Hi everybody, this is Craig Tanner for the Mindful Eye and the Daily Critique. Today’s image was submitted by Abby who is a beginning photographer from California. Abby shot this with a Cannon 40D. Used and effective focal length of around of a 150 millimeters and jump the ISO up to 640 here to try and get to a higher shutter speed because of some subtle subject motion of the boat on the water.
Abby gave us some great back story information here in terms of letting us know what he was going for in the image. We really do appreciate it when you share that kind of information with us on the Mindful Eye submission form. Abby let us know that he specifically went to the Venice canal area in L.A. to shoot these boats and he was thinking about shooting them in more of an abstract way.
Abby titled this image tranquility. I want to talk more about titling in just a minute, but that gives us even more sort of a conceptual idea of what Abby wants the image to say. And under questions and comments, Abby makes a couple of interesting statements one is that another part of the process in this particular shoot was to just shoot a couple of three images on it set up to try and work more on the idea of composing in the camera. Instead of taking a ton of images and kind of finding the image in the editing process and that makes a lot of sense particularly to me.
Anyway, on subject matter like this where it can be a lot more contemplative. The boats maybe subtly moving on the water but they’re not totally going away, its not like photographing a really dynamic situation like the person or something like that and Abby has a question. He say, now the single frame, I wonder whether I went in too close whether it would’ve help to include more negative space on the bottomless.
So here’s what I want to do on the Critique today. I want to talk about practical stuff and get right here to answering Abby’s question about composition. And at the end I want to talk a little bit more philosophically about the creative process relative to several different things. One is becoming more conceptual, so shooting to a concept instead of reacting. The other is titling your work, and the other is the idea of setting some kind of a limit to actually become more creative a little bit counter intuitive. We’re going to do that last. Okay so all you want is just sort of nuts and bold stuff. How do the daily critique because I know that Abby was thinking about more of an abstract image. And because of the title tranquility, it starts to give me as the viewer more of a context to give feedbacks to Abby. Abby is asking me for feedback.
So if I'm thinking abstracts and I'm thinking tranquility, instead of adding more negative space down here, and this is an image where I’d really love to be sitting with Abby and we’re talking about it. I don’t want to say anything, but I'm sort of the guessing that Abby maybe thinking that more negative space down here might help to balance this top part of the image because right now, for me this part does have a lot of visual weight relative to the bottom part.
Why is it true? Now we talk about a visual hierarchy of things that draw the viewer’s eye and we tend to just talk about the design elements that do that. We talk about the area or areas of highest contrast being the most visually heavy thing and we talk about warm colors versus cool colors being heavier and we talk about the idea of light drawing more of the eye than dark. But then, we also have the Psychological impact of things. And one thing that has a really big psychological impact on the viewer and takes a lot of visual weight is when one thing is different than everything else. And it’s interesting. When I look at everything else besides that area of the image, I see something that’s more abstract.
What do we mean by abstract? We mean shooting a subject in a way where we pay more attention to the intrinsic form or color or line, or shape. It does become more about sort of these inherent intrinsic qualities of something than describing the thing itself. This is very literal and very gradient, very documentary. This on the other hand is much more abstract than more just about line, shape, color and so on and so forth. And the other thing is that all of this down in here is very smooth and this has a lot of texture. This is also potentially very peaceful. Psychologically, this for lot of people may include it because I’ve had some nightmare experiences pedalling a boat with other people. This starts to a psychologically suggest all kinds of things that may not be peaceful at all, just the idea of having to paddle the boat for some people.
Sitting and maybe in a way that’s uncomfortable. Two people in one knows how to paddle and one doesn’t. One wants to go somewhere and one want to go somewhere else and so on and so forth. And so, this area to me inside of the boat just really has an enormous amount of visual weight and instead of adding more down here to try and balance that out because I know I have this concept and I know the title is tranquility and I know that we were going for something more abstract. I personally would say. Let’s just take it away.
Let’s simplify this and let’s come down here somewhere and I want to talk about the cropping in just a second, but I want to go ahead and just do sort of a fast crop and say to me, this is much simpler because of three ideas now from the design standpoint which is fun. The square is at more fine art and this will hackle a lot of people off every time I say it but I have a strong opinion about it, so I’m going to go ahead and say it anyway.
Black and white is a 50 billion times easier than color that I can’t overstate that like to say a higher number but I can’t think of one. And square is the easiest format to shoot in. Square is super easy. You can center your subject, square is more fine art, you can get away with getting away from some of traditional design a lot more in the square. It’s just might simpler to begin with because you have a framing device that is incredibly simple.
Much harder for trying to peel to a lot of people to work in framing devices that are a symmetrical and I like the square format particularly if we’re talking about a fine art approach. To me this is obviously much more abstract. It’s much more tranquil and the other thing that’s interesting to me is that an addition and now having three subjects which is kind of fun. I’ll only come down into this area. I’ll start this field the archetype of a dolphin which also starts to suggest peace. It starts to have a psychological impact. It’s very different in the inside of that boat.
Just talking about the crop itself, another crop that creates much more complex image that’s kinda fun to think about is coming just to right there and I'm looking at that line coming out of the right hand corner and working one of the major diagonals and also creating some tension right here along the edge, more complicated image having this bit of tension right here with all these that’s so peaceful and so smooth. Kind of the neat counterpoint that’s a very different feeling image, but it’s just a variation to think about and those are sort of the two crop variations in the most basic sense that I would think about. Love to hear your feedback, but practical part of the critique just a few a few comments about the more philosophical creative things.
To me there’s sort of two ends of the creative continue and more coming up with ideas. One is to reactive things. You go out with your camera and something happens and just react or maybe you go out and you get a little bit of an idea and you build around that. But you’re basically ripping of overreacting to the environment. The other would be to walk out and say this is my concept, and now I'm going to pull together the things to make it happen. And I think both are very powerful and there are also combinations of both of those processes in between but to me. Those are really setting it out on the end and sort of the creative continuing process. I love to work both, but the interesting thing is I think the older that I get, the more I'm appreciating having an idea first, something that really motivates me and then sort of shooting it out and that’s definitely happening in my song writing process, it’s another thing that I do to be creative.
The other thing that’s interesting is titling your work I think it’s very, very powerful. I think it helps to crystalize in our own minds. What are images are about; it’s another way to practice baing creative. It helps us to build creative confidence. The more we put ourselves into the situation where we’re coming up with ideas and I think a better way saying that is were actually letting ideas come in. We’re just accepting the ideas are being open to the ideas. We build confidence, to me creativity as a belief system. The people end up being the most creative are the ones that believe that they are creative and believe that they’re surrounded by tons of ideas, and I think in a bigger sense, I think very, very, creative people are people know that the ideas are around them and moving through them and are available to them all the time. I think they believe in something this much bigger than just their ability to do it on their own.
And the other thing that I want to mention is the sort of counter intuitive idea of limits. Putting limits on your creative process like Abby did here just a few shots on the subject, that’s the way to be more creative. Sometimes we have access to too much, that can feel fear. We can start to say I could do anything and I need to do something great and so I don’t know where to start. And when we start to make the box a possibility of smaller and where you can it really small. We can say okay, in the next minute, I got to take 30 pictures.
Obviously, that gets us connected to the only place that great pictures come from and that is actually being in the process of being a photographer to become the highest vision that we want to become for ourselves, we have to be the person now that we want to become. Very counter intuitive, but when we start the practice that, then that’s where all of our great shots have always come from. Big thank you to Abby for submitting a really beautiful image and big thank you to all of you for being here I hope to see you again real soon on the Daily Critique!
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