Five Men

Five Men.jpg, a photo by Pauls-Pictures on Flickr.

Welcome back to what was once and is now to be once again, a regular feature on my blog. The Pick of the Week. I read yesterday about how "blogging is dead" and one of the reasons is apparently because bloggers start out with the best of intentions then for a variety of reasons, stop blogging.
Well, I've always been a stop and start again kind of blogger. I don't like it, but I can't argue with the reality. Let's see how we go this time shall we?
Anyway, let's get to this weeks pick. It's not a photo actually made this week. Right now I'm in the desert town of Kalgoorlie, about 700 kms east of where this image was made. But it is the image that jumped out and said "pick me", so here we are.
Five Men, it's called. For obvious reasons. Or maybe not so obvious? Sure, there are five men in the photo. But there is a group of four on one side of the seat, and a group of one on the other.
It looks like the man on his own is eavesdropping on the other lot. Maybe he is, maybe he isn't; but it looks that way in the moment the photo was made.
Does he know the others? Do they know or even care he is eavesdropping on their conversation?
And of course there is a sixth person engaged in this moment: me, the photographer. In a sense I am also eavesdropping (though I couldn't hear them at all), or at least I am watching them as they share whatever it is they are sharing.
None of the other five participants in this moment saw me, or noticed what I was doing.
A fleeting moment perhaps in which these five men stood and sat as they are in what I think is quite an appealing composition.
My sense as I looked at these men was that they are all loners, all of them look like they spend a lot of time "on the street" and have come together for just a short chat before some or all of them moved on.
That's my job you know: to preserve those fleeting moments when people come together to form groups or little fleeting "situations". I have paid attention. And I have made the decision to preserve forever that little scene that when you really look at it, is really rather beautiful. Love, Compassion and Empathy. It's all in this scene, all in this photograph.
Peace