Something finished. [What what?]

Alright. I know that this demands some form of commentary. After all, if I'm attempting to challenge myself and talk about work; why not my own?

I'm working on it. But... damn it. I finished something massive, and relatively satisfactorily. There are definitely problems with it, which maybe I'll get to, although tonight I was thinking that extended artist's critique (rather than statement) may possibly sabotage a work. I think, fuck it.

I've got more work in me, and this is early. Why not sabotage away?

So... I'm working on that.

But if you want to slam it before I get to it, be my guest!

Things that have already been pointed out; potential racism of only portraying Chinese wholesalers, due to the racial diversity of the field.

Response: dude. I know. All I know are the semi-arbitrary limitations that I imposed on myself starting out. I draw a pretty nuanced line about executing photographs dealing with race, while attempting to be careful about racism, which, in photography, can exist in both portrayal of stereotypical behavior, or even in technique, surprisingly.

But I find that, in photographing race, (which wasn't how I viewed these, but more as a question of nationality, or, perhaps since I'm a white [urban?] suburbanite, internationality) one rarely gets stereotype. If you're an honest person, and can perform an edit; what you get is reality.

Besides, there's not even a person in these. Don't you need people? Maybe Confucius is racist, these days. (That is who that is, right?) Anyway.

(Also, amazingly, my dictionary of all things, pointed out that Confucius' name is a Latinization of a word meaning "Kong the master." Kongfuze ([K'ung Fu-tzu]. That's way cooler! Stupid Latin.)

Also, the wide, establishing shot, contains non-Chinese wholesalers, and is therefore something of a lie; as well as, for including cabs, a somewhat poorly composed shot.

Response: dude. Check the rooftop. See the scanner artifacts? That shit was straight.

Tell me that's a bad composition. [insert eyes-crossed emoticon.]

Also, color and B/W mix oddly; atmosphere of surveillance (which the audio would intensify, certainly). Also, my excellent professors are blowing my mind with their fancy educations; and are exposing me to the inherent unreliability of photography as truth (of course), although I maintain that such a thing exists, and is valuable to sports photography, and nature work. (Although the conclusion I came to was that the responsibility for photographic truth lies with magazine and web editors, whose responsibility it is to value and vet the work they pass forward.)

I don't care about modification, yet.

Let me take a good picture first.

Oh, and a last thing to point out as already covered is that I still suck in Photoshop, and can make my expired-film, underexposed shots (the first two colored pieces of signage) look more like, you know, an appropriately made photo. (I would like to hasten to add that only those two are "underexposed," [p'shaw, as if such a thing existed], and that it's a real testament to the power of a 120 negative that the colors are still, to me, absolutely gorgeous.) When I mentioned Roe Ethridge (perhaps lamely attempting to protect my "decision" by citing a known and established shooter), I was told, politely, that work like that is "sentimental."

Which was super on-point! This was meant to function as "documentary."

In that; I failed.

Ha. Maybe it's all covered.

[Shooting notes, multimedia instructions (some user assembly required!), and audio, if I listen to it and it's interesting, to follow. I have a show tomorrow night that needs material = perfect opportunity.]