Moses at ease

[RBSinTo]

Taken a few years ago in Kensington here in Toronto, late in the afternoon.
 Moses, the owner of a Caribbean products and record store was as usual, relaxing outside his store, making conversation with passersby and enjoying the early fall weather.
 I liked his casual pose on the bollard, and the wonderful warm light, and grabbed this shot.
 motorized Nikon F2AS
Tamron 35~105 2.8 AIS manual focus
Fuji 100 ISO colour slide
2.8 @ 1/60th

[golunvolo]

Beautiful shot. You capture a character! Expression, fashion, light and specially pose, they all add. It looks a tad dark in my monitor though. Option of crop with an almost but not whole support foot on the image is unusual. Nothing stops me from enjoin the image.

  F.I.L.M. you say?

[charlie]

Beautiful shot indeed, great moment you caught. The darkness doesn't bother me, I like the mood and color of the scene though I agree about the foot, might be worth while to crop just above it. Its almost as though he knew a camera was on him and gave his best contemplative pose.

[Mike G]

Robert, I of course prefer the colour version. 

[RBSinTo]

Thanks for the kind comments.
As for the crop?
The bottom of the original shot ends horizontally at about the ankle of his left foot, so I fooled around with a number of different crops, none of which were satisfactory to me, and in the end I spent a bit of time rebuilding his left foot and the bottom of his pant leg using the right leg as a template.
But again I didn't like the way the very bottom of the shoe looked on the sidewalk, and also wasn't happy with the bottom of the bollard where it met the sidewalk.
To alleviate the problems, I cropped it as I did, reasoning that the most important parts of the picture are at the middle and top of the image which is where I reasoned the viewer's eyes would spend most time.
Naturally the eagle-eyed viewers here noticed the crop and brought it up, which was the reason for my confession.
I'll say three "Hail Marys" or whatever, as long as my penance doesn't involve going Digital.
 

[charlie]

reasoning that the most important parts of the picture are at the middle and top of the image which is where I reasoned the viewer's eyes would spend most time.

Exactly, which is why cropping his left foot all together would make for a wise decision in my mind, having it there doesn't add anything of importance and personally, I would be more partial to the shortening of the image ratio that the crop would deliver as well. That said leaving it as is isn't a deal breaker either.

I'll say three "Hail Marys" or whatever, as long as my penance doesn't involve going Digital.
 

Well... you went digital in the post processing stage so you might already be halfway there... 

[RBSinTo]

Charlie,
Shooting with my wonderful, old, analog manual focus film cameras, and then scanning to digitize my pictures is one thing.
However, shooting with today's truly awful "space-aged Digital cameras is quite another.

[Tristin]

Great shot!  I like the exposure, great timing!  I kinda wish the whole left foot was visible, but that is of negligible detriment to the image.

[Alex Cejka]

Nice expressive shot.

If I may ask: why so much hate towards digital technology?

It is here for a reason. It is here to stay.

[Jørgen Ramskov]

Another nice one, though I think it must be awkward to stand like that for long

[Gary]

I've been looking at this for a while ... Nice. I read some comments, then go back to view the shot. I can almost read his mind ... Or maybe I want to read his mind or just have a chat. Well done. I wish I still had my F2.