Captured on a Thursday

M38A1 · November 4, 2011

I like it.... maybe not as a solo image as much, but I like the direction your recent images are moving. That sort of fuzzy, muted B&W of people is growing on me and this fits in with the others you've presented.

RSL · November 4, 2011

Sorry, Ben. Another miss. Two people in a waiting room. So what? You do some really good work but you need to learn to cull your stuff. The problem is that if you show a bunch of junk along with your good stuff the good stuff gets diluted in people's minds. If you want to see what I mean, get your hands on a copy of Looking In, Expanded Edition. The book is a wonderful printing of Robert Frank's The Americans. The expanded edition has the contact sheet for each of the photographs that ended up in The Americans. It also has pictures of the walls where Frank put up the pictures he culled from the many thousands he shot, and then continued to cull from there. It's a lesson in how to reject your losers and make your work stand out. Your work is too good to be diluted with the stuff you should have trashcanned.

bfjr · November 4, 2011

RSL wrote: »

Sorry, Ben. Another miss. Two people in a waiting room. So what? You do some really good work but you need to learn to cull your stuff. The problem is that if you show a bunch of junk along with your good stuff the good stuff gets diluted in people's minds. If you want to see what I mean, get your hands on a copy of Looking In, Expanded Edition. The book is a wonderful printing of Robert Frank's The Americans. The expanded edition has the contact sheet for each of the photographs that ended up in The Americans. It also has pictures of the walls where Frank put up the pictures he culled from the many thousands he shot, and then continued to cull from there. It's a lesson in how to reject your losers and make your work stand out. Your work is too good to be diluted with the stuff you should have trashcanned.

1st let me say, "What makes you think I have not read or own any of the countless books, that you keep mentioning in most of your posts?"

2nd the image or miss
You don"t see the light falling on only the two people.
You don't see the shadow surrounding that or the hint of someone sitting nearby in that shadow
You don't see the man's body language while his lady knits/reads
You don't see the the light threw the windows and detail retained therein creating depth

Sure Russ there are misses here and I've seen better and I intend to to better.
I'm not trying to be any of the Photographers you have already mentioned, I'm just trying to be
Benjamin and I'm sure I'll continue to miss just like the image above.

bfjr · November 5, 2011

M38A1 wrote: »

I like it.... maybe not as a solo image as much, but I like the direction your recent images are moving. That sort of fuzzy, muted B&W of people is growing on me and this fits in with the others you've presented.

That was very rude of me not to reply to your comment 1st, I hope you understand.

What can I say, except Thank You.
I'm always a work in progress.

richardman · November 5, 2011

Ben, in this case, I will have agree to Russ. Actually, there's a lot to learn just to look at Russ' site itself. Well, may be not his poli... never mind :-)

Street photo/PJ really is hard. You take a ho-hum photo of Yosemite. Sure it may look not so good against a Bill Neill, or an Adams etc., but it's still Yosemite and can knock one's sock off. You take a ho-hum street photo, and (it's a person walking down the street).

You said:

***
You don"t see the light falling on only the two people.
You don't see the shadow surrounding that or the hint of someone sitting nearby in that shadow
You don't see the man's body language while his lady knits/reads
You don't see the the light threw the windows and detail retained therein creating depth
***

I don't see what you described either :-<

So the question is should we "shut up?" If you put such a phrase in your post, I will never comment. However, if most people do that, then I will probably just not be here. We are all here to learn and share. Frankly, most street photos post online are, well, lets be frank, crap. Personally, I hope to rise above that, and learn from people like BD, DAH, and yes, even Russ. The thing with a forum like this is that we have to open a thread post to see the content, and if the reward isn't there, then there is less incentive to open the next one. We all post losers, but the joy is to see the winners, and hopefully more and more winners from each of us.

Now I have to say that Russ is very frank, and it could rub the people the wrong way, but it's free advice :-) and in all honesty, sometimes you can't pay to get good advice, and Russ is doling some good advice out for free.

lensmole · November 5, 2011

I am sure there are as many opinions as to what street photography is or isn't as their are photographer's .

Anybody can take a good street photo you don't even have to be a photographer,the reason I say this ,is because it been done.

We learn by doing and making mistakes and learning from them,and getting feedback from others,reading books and studying the master's isn't a whole lot of help unless you get out and take pictures .

I like this image,but that's just me, the work you have on your website looks like it was done by a Master of his craft. Magnificent ! :wow

RSL · November 5, 2011

Ben, I'm not questioning whether or not you've "read" those books or own them. I'm questioning whether or not you've studied the photographs in them.

Yes. I see the light falling on two people, but the dynamic range of the light makes the two people unintelligible.

Yes. I see the hint of a third person sitting in shadow. So what? That third person isn't brought forward enough to be anything. If the third person were menacing we might begin to have something.

Yes. I see that the man is bored. The woman is bored too. That's why she's knitting. But neither the knitting of the woman or the body language of the man jumps out at you because the extreme tonal ranges in the people make tham unintelligible.

Yes. I see light retained through the windows, but it's clear that the only reason the windows aren't blown out is that you brought the tonality of the whole thing down low enough to retain detail outside the windows and thereby killed the tonal levels inside the building.

There's one other thing I should mention: People sometimes laugh at the idea of taking the rule of thirds seriously. But the fact is that in street photography, good geometry is essential. If you'd pulled the camera a bit to the right, so that the almost invisible person is way on the left, and the couple ended up about a third of the way in from the left the geometry would have been a lot better, though you'd have lost some of the angle to the windows. When I tell you this I'm pretending in my mind that the tonalities in the picture have been evened out within reason with Photoshop or with standard darkroom techniques. With the tonalities the way they are, geometry doesn't matter much because the picture flops on that basis.

Hey, I'm a fan of yours. The reason I am is that you occasionally do some very good work, and you're one of the very few on here obviously trying to do more than personal snapshots. But it's important to learn to be extremely critical of your own work and avoid showing the bloopers. I'm sure I shoot at least as many bloopers as you do. Probably a lot more. But I only show what I think is showable.

Best regards,

Russell

bfjr · November 5, 2011

richardman wrote: »

Ben, in this case, I will have agree to Russ. Actually, there's a lot to learn just to look at Russ' site itself. Well, may be not his poli... never mind :-)

Street photo/PJ really is hard. You take a ho-hum photo of Yosemite. Sure it may look not so good against a Bill Neill, or an Adams etc., but it's still Yosemite and can knock one's sock off. You take a ho-hum street photo, and (it's a person walking down the street).

You said:

***
You don"t see the light falling on only the two people.
You don't see the shadow surrounding that or the hint of someone sitting nearby in that shadow
You don't see the man's body language while his lady knits/reads
You don't see the the light threw the windows and detail retained therein creating depth
***

I don't see what you described either :-<

So the question is should we "shut up?" If you put such a phrase in your post, I will never comment. However, if most people do that, then I will probably just not be here. We are all here to learn and share. Frankly, most street photos post online are, well, lets be frank, crap. Personally, I hope to rise above that, and learn from people like BD, DAH, and yes, even Russ. The thing with a forum like this is that we have to open a thread post to see the content, and if the reward isn't there, then there is less incentive to open the next one. We all post losers, but the joy is to see the winners, and hopefully more and more winners from each of us.

Now I have to say that Russ is very frank, and it could rub the people the wrong way, but it's free advice :-) and in all honesty, sometimes you can't pay to get good advice, and Russ is doling some good advice out for free.

Richard, I have never nor would I here tell anyone to "Shut Up".
I simply respectively disagree with You & Russ and will address Russ's matter of fact opinions in a moment.
My error to Russ's comment is, that I should of said these were the things I saw to make me want to capture this particular image.

bfjr · November 5, 2011

lensmole wrote: »

I am sure there are as many opinions as to what street photography is or isn't as their are photographer's .

Anybody can take a good street photo you don't even have to be a photographer,the reason I say this ,is because it been done.

We learn by doing and making mistakes and learning from them,and getting feedback from others,reading books and studying the master's isn't a whole lot of help unless you get out and take pictures .

I like this image,but that's just me, the work you have on your website looks like it was done by a Master of his craft. Magnificent ! :wow

As much as my Ego wants to agree here, I also must receptively disagree at least in part.
I consider myself a decent shooter but hardly a "Master"

My Gallery is in the midst of a serious redo. Many a my captures are being culled (a terribly painful process) and the overall look is being changed. Why, because I think I'm getting better and really do believe/agree with others that only your best work should be shown. The Gallery when complete should be easy to navigate as there won't be many images to view, and I invite you to revisit anytime

bfjr · November 5, 2011

RSL wrote: »

Ben, I'm not questioning whether or not you've "read" those books or own them. I'm questioning whether or not you've studied the photographs in them.

Yes. I see the light falling on two people, but the dynamic range of the light makes the two people unintelligible.

Yes. I see the hint of a third person sitting in shadow. So what? That third person isn't brought forward enough to be anything. If the third person were menacing we might begin to have something.

Yes. I see that the man is bored. The woman is bored too. That's why she's knitting. But neither the knitting of the woman or the body language of the man jumps out at you because the extreme tonal ranges in the people make tham unintelligible.

Yes. I see light retained through the windows, but it's clear that the only reason the windows aren't blown out is that you brought the tonality of the whole thing down low enough to retain detail outside the windows and thereby killed the tonal levels inside the building.

There's one other thing I should mention: People sometimes laugh at the idea of taking the rule of thirds seriously. But the fact is that in street photography, good geometry is essential. If you'd pulled the camera a bit to the right, so that the almost invisible person is way on the left, and the couple ended up about a third of the way in from the left the geometry would have been a lot better, though you'd have lost some of the angle to the windows. When I tell you this I'm pretending in my mind that the tonalities in the picture have been evened out within reason with Photoshop or with standard darkroom techniques. With the tonalities the way they are, geometry doesn't matter much because the picture flops on that basis.

Hey, I'm a fan of yours. The reason I am is that you occasionally do some very good work, and you're one of the very few on here obviously trying to do more than personal snapshots. But it's important to learn to be extremely critical of your own work and avoid showing the bloopers. I'm sure I shoot at least as many bloopers as you do. Probably a lot more. But I only show what I think is showable.

Best regards,

Russell

Russ I've already said that I disagree with your opinion on this Image. Instead of going into a long wordy response I will present my case with an image.
You mentioned in your response

Yes. I see light retained through the windows, but it's clear that the only reason the windows aren't blown out is that you brought the tonality of the whole thing down low enough to retain detail outside the windows and thereby killed the tonal levels inside the building.

Here is the original image. It has been developed and scanned, it has not been touched by my personal workflow in any way.

Russ, I want/need you to be my Fan, so please help me and stop confusing me.

RSL · November 5, 2011

Ben, Yes, with the backlight as bright as it was, if you were using an on-camera light meter the rest of the original exposure had to be way down. I'm pretty sure you remember the old saying in the film world: "expose for the shadows and develop for the highlights." It's the reverse of what people are learning with digital: "expose to the right." But in this picture, if you'd exposed for the shadows you'd have needed to pull the film fairly early in the development process. Since you're not shooting sheet film, that probably wouldn't have been possible. But... assuming there's detail hidden in the shadows a little work in Photoshop or similar post-processing software might bring up the shadows a long way. You'd probably introduce a fair amount of noise, but it'd be luminance noise, a kind of noise that comes across as grain. In a Tri-X picture like this one I'd expect to see a lot of grain anyway, so that would have been okay. But the other problem is that it's just not much of a picture. I hate to say that, but it's true. You're capable of something a lot better than this.

I said it once before and I'll say it again: in street photography, if you're out on the street nearly every day and you get one or two reasonably good shots a month you're doing well, and if you average one shot a year upon which you'd hang your reputation you're doing very well indeed. Somebody -- I think it was Liz -- took exception to that statement, but I'll reply the way I replied then: If you think you're doing better than that either you're one of the greatest street photographers of all time or else your standards are pretty low.

Again, I'd refer you to Looking In, Expanded Edition. You can see culling by a master at work there. If you think you worked too hard to get a shot to throw it away, read about the crap Robert Frank went through to get the few pictures that ended up in The Americans. It'll be a revelation.

By the way, you can disagree if you want. I'm not the Pope of photography by a long shot. People can evaluate my criticism and conclude that it's anything from very good to pure crap. I've studied and practiced serious photography for nearly sixty years now, but as is the case with other art forms, music and painting come to mind, study doesn't make you able to do it well. I'd invite anybody who wants to judge my work to go to my web and look. You can make your judgment about the value, or lack thereof, of my criticism on the basis of that. As they say, "opinions may vary."

I'd planned to stay off of Street & PJ because for the most part all I could see here was people dumping their personal snapshots and expecting and getting pats on the back for work that didn't deserve them. When I took a quick look again I saw Sam's interesting PJ post, but I also saw that things hadn't changed. Since I love good street photography above all other forms of the art I figured I'd try some serious criticism for a while. Richard's probably going to kick me off since I'm interfering with all the sweetness and light, but that's okay too.

richardman · November 5, 2011

OK Ben, please allow me to try: first of all: a viewer's response is often different from the emotional response of the shooter. We can't help it. as a shooter, we don't look at the image by itself, it brings back the emotion, the feelings, when we shoot the images.

The difference there is like re-telling a joke you have heard. It could be the funniest thing in the world, but we aren't there!

For a photograph to be successful, it has to be good. Well, duh, isn't it. But what is good? It has to go beyond, and for street photos, way beyond, technically good.

This is what I think Russ meant by "So what?" I see lights, I see a couple people, I don't get any emotional response. There's nothing here that makes me say, "Hmm... I wonder what's happening?" The last thing you want is a viewer to ask "Hmm... I wonder why the photog take that picture?"

If you can redo it, what'd I suggest? Move to the left a bit. Either include the person in the window or get him out. Which one would work? I don't know.

I'm not sure where you're focusing, but I think it may be toward the back. If the couple is your main interest, then focus on them.

In fact, the backlight is going to be a huge PITA no wonder what. It could make a brilliant picture, or just move in. The gentleman's right leg and arm could be a point of interest, or the woman's knitting.

Hope this helps....

bfjr · November 6, 2011

Richard, Russ

Just want to let you both know how much I appreciate your time to respond and your sincere efforts in helping my further understanding of "Street".

I can't say I totally agree about this image but I am far more in the middle then in the beginning.

Thanks again

Captured on a Thursday

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