Hi everybody, this is Craig Tanner for the Mindful Eye and the photo of the week on the Daily Critique. This week’s photo was submitted by Carl who is an intermediate photographer from the South Eastern United States. Carl says his picture was taken at a lake on a foggy winter morning. He said in the summer of this place is full people and he saw that and thought it would really be interesting to take a picture on an empty winter morning. Carl shot this with a Canon 400D and he used and effect of focal length of around 30 millimeters down the F9 and exposed the file for 125 of second.
One of the things that I wanted to say in the very beginning, other view this image today is that, even though Carl doesn’t really talked about the idea of sort journaling this idea, he remember the idea. So at some point, probably in the summer he looks at this and says, “Boy that should be amazing on a winter morning. And so one of the things I wanted encourage you to do is you look at this image, is to always carry a journal if you’re an artist. You know, to me so much creativity is just ideas, just intuitions, hunches or thoughts that just pop in without any effort.
You know so many of this ideas that sort of come from a right branches kind of show up is just a fully formed photo concept, but a lot of them don t ever come to fruition, because we just forget about them and this is so beautiful to look at. This image and to try to imagine Carl being there with all of the people and having this vision and for a lot of us, we might forget that if we didn’t write it down. If you have a journal and you can really, I think grow your intuition and grow your creativity by capturing all those thoughts and starting to make a shot list and come back to it. The other thing that I do believe is an become more conceptual in the last five years and particularly doing a lot more personal work, that this thoughts that just show fully formed are very powerful and so much of the time they do lead to amazing things for us as artists.
When I looked at this image, you know one of the things I think about just from the very basic label of visual design, is just how powerful the idea being lead in this image and you know you got this concept to leading a line, but it follows a leader of path in the image. The duck and going out to the diving platform, and it’s just so powerful for me as the viewer with the fog, sort of encapsulating the main idea. You’ve really got this feeling with a light here of the sort of gradient stripe just right behind the diving platform, sort of t he destination in this image. And it really makes it pop out, the fog has kind of enveloping the main idea to still look the water is making us even more palpable and everything about this image for me is just so powerful in terms of being lead out to the diving platform, which is kind of the visual anchor of the image and where I go is the viewer that kind of rest and then take in the rest of the image.
The other thing that I love about this image is that, when I’m sit ting back from it, it has this incredible simple graphic quality, that’s very unified but then as I moved into the image I start to pick up on this other level of information. This other textures and this depth to the image that starts to happen for me as the viewer. You know we start with this really beautiful warm kind of feeling of texture on the diving platform and then when I start to, from here look out into the spaces. There’s as really beautiful very visually cohesive metal part of the image where you have t his repetition of this sort of melon of trees and reflections of trees. But within those ideas, there’s a really beautiful detail it settle from a distance but then the closer you get this whole other world is kind of revealed in the shadows and I just love that part of the image. Because it really draws me, way into an image that initially seem sort of graphic and a little bit two-dimensional. The beautiful of the bunk in that shape rhymes the platforms themselves, you’ve got what looks like another ramp here and a ramp here that obviously runs the duck itself, but again plays off the idea of the diving platform and just very subtle gradations of, a very dark tones in here with the different trees and other reflections of the trees and some highlights.
Same thing over here, if I look there’s a really subtle transition of tomes from the bunk up to the trees and then again as we get closer to the light is a really beautiful edge of a shape in here, shape here that’s rhyming a lot of the qualities of line and moving in line and the rest of the image and there’s an enormous somehow on rhythm for me and in all the other places in the image. One of the real powerful rhythms, you know you get the positive space shape of the duck, the diving platform, the trees, reflections of trees and that for me are this negative space shape of foggy sky and the reflection of that and very, very calm lake. But this overall shape right here, you know which has this kind of trapezoid filling of parallelogram filling to it is such a beautiful repetition of all of this smaller negative spaces in here in the diving platform. For Carl has chosen to frame this from left to right is really playing after that, you get the sense over in here too.
The other thing that’s really interesting for me about this image is that a couple in this diving platforms on the bottom you get a sense of kind of this thin or ark in shape that rhymes. This and also place over this is a very powerful graphic shape way out of the water but then that shape is rhyming so many other things in the image. Just the stunning image and everywhere you look there are either details or things that are very big that are playing off of each other and you know, and then the last thing I’ll say about this image is, it just has such a power to evoke. The idea of fog is so evocative. You know when you’re I n fog, it’s just like being in a completely different world and not just visually from a sound standpoint. Still water is such a powerful arch type and you combine the fog with the still water, the idea of the diving platform just the idea of jumping off is such a powerful arch type and then you know the black and white just, it gives the viewer so many different places to go.
Literally in the image but also in your mind that level of story to me this is a very, very cinematic setting. It’s a stage where the viewer and can just sort of have all of these feeling and all of these experiences are really, really powerful image and I want to say a huge thank you to Carl for sharing it with us. I just want to say few other things here at the end today, big thank you to all of you for your support. We’re up to over 8, 000 people that are registered as a member of the Mindful Eye and 5, 000 of those people are regularly visiting the sight. We’d love to double that, because as far as the regular visitors to the sight. We’d love to get that up to 10,000 and we can do that pretty easy with your help if you just link to us. The other day we got a link from a Botney Club and we got about 50 members over the course about a day and half just from that one length. So just, link into us if you’re a regular visitor to another forum and you can sort of legitimately link to us, somebody has a question about something and they’re looking for a place that has the concept video tutorials that we do.
They’re looking for a supportive community to just put a link up over there on the forum. If you’re part of the Camera Club or group and letting the other people in your group know about us would be a deeply appreciated. And also, just continue to encourage you to submit your images for photo of the week or Daily Critique for inspiration in the showcase and also to share your work on our community forum.
Again I want to say a big thank you to all of you for all your support so far and another big thank you to Carl for sharing a beautiful image for this and we look forward to seeing you again soon on the Mindful Eye. Hope everybody has a great weekend.
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