Grilled Veal Chops Photo

Photographer’s Note

I return to the book sale in downtown San Anselmo where mom and her daughter were playing Hide and Seek. The crowd of shoppers was thinning out as we approached the end of the sale and the afternoon sun headed behind the hill to the west. I kept moving around those few remaining customers who were pouring over the books loaded on carts and filling boxes looking for a treasure. I've long been a lover of books and would no doubt have been among them had I not discovered the pleasures of wandering with a camera in hand.

I had to lean over on the bench where I sat to catch this shot, intent on the woman's profile as a focused manually. What captivated me about the image when I finally opened it on my computer was that as I enlarged the photo to its full size I could read what this woman was gazing at... a recipe for Grilled Veal Chops! She bought a book eventually though I have no idea whether it was this one. I couldn't help but wonder whether she'd gone home to try out a new recipe... ;-)

Hope the image whets your appetite.

pamastro, Rinie_Hoff has marked this note useful

Critiques | Translate

RGatward (19737) 2005-11-09 3:08

Very clever framing and use of DoF to make another interesting shot of the place. I like the very sharp strands of hair set against the OoF background.

erdna (5348) 2005-11-09 10:59

Very nice, clear and sharp photograph with good depth of field. The face of the woman is definitely the focus in your nice composition.

Andre'

martin-images (661) 2005-11-09 16:01

i like this image in that the two books look connected in some way, my only crit is that the womans head seems part of the other persons body, maybe a different angle slightly would have improved it, but a good candid
Martin

Rinie_Hoff (9332) 2005-11-09 18:25

Well, it's not that I don't like veal, (sorry vegetarians, I love it, especially as 'Vitello Tonnato'), but if I was her, I would go for the 'Grand Diplôme Cooking course'. Ah, I love books too, and she is in the section that I like as well.
My menu for that saturday night will be (which does not come from a cook book), a stew of game, deer, hare and wild boar, with red cabbage and mashed potatoes, and stewed pears. Less refined, I admit, than her grilled veal, but very nice for the time of year and the surroundings ;-) I am looking forward to that ;-)
Lovely capture. Curtis, I agree a bit that the two persons separated from each other might have been nicer, but I guess you had to come from that bench then ;-) Very sharp image, I like her concentrated looks.

pamastro (7213) 2005-11-15 23:28

Once again a fine person capture Curtis using a good DOF to bring out the woman and her book in the midst of this book sale. She has a look on her face as if she's enjoying what she's reading so perhaps she did purchase this and go home to try it out. Or maybe it's just me who wouldn't mind grilled veal chops. You include just enough of the nearer person to separate him clearly from her but not enough to distract me. His book leads me into her and her book. And again so very sharp. I'm sure I could read the writing here if it weren't for the compression.

AnimeshRay (8886) 2006-06-16 0:59

You isolate your subjects by narrow focusing very well indeed. This one is a terrific examole. Excellent sharpness, control over tonality and light, and composition. THe bokeh produced by this lens is really unparalleled.