>>> Street Photography eXchange #158 <<<

this is fun--a good bit of mood.

for me, it balances much better, and the painted face reads much more reliably, if you crop just inside the 'D' on the right, and down from top proportionally to lose some bricks--puts the two figures into a more definite relation.

the attitude of this is very strong--and the bw style suits it. perhaps it would be nice if the woman's eyes read a little more clearly, so that her glance up into space is more obvious--it is somewhat ambiguous here, so that it can be mistaken for her looking at the camera, which is not as interesting.

but you've clearly captured something happening, as distinct from someone who merely happens to be on the street, which is less compelling.

this is an interesting, complex scene, fairly challenging to turn into a photograph.

the best parts for me are the figures at the left, especially the woman's expression/glance. overall, the composition holds up i think, with the symmetry helping to simplify the complicated scene.

the two figures who appear to look at the camera seem to illustrate something about what works and doesn't work so well when people look at the lens; the guy's pose is great, but for me his orientation towards the lens subtracts from that impression. otoh, i rather like how the child is aware of the camera, and cut by the frame--if i imagine the guy looking up at the ceiling or down at the floor, but the child still looking as she is, i feel like this would have been stronger.

not really criticizing you for that, something in the scene out of your control really, more trying to communicate how i perceive the pictures, in hopes that it's helpful on a more general level...

looks like a lovely day indeed.

i understand a desire to not show faces, to maintain more privacy as you say. but, i would recommend that if that is your goal, work on developing more ways to achieve it besides simply shooting from behind. while some really great photos have been made of people from behind, it is tricky to pull off, and usually requires more graphically demonstrative mood or attitude. it can be a way to make a specific person emblematic or iconic, or to emphasize color or shape, but those usually have to be pretty evident to work in the absence of faces, which tend to be engaging.

but if your theme is actually privacy, it seems to me that you could try to make that something that the viewer sees in the photo, and there might be creative ways other than shooting from behind to get there. does that make sense to you?

in the meantime, if you shoot more of this sort of picture from behind, you might try concentrating on placing the figures so that they relate to each other an to the rest of the frame in a more pictorial way. for instance, as another poster mentioned, in the first picture the figure of the woman functions not only as who/what she is, but also as a frame or border for the photo; by contrast, the kid on the right is fairly isolated from most of the rest of the frame on that half of the picture, with everything else mainly functioning as empty space.

thanks for posting--i hadn't seen this...

it was inevitable of course, and the main, fairly predictable points are all there. i can't help but feel that it could have been done better... but then again, the fad seems to have largely abated, and perhaps the opportunity to really express it is gone as well...

please post new pictures on SPX #159 .

you can post comments on photos already posted and replies to comments here until the thread closes automatically at 150 posts, but feel free to continue discussions in the new thread and link back here to what you're responding to.

The crop you suggest would smother it for me. I do not like shots that are too cropped, they suffocate and do not seem to breathe. Kind of how such scenes are better shot with 35mm than 50mm.

xtoph said:

the attitude of this is very strong--and the bw style suits it. perhaps it would be nice if the woman's eyes read a little more clearly, so that her glance up into space is more obvious--it is somewhat ambiguous here, so that it can be mistaken for her looking at the camera, which is not as interesting.

but you've clearly captured something happening, as distinct from someone who merely happens to be on the street, which is less compelling.

Click to expand...

Thank you very much for your comments, much appreciated.

xtoph said:

this is an interesting, complex scene, fairly challenging to turn into a photograph.

the best parts for me are the figures at the left, especially the woman's expression/glance. overall, the composition holds up i think, with the symmetry helping to simplify the complicated scene.

the two figures who appear to look at the camera seem to illustrate something about what works and doesn't work so well when people look at the lens; the guy's pose is great, but for me his orientation towards the lens subtracts from that impression. otoh, i rather like how the child is aware of the camera, and cut by the frame--if i imagine the guy looking up at the ceiling or down at the floor, but the child still looking as she is, i feel like this would have been stronger.

not really criticizing you for that, something in the scene out of your control really, more trying to communicate how i perceive the pictures, in hopes that it's helpful on a more general level...

Click to expand...

Thank you very much for your comments and review, much appreciated.