23

Lots of stuff is going on in this photo: 1) the foreground interaction perfectly 'framed' by the street gutter; 2) the flow of people around this interaction, many feet in the air, raised heals; 3) the over the shoulder look from the woman at right; 4) the strong one-point perspective created by the gutter which 5) finally leads our eye to the patient mom waiting down the street for her son (and tolerating the photographer who has swooped in on him).

It should work. But for some reason it falls short for me. I think this is because of the strange aspect ratio I cropped the image to. It feels unnatural and forced. I'm sure I made the crop for good reasons, probably to accentuate the elements described above.

A 2x3 or 3x4 image speaks the vernacular of 35mm film and common digital sensors. These aspect ratios look "like a photograph should" which, I think, suggests the camera itself and the photographer wielding it at the moment of exposure. As I've said elsewhere, this sense of the moment, of being there, of the camera being witness to a real event is essential to street photography. A non-standard aspect ratio kind of gets in the way of that.

I guess it's time to revisit the original scan of this photo's negative.

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19.04