How to Photograph Spontaneously

Hi everybody this is Craig Tanner for the Mindful Eye and the photo of the week on the Daily Critique. This week’s photo of the week was submitted by Pam who is a professional photographer from California. Pam said she shot this with the Cannon 5D in a 24 to 105 lens and she shot this on an animal park. She says this is a one hungry tiger going for a chunk of meat and she calls this one lucky shot, and I can imagine a photographer feeling that way about this kind of shot. This is all about being on the right place at the right time. And you could call it luck, you could call it serendipity, you can call a preparation made in chance but it’s definitely one of those kinds of shots where you’re not going to get a do over. And it also involves being an extraordinary space. This is not some everyday thing. This is an animal park that Pam is maybe just going to go to once in her life and she’s there with her camera just the right time. And not only that, but she gets this particular moment out of the situation. There are so many things that are working here. You could almost teach a class, a mini class in composition just talking about what works in this image and I want to do that in a minute. I want to make the bigger point for a second to just say that some much of the time, images that stick in our consciousness are images that are story based that really play on very deep seated emotions. And this image really plays and one of our big fears. You know just the idea of possibly being preyed upon by either another human being or some of the animals that we have on eradicated on the planet. That relative to us represent a huge threat, they could hunt us. So this image really plays on that fear and it’s a story based image and it also is an image that has so many things going for it from a design standpoint. And that’s a big part of the Daily Critique is about. It’s not about my opinion about the images, I share t that essentially, that’s sort of the entertainment part of this. The educational part of it is talking about pictures within the context of the language of design, so that we can start to think about images from my preconception standpoint or pre-visualization standpoint. One of the points that I'm really trying to make here is that, definitely somebody in that’s cynical could come in and say all the things that I'm talking about, do you really think that Pam thought about any of these things. She saying it’s a lucky shot and no, I think Pam was probably just shooting in and trying to get something. This is one of these things that I can imagine that’s happening so fast that your conscious mind cant keep up with it, but I always like to remind people this point. And some of the biggest chest bitter arrogant people out there and when you see somebody doing that, they’re afraid, not afraid somehow will they mention that in the context of this image because it plays on our fears. When people are doing that, they’re afraid of the feedback loop almost all the time. They just don’t want the feedback, they want to somehow set themselves apart from that and they tend to be the people that are the most sensitive about any kind of negative feedback and not that against those people because being in the feedback loop is also sort of a dealing with one of these beast in our artistic process. But the interesting thing is we just cant get away from that feedback loop if we’re going to share our work from other people and if we’re going to participate in the whole process of our work, if this image stay in the camera and we don’t ever look at them, then it maybe ridiculous to talk about design in the context of an image like this. But, we have to add it, even the images that happen in situations, that are outside of our conscious ability to think about design, we still have to go and pick frames that work or don’t. And now, we’re going to be coming back to thinking about images in terms of what might work for us, and for our viewer, and what works from a visual standpoint on one level is determined by things that are based on natural law. For instance in this image, the tiger is separating in the shot because of light. They’re separating because of the way of light is moving through the waters, it’s also separating because of the way the tiger reflects light in the way that’s different in the water. The tiger is reflecting a color of light that makes us perceive the tiger has being very warm and the water very cool and that creates separation. These are things that we cannot get away from if we want to talk about design. So on one level; these discussions on the Daily Critique are very much based on natural law. And then there starts to be a gray area and that’s where the beast it’s like the beast were seeing here starts to come in and starts to get a lot more difficult. It’s not so black and white. So, I just want to do to throw that out there and just remind everybody that at some point in our process will be coming against the idea of design on two levels. One based on natural law and then two based on the aesthetic that we’re trying to push in that may or may not be important for us to get the audience to come along with us. When I look at this image and I think about elements of the design and one of the things that I think about that I really enjoy very simple thing to do from a story telling standpoint is to have a flow of focus. It’s something that’s unique to photography, but I really love how this is the sharpest part of the image. And we don’t know the exact aperture that Pam is shooting here to get this step of feel. But focus seems to fall off and like I said, that’s something that’s sort of unique to the idea of photography and it’s abstract because we don’t see this way, and it’s a very, very powerful way to draw the viewer’s attention to our main subject and shallow depth of the field is also a very powerful way to abstract things and give them an emotional depth for the viewers that goes beyond that ordinary. The other thing, that I've already mention is working really beautifully here. It’s just the idea of warm and cool colors. Warm comes further appears to come forward to us and that’s physical, that’s based on the way that the muscles in our eye flex our lens to focus on warm colors that the lens would bow out and moves actually towards the warm colors and to focus on the cool colors it’ll bow away from the cool colors. So this is literally the idea of warm sort of moving toward us and cool moving away and very powerful in this image with the tiger having all these energy coming towards the food here. And this being warm tone, very, very powerful and creating a really beautiful sense of separation. Something else that’s very powerful in this image is very simple. I talk about it over and over again. There’s the very powerful aspect of movement on this diagonal and in all of our images particularly in the west or a sort of specifically in the western hemisphere, this line movement is the most powerful implied visual pathway in the frame. Before we put anything in there, we can have a blank frame and this is the most powerful form of implied movement. We’d like to start at the top left and like to work our way down to the bottom right, and this image just such a powerful sense of that movement. When you look at to where this shapes end, they end right on this line, it doesn’t have to be a contouring line can blend in – path. Real powerful sense of that and you also get a very powerful sense because of this diagonals are the cross hatching of diagonals which is also a very powerful thing from a design standpoint. You get a real strong sense of visual movement because of that and you also have a really beautiful qualities of line just based on the gesture. You have these arching shapes, she has the idea of a circle, you have the head tilted here. You have the opening of the mouth and the teeth here creating a feeling of a circle, you have the feeling under here, you have the feeling here in the light, you have the feeling repeating again over the line really beautiful and obviously in the pattern here and in this markings. And the other thing that I want to mention here is just the idea formal versus dynamic symmetry. It’s interesting because the mask of this subject is sort of centered in the frame. And you get a lot of specs are really beautiful unity with that idea that sort of confronts us right away. These two negative space shapes are really beautiful and how the play off of this sort of centering of the mask of the animal, and then you get a sense of that symmetry up here with these lines moving in the middle and negative space here and here. It’s just awesome that you see the other light back here. If you can try to imagine the shot where you can’t see that leg, it could be very awkward. The fact that you look around on the image and then you get there and you see that, now in your mind you see the whole the animal. You see all the legs, and considering this is centered to begin with, saying both the right and left front leg and right and left back light, again are congruent with the symmetry, to me this is a really lucky thing in the image. You also get the sense based on the placement of these legs again of a pretty powerful formal symmetry. That sets up in the image. Obviously, this breaks it up and there are other things that break it up a little bit. Not quite as much space over here and more over here but still. It’s really interesting if you just think about the concept of dynamic and formal symmetry. Something else that’s just awesome here is the way the light is falling. Even though the light is not in the eye, you get a sense of either the way the natural light fell in here, the way Pam has managed this after the fact of there being some really nice high contrast light right here at the point where the main part of the gesture and sort of the story is happening and get a real strong sense of light in here, and the bubbles also drive a lot of high contrast. Now, it’s another thing, one of the highest contrast areas of the image is the main subject. This is very high too, but we draw on the fact that this is an archetype, it’s much more powerful that just water and reflection, and this really to me has the most visual weight in the image. There’s also just the really beautiful sense of moving on the light and other places in the image. Incredible shot, incredible moment, and I want to say a huge thank you to Pam for sharing this image with us, so we’d love to hear your feedback about some of the things that I brought up today from a design standpoint and from a philosophical standpoint. I really appreciate you for being here on the Mindful Eye. We hope everybody has a great weekend, see you next week on the Daily Critique.