Hi everybody this is Craig Tanner for the Mindful Eyes and the Daily Critique. Today’s image was submitted by David who is an intermediate photographer. We have the back story and the metadata on this one. David’s says he shot this as part of the contest for his photography club. The theme was City Life. He said he like the busy view up the street and then his concept in addition to the view was to blur the people who are crossing the street. He says he took a number of shots from this location when he picked this one because he felt it can rally conveyed the feeling he is going for. And we don’t camera body information but we all the other metadata. They would shot this at 70 millimeters, so that could mean this was shot with a real short telephoto of it.
I’m sort of guessing that this is a crop factor camera and the 70 millimeter is more like a 110 or something, like that. It has that feeling to it of a little bit more compression. Talk more about that in a second. Maybe shot this at F56 1/8th of a second. And right away one of the things I love about the image is of what David was trying to accomplish here. I love to adjust the position of the blurring of the people with other things in the shot that are static. It stills a photograph probably better that any art form just such a great job of implying motion. And the other I love this image is that it’s very layered in terms of David’s concept. There are sort of multiple levels of that reality. You have the people blurred here then cars are static, more people that are blurred, cars are static, a car moving here, a person is doing something there that’s blurred and that rhythm kind of movement static movement, static, movement, moves all through the image. And so I think just having the eye to choose this location is great.
The other thing that I think was smart here was going to monochrome, trying to imagine the scene in color and then there’s a lot going on here to begin with. And then try to imagine in it in color. It’s pretty easy to imagine getting overwhelmed by all of the different ideas. So I think monochrome is a good choice here and as I mentioned before, I think the compression of the lens is creating some drama and it’s really helping this image. So just real quick for people the maybe watching the critique today, they’re just getting in to photography just a basic concept to think about is the longer we go on our lenses, the more we can compress subjects that are maybe very far apart. We can create the illusion that the distance from here to here is much shorter and we can use that sort of stacking effect or compression effect to make the relationship between all of these different subjects. More dramatic by bringing them closer together or we could the kind of drama that happens when we put on widening the lens and we start to create the illusion of that things. They are maybe not that far apart of stretched out further and it’s the perspective distortion that you can get working both ends in the extremes in terms of very wide lenses, and very long lenses.
The other thing that I like about this image is it’s framed in the way. That’s pretty simple even though there’s a lot of going, on. This real obvious cut here just straight across on the crosswalk, a really nice framing, a dramatic framing at the bottom of the image. And then you get a real strong sense of this sort of arching framing at the top with the dark trees, sort of an end to the image. And I think that works really well here starting an image at the bottom that this graphic—this sort of very definite negative space. It’s very even all the easy across. It’s kind of crying out for something at the top. That’s also a pretty symmetric and pretty balance. So even though this is an arch, it really all the way across the image and place out in way that’s very consistent like the bottom part of the framing here, and I think that works really well.
There’s also a nice feeling of rhythm in terms of this moment. This image that David has picked with the two layers of cars sort of this kind of line and this line, and then sort, of the negative spacing between and that works really well. And start to think about perfect rule improvement for this image, I would love for it to be even a little bit simpler and a little bit more graphic.
So I want to mention a couple of things, I think that this location is amazing for this kind of shot. So, we have to imagine this because it doesn’t involve anything that I might do in the image. One of the things I think would be interesting fro David to do, if this is the location, he can get back to and to see if he use quality of light to simplify this a little bit more. And right now, one of the things I like to change about the image, I would like for the main idea which is to blur people here in the foreground, coming across the sidewalk, to separate a little bit more with everything at them else in the image. And because we’re not really going to work so much with shadow depth of field to do this because we’re doing emotion blur. So the idea of just opposing something that are sharp with other things in the background maybe there are soft is not going to work. Because one of our concepts is to blur these people and even though they’re blurred. The reality is with everything being in the same quality of light and then going to monochrome, it’s hard to get these people to separate against the background. Unless you just get incredibly lucky I like this where this guy sitting in between the two areas of the car that help him to separate. So one of the things I could think about was quality of light. It maybe the way the streetlamps are placed, that in twilight are very late twilight even going in the night time. There could be light that falls across this crosswalk and a lot of times there is and you see there’s a pool of light here than dark then a pull of light and that might really help to simplify the concept to this image. So one thought is just going back another time and seeing the quality of light and twilight would create some separation.
If I would work with this image I’d like to do this. I’d like to come in and essentially make the framing of the image much darker, sort of much heavier. I also like the tone down the pavement. Remember, I adjust to the area at high contrast and boy there are lot of areas of high contrast in here. And then next to bright areas and all of this bright in here is rally draw in my eye past the main ideas and so I’d like to tone that down. I’d like to add contrast to the blurred figures in the image. And lot’s of contrast right in here in the crosswalk. I want to bring the main idea and I know the contrast is the most powerful visual element of design. And so if I could more contrast to the main subject and then turn down the contrast in the areas that are in the main subject then hopefully I can bring the main idea forward. And one other detail that I’ll mention here is this leg being blurred to the point where you can’t see it. For me start’s top really hurt the balance of the image. Over here, you’ve got these two guys and they’re having this perfect V shape and he’s almost making it and then there’s no leg there, and my mind goes over to here and out of the image and so I like to put another leg guy, it sounds strange, didn’t it? It sounds really strange to me at 5:30 in the morning.
Okay so here we go I just started off with a quick curves adjustment. It’s just darkened the pavement down I done that in a pretty rough way sorry it doesn’t look so great. And I added a leg to that guy and you’ll se me coming and get rid of those power lines in the back. I think in some shots or in a lot of shots, you could have power lines all over the place and they can work with what’s happening. But here for me, they’re really breaking up this layered design that I talk about earlier. And some respects is making this film more static, and it’s a small detail but in those one if you’re open to change in the editorial content, I get rid of that. And to me its makes a huge difference in how I move all the way back to the end of the image. It’s nice because this in effect sort of becomes a code to this without the power lines in there.
The next thing that I did was significantly darken the road now and add a lot of contrast to the people on the foreground. And the last thing that I did was digital gardening up there and that top framing where’s there’s a lot of high contrast. And here’s where we started, and here’s where we ended up. It’s a little bit over the top. It’s a lot more graphic but for me this is a little bit simpler having said all that, loved David’s concept here. I loved this location. I think he’s got a great eye to pick this location. This is locations that if I were wanted to do a series of these city life shots you could go back and shoot the same location over and over and over again. Very powerful way to work as a photographer to just say to the viewers, “ Okay I’m showing you this view that I’m going to show you all the different ways it change in shooting in different qualities of light”. And of course there always be different combinations of people and cars and then energy and so on and so forth. Really cool shot as far as this concept of city life goes.
I want to thank David for submitting this image to the Mindful Eyes Daily Critique. See you tomorrow everybody.
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