Veteran's Day 2009

rainbow · November 11, 2009

Well done shot. This captures a part of Veteran's Day very well. You chose an excellent perspective for this.

sara505 · November 11, 2009

rutt wrote:

Rutt - this is prize-winner, on so many levels. GREAT!

clap

Flyinggina · November 11, 2009

Very, very nice. Great framing. Excellent dof.

Maybe it's just me (or my monitor), but the whites in the flags are so white that I find the flags distracting me from looking at the picture as a whole. They are an integral to the picture, of course, but they are not the whole message. I would burn the white in a bit.

Virginia

pgaviria · November 11, 2009

I love this photo!

Tina Manley · November 11, 2009

Really nice! I love the out of focus background that makes the subject and his flag just snap.

Tina
www.tinamanley.com

Patti · November 11, 2009

this is a great shot, great use of DoF.

adbsgicom · November 11, 2009

A real keeper! Very well captured.

Richard · November 12, 2009

I love the shot, Rutt, but I agree with Virginia that the flags are so strong that they distract a bit. You know what to do

.

sara505 · November 12, 2009

Richard wrote:

I love the shot, Rutt, but I agree with Virginia that the flags are so strong that they distract a bit. You know what to do .

How can the flags be distracting??? It's VETERAN'S DAY!!!

Richard · November 12, 2009

sara505 wrote:

How can the flags be distracting??? It's VETERAN'S DAY!!!

Yeah I get that, but shouldn't it be about the veteran, not the flag?

sara505 · November 12, 2009

Richard wrote:

Yeah I get that, but shouldn't it be about the veteran, not the flag?

There are no shoulds, as far as I'm concerned. It's a great interpretation of Veteran's Day by its creator, Rutt.

thoth · November 12, 2009

Excellent shot, Rutt. Was this taken with the GF1?

rutt · November 12, 2009

Yes, GF1 + 20mm f/1.7. My 5D with a 50 or even 35 would have much better bokah, but people do accept this camera a lot better. It isn't the complete solution; people still notice it. Just not as much.

thoth · November 12, 2009

rutt wrote:

Yes, GF1 + 20mm f/1.7. My 5D with a 50 or even 35 would have much better bokah, but people do accept this camera a lot better. It isn't the complete solution; people still notice it. Just not as much.

It seems to be producing some very nice shots and the bokeh is quite acceptable from a camera so small. Still, it is a pricey piece of equipment so the decision to purchase, or wait another year, is proving difficult.

rutt · November 12, 2009

thoth wrote:

It seems to be producing some very nice shots and the bokeh is quite acceptable from a camera so small. Still, it is a pricey piece of equipment so the decision to purchase, or wait another year, is proving difficult.

See this thread.

bdcolen · November 12, 2009

rutt wrote:

Because this is Rutt's photo, and I know, to borrow and flip the great Jack Nicholson line, he "can take the truth," I'm going to be brutally honest:

This is a brilliant photo on several levels, but a failure on another.

It is a wonderful portrait - I feel as though I now know this man; it captures what seems to be his spirit.

It proves that Rutt is the champ when it comes to black and white conversion - there's a really outstanding tonality here. And, by the way, those of you who complained about the white stripes in the flag are way off base - the stripes in the flag are white, and I would go so far as to say that the pure white stripes work well with the non-white subject.

But...This doesn't say "veteran." It doesn't say "veterans' day." I really want more people in the back ground. And if this really does represent "Veteran's Day 2009," it tells me that this was a typical Veterans' Day, which is to say a day to go shopping and ignore veterans. But, in fact, I think yesterday was an atypical Veterans' Day, probably because of the Ft. Hood ugliness, and there really was some "attention paid."

Okay, talk amongst yourselves. :ivar :ivar

thoth · November 12, 2009

bdcolen wrote:

Okay, talk amongst yourselves. :ivar :ivar

I think you could have summed that up nicely with, "stop titling your damned images!"

I don't care if it's a picture of Veteran's Day or a flag salesman and, if timing and title were ignored, I doubt anyone else would either. It's a great image as it is although you're right that it doesn't live up to its billing.

sara505 · November 12, 2009

Is it the end-all summation of Veteran's Day? No. Does it capture an aspect of Veteran's day, poignantly? IMO, Yes.

rutt · November 12, 2009

bdcolen wrote:

Because this is Rutt's photo, and I know, to borrow and flip the great Jack Nicholson line, he "can take the truth," I'm going to be brutally honest:

This is a brilliant photo on several levels, but a failure on another.

Perfect. Thanks. Honest blunt critique is the highest praise.

bdcolen wrote:

It proves that Rutt is the champ when it comes to black and white conversion - there's a really outstanding tonality here.

This particular praise is very nice, but jeez, it's not like I haven't sat in my living room with you and showed you exactly how it's done. And this particular shot got just about the most basic possible version:

Take the green channel. That's B&W conversion for 99% of portraits.
Curves to establish wihte/dark points and steep through the face.
Sharpen with wide radius (10-50px) and low amount (20-35) for local contrast and sense of focus.

Viola! It's all the workflow you need for B&W conversions of people. Nothing else I've ever seen gets as good results as consistently for portraits. Just forget everything else you think you know on the topic and learn this one thing well and you'll be well ahead of the game.

bdcolen wrote:

But...This doesn't say "veteran." It doesn't say "veterans' day." I really want more people in the back ground. And if this really does represent "Veteran's Day 2009," it tells me that this was a typical Veterans' Day, which is to say a day to go shopping and ignore veterans. But, in fact, I think yesterday was an atypical Veterans' Day, probably because of the Ft. Hood ugliness, and there really was some "attention paid."

I knew you'd say this when I posted. I was thinking, "B.D.'s going to be all over the title of this one." So I'd like to discuss this topic in a little depth, trying hard not to be defensive, but rather in search of understanding and photographic growth. So beware, here comes a tidal wave of words.

B.D.'s thesis about captioning and titles as I understand it is:

Titles and captions cannot add context to a picture that doesn't already have that context. They can only detract.

To quote B.D.'s favorite poet: "So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late." The point of this shot is the scar on the guy's wrist. He made a pretty serious attempt on his own life at some point. That juxtaposes with the flags he's holding and the damaged enthusiasm on his face. And here's a fact: he was standing on the edge of a Veteran's Day peace rally. The picture doesn't show this. I wish it did, but it doesn't. I have some others of him, but they either have less context or don't show the scar. If the parade had been visible behind him, if he had been wearing a uniform, pin, or hat, well that would have been sweet. But in spite of that, I love this picture; I think it's one of my very best.

And I think that bit of context, that it was shot on this particular Veteran's Day, makes it that much better, more poignant. Not as good as it would have been if it showed that context, but better than it is with the information withheld. So I captioned it. When I did it, I thought of it a little bit like cropping; I strive to shoot pictures which don't need to be cropped, but when you have to crop, well, you crop. It can make a good shot into a great shot.

Captions have a long tradition in photography, even street, PJ, and documentary photography. My own all time favorite photographer, HCB, was a master of the terse judicious title. Here are a few examples:

SPAIN. Andalucia. Seville. 1933.

This caption adds a bit of important context to this beautiful awful image: this is the Spanish Civil War.

USA. New Jersey. Model prison of Leesburg. Solitary confinement. 1975.

Who is the victum and who is the oppressor here? Without the caption, we are free to blame some totalitarian state. But the enemy is us in this case. We couldn't have known it without the caption, but it makes the picture hit it's target squarely.

Look, I'm in dangerous territory. I'm showing some of the all time best photographs on a thread of one of my own modest efforts, which is sure to suffer by comparison. So I'll stop with the HCB images and captions. If you have a book of his, though, leaf through it and notice how often his captions subtly enhance his images.

I thought pretty hard about my options for this image. I liked it well enough that I wanted to see if it would stand on its own with the title. But I take B.D.'s critique very seriously and so I came up with an alternate approach, using the picture as the punch line of a series, which I did in this post. Does it work better in that context, with no information but the date? Would it be fair to have called the series something like Veteran's Day, Boston, 2009? That would have been a little less coy, but really added no information beyond the date and what is obvious from the images.

I've probably overthought this, so I'll stop and go walk the dog, who will really enjoy my attention.

bdcolen wrote:

Okay, talk amongst yourselves. :ivar :ivar

Done!

rutt · November 12, 2009

And thanks to everyone else for looking and commenting!

bdcolen · November 12, 2009

rutt wrote:

And thanks to everyone else for looking and commenting!

"Let me make things perfectly clear"... Not all captions detract from images - but the wrong caption will, because it will demand of an image what it cannot provide. And, yes, I do believe that outstanding images standout without captions. Your image of this vet - if he's a vet - is outstanding, and stands out by itself. But I believe that the caption you choose demands more than the image can provide. "Veterans Day, Boston, 2009," might be a bit better, because then it gives us a bit more context, and yet somehow promises less.

Now, as to the wrist. Yes, I saw the wrist scar, and it suggests a quite serious suicide attempt. But oddly enough it didn't say 'Vet' to me - perhaps I'm being too politically correct. Note, however, that no one mentioned the wrist scar - did anyone notice it?

As to the two other images:

The Cartier-Bresson image needs no caption. Without the caption it is a work of art; with the caption it is an artistic piece of photo journalism. And this is a caption that delivers what it promises.

Similarly the second image - Wham! "No Caption Required," to quote the title of a recent unreadable book. This image doesn't need a caption. But if we really want one, this caption does tell us precisely what we're looking at.

Finally, let me say that you should be proud of the image - it's outstanding, but it's outstanding in spite of the caption, not because of it.

sara505 · November 12, 2009

I saw the wrist and was deeply moved by its implications in the context of those crisp flags. I didn't mention it because I didn't want to call attention to it; if you saw it, you saw it.

Patti · November 12, 2009

This image is compelling. I didn't read veteran but certainly patriot. I didn't see the scar until it was pointed out which tells me that my eye for detail isn't what I thought it was. Once I saw it, I couldn't believe I missed it. The flags may have distracted me a bit. Given a bit of back story it has become even more compelling to me.

I want to thank you all for the discussion on this great photo as well as the others I've read in the past few days here. I've learned so much.

rutt · November 12, 2009

bdcolen wrote:

The Cartier-Bresson image needs no caption...

Similarly the second image - Wham!

A nit; both images are by HCB and shown on his Magnum catalog page.

rutt · November 12, 2009

The Boston Globe has a picture of this guy on the front page today. You can see it here as long as they keep it in their archive. It's top left. You can't tell from the repro in the newspaper, but they might have hit the grand slam I was after. They have him facing the right way, wrist probably exposed, but in context with the parade around him. I'm not sure how well the scar shows in their original.

ian408 · November 12, 2009

I like the picture. Great portrait but to me, it says nothing about Veteran's Day. Could be any parade--even a 4th of July parade.

On the other hand, our (my?) expectations of a Veteran's Day portrait is one of wreaths, tombstones and marching veterans. The portrait of a spectator is un-expected and refreshing.

rutt · November 13, 2009

What can I say. I slept on it, and B.D. is right. HCB's titles are very careful not to promise more than we get, and calling this Veteran's Day is too much of a stretch. He just gave the date and place for both the images I showed. I could do that for this one as well, in fact B.D. has suggested that. Maybe even: Boston, 11 November 2009, Veteran's Day Participant. It delivers the information without promising too much. It's exactly what the picture is.

And, yes, I think it stands on its own without the title. But as I said, I very much like reading the titles in photography books, so I want to provide them for others like myself.

bdcolen · November 13, 2009

rutt wrote:

What can I say. I slept on it, and B.D. is right. HCB's titles are very careful not to promise more than we get, and calling this Veteran's Day is too much of a stretch. He just gave the date and place for both the images I showed. I could do that for this one as well, in fact B.D. has suggested that. Maybe even: Boston, 11 November 2009, Veteran's Day Participant. It delivers the information without promising too much. It's exactly what the picture is.

And, yes, I think it stands on its own without the title. But as I said, I very much like reading the titles in photography books, so I want to provide them for others like myself.

Coming up with titles that mean something, or, alternatively, that don't mean or say too much, is a real bitch. I had to do it with those images I asked for help selecting. You can take a look here at the final 20, sequenced, with titles.

Veteran's Day 2009

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