As she is gritting through her teeth, Shoot already !

Javier · April 23, 2012

As she is gritting through her teeth, Shoot already ! by Street Vision L.A., on Flickr

damonff · April 23, 2012

hahaha

RyanS · April 23, 2012

Javier, love the very current aesthetic in this. Thank you for sharing. Every element seems to be working. The leaves at their feet. The big wall on the right. Overlook. Table, chairs. And of course the subjects. That guy looks like he is taking her portrait very seriously. Both their legs are crossed, creating some interesting body language. I wonder what they really think of each other. Would love to see more of this type of work.

RSL · April 24, 2012

Fun shot, Javier.

bdcolen · April 24, 2012

I LOVE this. Wonderful! The one suggestion I would make would be to make a proportional crop, so that the left hand edge comes just behind his chair, as the right edge comes right behind hers. Take off the same amount on the top that you take off on the left. But I am being picky - it's terrific.

Javier · April 24, 2012

Thanks for all the kind words folks.

bdcolen wrote: »

I LOVE this. Wonderful! The one suggestion I would make would be to make a proportional crop, so that the left hand edge comes just behind his chair, as the right edge comes right behind hers. Take off the same amount on the top that you take off on the left. But I am being picky - it's terrific.

Thanks for the critique. As far as cropping goes, I will have to kindly disagree. I believe in cropping to straighten out photos and cropping as little as possible. Filling the frame best I can. Of course this is not always possible, but in this particular image, it is almost as shot. To crop it close as you suggest, would be cutting out some of its context. I am sure that many will disagree with me, and that is fine, we can agree to disagree

RSL · April 24, 2012

I certainly agree with you, Javier. Cropping is an emergency procedure, like bailing out of an airplane when things start falling apart. Never could understand why anyone in his right mind would jump out of a perfectly good airplane, and I can't understand why someone would want to crop a perfectly good picture.

Javier · April 24, 2012

RSL wrote: »

I certainly agree with you, Javier. Cropping is an emergency procedure, like bailing out of an airplane when things start falling apart. Never could understand why anyone in his right mind would jump out of a perfectly good airplane, and I can't understand why someone would want to crop a perfectly good picture.

Thank you Russ.
The whole cropping thing is usually controversial and I have no idea why. I have seen so many ''could be great'' street shots, if not for the context being cropped out. Blows my mind away. I can see cropping for a better comp like the tried and true rule of thirds. But having said that, even the rule of thirds in street photography can often be tossed in my humble opinion.

RyanS · April 24, 2012

I find it interesting that HCB occasionally cropped, though he is often quoted as being opposed to cropping. I'd love to compare his negatives to the actual prints. However, I do understand your point about cropping out context. For me I try to find a compromise between removing visual distractions while maintaining visual context. I prefer a 5:4 aspect ratio aesthetically, which doesn't match the standard 35mm frame. Therefore, I plan on cropping at image creation time. In other words, I pre-visualize the crop. Nearly every image I produce is cropped.

That said, the photo editors of the world don't really care about your fancy crop. They'll suck the context right out of the photo and be sure to offend any artistic integrity you thought you had. The pay check is supposed to make up for that violation. Let me tell you something, it doesn't.

http://www.brianrose.com/journal/2007/02/new-yorkcropping.html

Javier · April 25, 2012

I hear you Ryan. I used to shoot the same way. Shoot to crop and It does work some what, especially for comp with wide angles and especially UWA's. When I shoot with my Tokina 12-24, there are times when I shoot to crop, but still I try and avoid it best I can. Garry Winogrand rarely if ever cropped and I have read where HCB never cropped, but I have seen other wise. At the end of the day, it comes down to what ever works for each individual. No right or wrong way, just different styles. Take a look at this link to my blog. These where all shot at 12mm, all shot in one afternoon and no cropping.
http://jgredline.blogspot.com/2012/03/street-fun-with-12-24mm-uwa-lens.html

RSL · April 25, 2012

HCB cropped twice: Once for "Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare" and once for "Cardinal Pacelli in Montmarte." In the first case he stuck the camera between two boards in a fence and caught a piece of the board on the left in the picture. He admits it was a completely blind shot, but in spite of that it's the picture everybody thinks of when the phrase "the decisive moment" pops up. In the Cardinal Pacelli shot he couldn't elbow his way through the crowd in front of him, so he got as close as he could and then held the Leica over his head and shot downward. One look at the picture will tell you that Henri Cartier-Bresson was an unusually lucky man. He worked his butt off to make the luck pay off, but I doubt any of us on Dgrin have ever shot anything approaching "Gare" or "Pacelli" no matter how hard we've worked at it. That kind of luck is very, very rare.

HCB may have cropped some other pictures, but if so, he's never admitted it, and I doubt anybody's going to be able to prove otherwise. He insisted his pictures be printed with the black borders outside the sensitized area, sometimes decorated with the edges of the sprocket holes, to prove that he composed on the camera.

I agree that there are times when a crop is unavoidable, and I suspect HCB either tossed some pictures he should have saved, or cheated a tiny bit from time to time. On the other hand, his intuitive grasp of geometry was so incredible that it may well be he only cropped twice.

I tend to think that if you want a 5/4 aspect ratio in your pictures you should be shooting with a camera with a 5/4 aspect ratio. Although there are plenty of exceptions, traditional street photography was based on an aspect ratio of 3/2 because that's what early movie film used and that's what Oskar Barnack built the Leica to handle.

Javier · April 25, 2012

Good stuff Russ. Personally, while I along with many others toss the word ''luck'' around, I personally deep down do not believe in luck. You said it best right here ''He worked his butt off to make the luck pay off''...
On a side note, since I shoot quite a bit of street with 35mm film, it is rare for me to crop one of those and when I do, I usually will go for a square or close to a square crop. For some reason, I am still far more careful when I shoot film as opposed to digital. But this also seems to be true of all the greats in previous generations.

bdcolen · April 25, 2012

Javier wrote: »

Thanks for all the kind words folks.

Thanks for the critique. As far as cropping goes, I will have to kindly disagree. I believe in cropping to straighten out photos and cropping as little as possible. Filling the frame best I can. Of course this is not always possible, but in this particular image, it is almost as shot. To crop it close as you suggest, would be cutting out some of its context. I am sure that many will disagree with me, and that is fine, we can agree to disagree

On general principles, I could agree with you more - the camera's viewfinder is where cropping should be done. On this image, however, we disagree. I would suggest that the space to the left of the photographer is wasted space, rather than empty space, and it gives the otherwise excellent image a somewhat off-kilter feel. Also, but cropping as I suggested, the couple comes closer, and the woman's expression is even more apparent. However, this is your image, not mine, and what we are discussing is a matter of taste, not rights and wrongs.

However, none of us are HCB, nor are we Winnogrand. And very often our images can be improved by cropping.

RSL · April 25, 2012

Javier wrote: »

Good stuff Russ. Personally, while I along with many others toss the word ''luck'' around, I personally deep down do not believe in luck.

In the normal course of events, I don't believe in luck either, Javier, but check http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4qZ3Z8shZE&feature=related.

bdcolen · April 25, 2012

RSL wrote: »

In the normal course of events, I don't believe in luck either, Javier, but check http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4qZ3Z8shZE&feature=related.

Horseshit.
If he had enough room to slip the lens between the planks, he had room to observe and know when to push the shutter release. Also, numerous people jumped the puddle, so he would have been able to pre-focus, or at worst, with his experience, gauge the distance and set an F stop and focal point that would get him what he wanted. Does luck play some part in photography, or course. It was luck that had him walking past the fence at that time on that day. It wasn't 'luck' that produced the image.

I'd suggest that what HCB had to say in an interview in his 80s about an image he had shot some half-century earlier doesn't necessarily hold water as 'fact.'

RSL · April 25, 2012

In other words he was lying about the "Gare", eh BD? How about "Cardinal Pacelli?" Was he lying about that one too? I'm 82, BD, and I can give you chapter and version about the circumstances surrounding any of the photographs I made in Korea in 1953. That's almost sixty years ago -- a decade more than a half-century. In your estimation, would my descriptions not "hold water as 'fact?'"

Patti · April 26, 2012

It appears that, although she is looking a bit strained, the camera likely came out of her purse. Her choice or was she coerced into carrying it for him. The comp is terrific, including the leaves, the backdrop, the wall.

As she is gritting through her teeth, Shoot already !

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