Thought long and hard about this...
bdcolen
Registered Users Posts: 3,804 Major grins
...The posting of this image has been an interesting exercise for me. Your various comments made me rethink the image, and I was inclined to agree with the idea of cropping, and with Richard's comments about the need to bring up the cow more. So that resulted in a square crop, which brought up the woman with the toddler, and got rid of the guy eating the ice cream cone - who I find essentially uninteresting.
But...Then I began to think about the original image, and what I find interesting in it - why I shot it in the first place. And that has everything to do with the woman's isolation from the man and older children, and little to do with the cow - which is more suggested background element - or with whether the man is amusing. I framed the image as I did initially because I see a family tableaux, and not a very happy one. I see a disconnect between the woman and the man and teenager, 'stuck' with the new child, wondering what she's doing in this picture. So when all is said and done, I'm back to the original image, because it, rather than the crop, captures what I saw - an everyday moment isolation within a family unit, the kind of everyday moment we all see, but don't see...
But...Then I began to think about the original image, and what I find interesting in it - why I shot it in the first place. And that has everything to do with the woman's isolation from the man and older children, and little to do with the cow - which is more suggested background element - or with whether the man is amusing. I framed the image as I did initially because I see a family tableaux, and not a very happy one. I see a disconnect between the woman and the man and teenager, 'stuck' with the new child, wondering what she's doing in this picture. So when all is said and done, I'm back to the original image, because it, rather than the crop, captures what I saw - an everyday moment isolation within a family unit, the kind of everyday moment we all see, but don't see...
bd@bdcolenphoto.com
"He not busy being born is busy dying." Bob Dylan
"The more ambiguous the photograph is, the better it is..." Leonard Freed
"He not busy being born is busy dying." Bob Dylan
"The more ambiguous the photograph is, the better it is..." Leonard Freed
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Comments
Sorry to be too straight up, but that's just my opinion - The shot was boring to begin with with very little to no subject isolation. Any further cropping isn't going to magically make it great. The story would be a little different if it was shot with a faster lens to great the subject isolation between the woman and the very-busy-and-uninteresting background and surrounding.
I hope I won't get nailed for expressing my honest opinion!
Of course you won't be...We're all free to express our opinions, and they're generally worth what we're paid for them.
"He not busy being born is busy dying." Bob Dylan
"The more ambiguous the photograph is, the better it is..." Leonard Freed
That said, I think a feeling of isolation is conveyed very well by the posture of the woman and her expression of preoccupation or perhaps simply tiredness. In fact, it isn't really clear to me that she has any connection at all with the other people, except the kid. You were there, so I'll take your word for it, but if you believe as I do that the only thing that matters is what's in the image itself, one could easily conclude that she is waiting for her husband to return to their table with some ice cream for the kid, who is pestering strangers at another table. Dunno. If you want to get philosophical about it, you might consider that reality--the present as we know it--is not to be found in an instant, but is only perceived over a short span of time. From this perspective, any frozen moment will be ambiguous, and that's why still photography lends itself to art, not just forensic science.
Wow, I got a little far from the cow this time--sorry about that.
Hopefully you'll never get nailed for expressing your opinion in this group.
Here's why I said "thank you." B.D.'s explanation isn't about the picture per se, but the content and story within in the picture. I doubt he thinks this is one of his best, but it is expressive of a family dynamic that plays out in front of many of us on a daily basis and while we register it, we manage to process it out of existence. B.D. froze that moment. There it is. Five humans connected as a family and in completely separate worlds.
And a cow.
Thank you, Jen, and Richard - My point in reposting, and in my comments, was to express some thoughts about the image, about what we do and don't see, and about images and seeing in general. That's "all."
"He not busy being born is busy dying." Bob Dylan
"The more ambiguous the photograph is, the better it is..." Leonard Freed
Great to know that people here aren't being all defensive whenever the comment is not positive (like some other forums).
Cheers.
The original adds the connection between the people. It does appear to be a separate family with the little boy linking to them while the mother is lost in thought. It is also so out of place for her to look isolated in an ice cream parlor, which adds to the interest of the shot. As such, the man with the cone is an important element of the shot.
If you are still in "exercise mode", I would suggest exploring a square crop, taking off some from the right and left edges.
I'm late to this image but will add that I really like the original (though I would crop the one guy's back on the left). Not having read about the cow in the previous thread, I would guess that the prominence of that cow depends on whether you've ever been inside a JP Licks before! For me, the cow serves to place the image and give some added context. If you've never seen that cow before, you might be inclined to place it more prominently in the image.
Nice shot and nice dynamic you've captured.
E
ps - hope you managed to snag a few scoops while sitting there...
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Don
'I was older then, I'm younger than that now' ....
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Don - and others who made this suggestion - but if we crop to the left of Tongue Man, we lose the connection between the curve of his shoulder and the curving of the shoulder of the figure to his left.
"He not busy being born is busy dying." Bob Dylan
"The more ambiguous the photograph is, the better it is..." Leonard Freed
It has a hint of *Vintage* to me and reminds me of a family dynamic back in the day....it was not always perfect. I immediately thought, * I wonder what she is thinking*..
Thank you for sharing it, and what you saw in it.. I absolutely LOVE this photo...
We take pictures to share how we see the world and you have done just that...
And they both might own Rottweillers named "Fluffy". Sometimes you have to be BolD! ("Carpe Diem Manana")
To each their own. Not a shoulder man, myself....especially men's!
Don
'I was older then, I'm younger than that now' ....
My Blog | Q+ | Moderator, Lightroom Forums | My Amateur Smugmug Stuff | My Blurb book Rust and Whimsy. More Rust , FaceBook .
When I saw the first crop in this thread, I said, "hmm, that's weird, a statue of a cow inside - too bad he didn't focus on the cow but got that lady in focus".
When I saw the "original" crop, even though my eye was drawn to the cow (I think because I had already seen it in the previous crop), my very first thought was, "Wow, that lady doesn't seem very happy - and if that's her family, why are they happy and she's not?"
So, as has been said - the crop defines the photo. Not sure how somehow the "intent" of the photo got changed from the OP's original intent - to show the dynamics within the family. The cow has nothing to do with it. Whoever suggested that the crop should focus on the cow was WAAAAY off base.
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