seen as part of the social commentary too, though a rather obscure and technical aspect that nobody but other photographers would catch.)

bdcolen

craig_d wrote:

In other words, it's better this way? Hmm. Well, one can certainly point to examples of great photographs where there is an artistic reason for the focal point of interest not to be in sharp focus. And the fact that she's the only thing OOF in the whole picture does set her off from the background. You could be right. But once my attention is drawn to her, I want to see her more clearly than is possible in this shot. Maybe if I could, I'd be disappointed?

I just now notice that while the OOF woman may be black (I think she is, but it's hard to be sure since her face is shadowed and her features do not seem to be strongly African), everyone else whose face can be seen is white, and overall the picture has a lot of light tones (the sky, the buildings, the awnings, etc.). That, together with her being the only thing OOF in the picture, could be taken to suggest a social commentary, though perhaps a somewhat outdated one at this point.

Another thing that I realize I haven't mentioned about this shot is that I really like that it's in B&W. The featureless white sky makes me think of early photos shot with emulsions that were only sensitive to blue, where the photographer had to blow out the sky to get a good exposure of the ground. (Being sensitive to only one color could be seen as part of the social commentary too, though a rather obscure and technical aspect that nobody but other photographers would catch.)

I'd suggest you're reading much to much into the fact that there's someone out of focus in the foreground, especially when there is so much going on in the image further back - like the woman on the cell phone in the center of the image, or the two people connected on the left, or any number of other people in this image, or the overall scene. I don't know that the image is about her, so much as she is passing through it.