'Paris Metro: Bookends' - Limited Edition 1 of 20 Photograph

As a photographer, whenever not absolutely forbidden,I try to carry a camera with me everywhere. When I can, I prefer two cameras, each with a zoom lens of its own, semi-permanently mounted to avoid lens changes. If I wanted a diffeent zoom lens,I would just use the other camera with a zoom of different focal length. I prefer each to have a zoom lens of complementary length--one with a wide to 'normal' vibration reduction lens; the other with a 'normal' to longest available telephoto. With no lens cap on either, I can almost get the capture I visualize within less then two seconds or less at the fastest, and when not necessary to 'work the subject' to fulfill its potential. I can 'work a subject' as Dorothea Lange famously did with her Nipoma, CA pea picking 'Migrant Mother'. She had come across her famously worried subject and her kids at a farm labor camp where the pea crop had frozen leaving all without work -- hopeless and hungry. At the end of a series of about seen images taken as Lange approached this mother breast feeding her infant, gaining trust and acceptance with each capture as she approached Lange 'worked the subject' and made one of photography's most moving and enduring capture featuring that destitute and desperate mom and her kids. The 'work the subject' approach is time honored and can work well if one has a little time. Some of my best images are 'one-off' where I had to 'shoot' and 'hope' as I saw a likely subject, and framed and exposed almost in one motion, often in less than two seconds. Sometimes, if the second situation does not deconstruct, it allows me later to 'work the subject' to try for a better capture. Other times evanescent scenes, often with people as subjects, deconstruct quickly. When I came upon this scene while shivering and shaking late at night shortly before the last Metro train before the system shut down for the evening, I recognized a potentially enduring image of hardship and symmetry that I believed had 'beauty' that I felt I had to capture. I vowed to take the image, but problems developed. I carried two cameras around my neck, but in those days of smaller memory cards, all my memory card spares were full after a 12-hour day of shooting, and the card on one camera was also full, rendering that camera useless in the near term. I framed this exact scene on the second camera which had a 'wide' to ''normal' lens mounted, and took the photo at the longest focal length, but the subjects were so distant with that focal length they did not fill more than half the frame. Coupled with then poor, ;low light sensitivity of my camera, I knew that enlarging that image would yield a poor result that could not be enlarged much after required major cropping to isolate this scene. The ever-present worry was a passerby might ruin the scene, or these men would move. The latter was a major threat. People 'sleeping; in public often recongize they are possible victims or can be unwelcome and often 'sleep with one eye open'. If sleeping homeless are uncomfortable, my experience observing has shown such subjects often move about quite frequently in their discomfort. The lens on the camera with media was too 'wide'. I reached into my jacket pocket for what I supposed would be the 'perfect' lens, a wide to telephoto lens. But found it was smeared with chocolate from candy a subject had given me that was placed in my jacket pocket. The chocolate was hard and the weather cold, so it might ahve stayed hard, but in an a stop at an Internet cafe, the containing jacket had been placed on a radiator, and the chocolate had melted,then later solidified in outdoor cold, coating parts of the lens's front element. That lens then was useless. The final possibility was the lens on the camera with full media. I switched lenses, almost dropping both from shivering, shaking hands as my body quaked from cold. That lens was short telephoto to long telephoto,but stabilized. When successfully changed I found the nearest and widest image with the short to long telephoto was so 'long' and 'narrow' I could not frame the entire scene in one capture as I stood there. I did not have a tripod, time was short, and at that time the art of taking multiple scenes with a tripod mounted camera and in image editing 'stitching them together' was not common practice. Without a tripod, that would have been impossible anyway. Almost frantic from fear of losing this scene, I moved back and back and back even further. I was pressed against the far wall of the opposing platform -- there was no farther distance from the subject and the entire subject did not quite fit as I hoped. The only hope was a few more inches of distance, which I attained by dropping my body pressed against the wall's cufrvature, just to the wall's farthest distance from thios scene. Crouiched,shivering and shaking I attempted to frfame and take the capture. It seemed to elude me. I finally took a series of shots, and hoped just ONE would make the capture with enough space at sides for proper composition. That final effort yielded this one frame. This is that frame with very little adjustment. Just as I had previsuzlized. Many photos have a 'back story'. This is the 'back story' for this image, which I cherish. john 7(John Crosley) .

Photography:Digital on Paper

Artist Produced Limited Edition of:1

Size:36 W x 24.4 H x 0.1 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.