Reddit reviews The Fourth Way: An Arrangement by Subject of Verbatim Extracts from the Records of Ouspensky's Meetings in London and New York, 1921-46

In the alley from a guy named Joaquin. Heyoooooo!

If I'm being completely honest:

Pain. Leaning into fear. Eventually, refusing to settle for a default life. Creating my own meaning. Focusing more on what I am being more than what I am doing or having. Moving out of my comfort zone, returning to it only when I need a break.

At default, I would go on a month-long growth binge every 6 months or so. Now, it is every day. The days feel much longer. Living life is so much more satisfying than watching it pass by. Death is always around the corner.

Edit:

Oh right, timeline. These are the ages I had the strongest epiphanies and what was linked to them:

• 4 introduced to The Prophet
  
  
• 5 had empathy explained to me; blew my world open
  
  
• 8 existential crisis about the mortality of my mom; cue the beginning of depression
  
  
• 14 discovered TOOL
  
  
• 16 read The Fourth Way
  
  
• 24 read Man and His Symbols
  
  
• 34 had a kid; separated from wife. Both have resulted in more growth than everything else combined. Can recommend a kid. Wouldn't wish separation/divorce on anyone, but even being the unwilling party, so much growth through pain to be had there.
  
  Plenty of interstitial growth happened between those ages, but those are the epiphanic ones.

What were you going for here? My eyes go from the shoe to the two words that are starkly in focus, to the top of the busses and out of the frame. The woman seems an after-thought.

I get that things like the circular-mask blur and the contact-sheet-esque border create visual interest, but they don't add or enhance anything. They are crutches meant to obscure the lack of actual content from the casual observer. Any attempt at critique is thwarted by these elements - what are they doing there, how do they add to the shot? There are many techniques for manipulating a photograph to enhance visual interest, to make the subject stronger and the background less distracting. Some standards are dodge/burn, vignetting, or cropping the extraneous elements. Consider also the C-B technique of capturing the decisive moment - first find a compelling background, and then camp there until an interesting subject arrives. I believe true craftsmanship lies not in knowing what to include (typically a very short list), but what to cull, what does not belong in your work. That's why we have professional editors in almost every creative field.

The human brain is a marvelous thing, we do so much subconsciously. For instance if you were to put your hand on a hot stove, your nervous system moves your hand automatically, before sending the pain signal - you move your hand before you are aware that it hurts. I mean really, breathing, need I say more? An excellent primer on this idea is BLINK by Malcolm Gladwell (or THE FOURTH WAY by PD Ouspensky if you don't mind the occult). What I'm getting at is that elements like the blur in your composition are literally revolting to the human eye - our brains subconsciously register it as unnatural, sort-of wrong, and that feeling that something isn't right often manifests as revulsion. No matter how good the rest of this photograph is, all of that is negated by your blur.

On the subject of the blur, consider the frame as a container. You choose what to put inside of it. When you're packing a lunch, most of that container is filled with food and drink, with a small share for napkins/utensils/etc. Your frame is filled with forks - I have a hundred forks and only two bites of food to eat them with. It looks like you're focusing (oooh pun) on the shoe/sign/woman - ignoring their relationship or lack thereof, why do these three main elements fill less than a tenth of the frame? If this is a picture about the woman, what's with all this blurry bus bullshit? Crop the crap and be done with it. To further this idea of frame as container, why did you employ that border which only serves to reduce the size of the container? Digitally emulating artifacts of analog techniques can serve a purpose, but what purpose does it serve here? I can see how one may consider the border 'artish' but to add one to a shot it bares no relevance on belays the idea that, again, it is there because there isn't anything interesting in the photograph itself.

You have good material to work with here in your original photograph, I hope your editing was non-destructive because I would really love to see a more thought-out rework of this. Keep working, keep sharing, keep being the champion that you are; that will gain you a lot more respect than your actual work, in many cases.

To paraphrase Dali, "Begin by learning to photograph and edit like the old masters. After that, you can do as you like; everyone will respect you." This is in small part because you will have learned quality technique, but a large part of that respect comes from showing that you have the perseverance, the drive to improve. To end on another Dali quote, "Don't be afraid of perfection: you'll never attain it!"

Four books about art that I personally believe to be invaluable to any photographer: the Adams holy trilogy (Camera, Negative, Print), and Dali's "50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship."

Full disclosure: I am a Young Uneducated Male Pedant.

tl;dr: start from the top and then continue until you arrive back at this point.

Probably this book