Well, honestly, I've seen these same photos about a zillion times before. Calm, peaceful protesters, holding up nicely-crafted signs, in a peaceful-looking American city, in sunny weather. They all appear a teeny bit dark to me, but again, laptop editing....that's always tough...your rendering of the strong sidelighting is good--good exposures, good processing with detail held in the highlights, and shadows that LOOK LIKE SHADOWS--none of that awful HDR-looking shadow rendering we see so often. But to me, the images are simply not compelling. I am not tuned into the protest cause being shown to me; honestly, I am out of it WRT to whatever it is these young people are advocating,and so to me there is virtually no real connection; if it were a subject or cause I were familiar with, or attuned to, I'd probably be more interested. ALso, and this is not a knock, just an observation, but these all appear to have been shot from "across the street" using a medium-telephoto focal length that's kind of boring, and similar on almost all the photos...and even though I kind of do not like wide-angle shots, I've always felt that for social and social-documentary photography, there is a MUCH stronger feeling of connectedness when the camera is physically CLOSE to the subject, such as when using say a 20mm, 24mm,or 28mm, or even a 35mm lens on FF. I'm not sure why that is, whether that is purely cultural, purely psychological, or some blend of the two, but when I cannot, "see the whites of their eyes" in photos such as these, there just is not much of a feeling of engagement with the subjects...these telephoto-syle shots make me feel less-connected to the people, and more like a distant bystander...now...had these been shot with a 300mm, maybe I'd have felt like an interested voyeur...but this medium telephoto "look" is just,well...I dunno....it's like a pot metal pocket watch case, you know what I mean???
Anyway...those are my feelings about these pics. I hope you're having a great time on your vacation!!!
