Hi, everybody this is Craig Tanner for the mindful eye and the daily critique. Today’s image was submitted by Steve who’s an advance photographer from Denmark. Steve has a new 12-24 millimeter zoom want to go out and practice shooting with a wide end of the zoom he returned to this location. He’d been here before said that when he was here before he had more a satellite and he was surprise to come back at the same time of day. And have a direct path light and just ended up going with the flow and trying to work with the back light. Which could be technically difficult to deal with and he says he ended up bringing the bridge and the composition he didn’t do that before but now that he’s shooting super wide, he did.
And Steve said to deal with the very high contrast of shooting at in the backlight put the camera in the tripod and shot three exposures bracketing and two stopping from and then blended those exposures manually in Photoshop. To increase dynamic range and sort of set his contrast in the image and under the questions and comments, Steve says that he’s happy with the contrast here but not very happy with the color he says that he tried adding more saturation to make the color more dynamic. But at the end of that was something that felt unnatural and he says ,I’m wondering if maybe adding a 3rd color would help or could a black and white conversion be what’s needed to solve the problem of this being very flat from a color standpoint
Let’s get right into it one of the big takeaways that I think he get this today’s critique. Just has to do with the back story in Steve’s process. Steve is doing something here that’s called conscious practice what is conscious practice, its saying, today when I go out and photograph I’m not jus kind of take my camera and just react to thing or whatever. I’m actually going to pick one thing relative t o my skills stand I’m going to work on that. And when we do that no t only are we working on something specific. But we can tell when we’re making progress because we know the purpose of our practice that’s conscious practice it’s very powerful. This is how powerful it is in the last 10 years multiple studies have come out experts on behavior psychology.
Who study experts and they say the 2 most important components of getting better. Number one having a belief system that supports the idea that you can do it. And number two conscious practices. And the other thing that I love about the back-story here is the idea of showing up, having and expectation of one quality of light. Getting something else and going with it, so just becoming more creative instead of asking the why questions, why is it raining? What this how to be back light mi wanted the side lights, mi want and so forth. Which is kind of been emotional mentality for a 1 year old, we could get a lot bigger than that. And we could say “okay this is it” this is held and out. How can I work with this to achieve the highest vision that I have from myself as an artist. And adjust the power and that’s amazing so how it helps Steve for going into the flow here.
When I look at this image I love the Steve use the back light puts the sun behind the tower. He creates this really beautiful penumbra of light around the tower obviously creates the shadow by huge part of composition. This is really cool, its look like the real shadow comes to the haze there, and it really makes s the tower the idea. The bridge now is just a supporting player. And without this back light to be really easy to imagine these2 things either becoming static or just kind of playing against each other too much. Instead of working with each other and the other thing that I love about the image is there’s a lot of visual unity. And I get a sense right away of this design that includes these real powerful triangles and then the bridge rhymes that. , in so many different ways that’s really cool.
Not the shape of the shadows by the way this is framed. Plays off of the feeling of these two triangles that are sitting on top of each other lots of other rhythms you got this supports of the bridge but above and below playing of each other. Then playing off at the graphic verticals of theses cityscape of the building and also the vertical of the tower. And then just sort of the way negatives spaces playing from grass to sky. Lots of things are working here.
You know what when it comes to perfect world improvement. I think Steve is going to hit whole thing and hit the nail these questions. The color is flat and you know quality of light whether it’s good or bad is relative to what you’re trying to say. And you’re subject matter and Steve, is trying to say that, he wants more dynamic color. And this is why so many people start to talk in a general sense for general scenic work that early in night light working better. Because early in night we have, warm high lights cool shadows and its starts to create that illusion of doubt.
That we’re going for a lot of times in the shots. And I’ve been ask this over and over again, why can’t we just in the same easy that Steve extended dynamic range why can’t we come in ,Photoshop and make the highlights warmer. Make the shadows cooler and add a third color here and we can’t if we’re working traditionally. Because from those people it won’t look right, they don’t have to know anything about photography or cinematography. There human beings they been in this situations a billion times it won’t pass the sniff test. It’s sort of like a fake smile or just the mouth and not the eyes and everybody knows that. We still are okay with it, smiling is very important even faking it. From a body language standpoint is way more powerful than not smiling at all. But the point is it won’t pass the sniff test that’s what we’re going for is the genuine article, the genuine color in this kind of situation.
And so I really follow Steve’s questions and just say yes. To me if I wanted to make this have more depth I would push it to a black and white conversion. And this is what I want to do here from a visual standpoint. The one part of this it isn’t quite stacking or not working together for me. Everything is so graphic and then in this lower part were you have these shapes they’re trying to play off of the tower and the triangles over here. You have this real soft transitions I like to take the contrast where we can make this shadow look like a hard edge shadow and run it way up to be have this more edge. And I’m also going o come in a lighting effect in the corner right here again the to try and push the grass part of the image towards more of a contrasted graphic that can balance the tower itself and the bridge.
Before I do that I want to mention something else min the critique today. And it’s just sort of a challenge and maybe a point of discussion for this particular image. When I’m shooting a big scenic image like this and I’m working traditionally. And I’m telling a story in a traditional way, I’ll ask myself two questions. I’ll say even if I like the graphic that I’m coming up with even if I like the eccentric form, the rhythm the leading line and all this. At the end of this is the viewer going to be able easily imagine moving in to this image and ending up somewhere. And then being inside of the image, physically can they actually do that and then number two. If they can once they get there are there things happening in this image where they can go even deeper into the image by having some kind of story that they tell them elves. At the level of imagination and what happens in these images. As much as I love the graphic form of it an all of things that I’ve talk about.
I can imagine getting to the bridge it’s up here; I can’t get in to it. and I’ll also can imagine getting to the tower or inside of it, I don’t see anyway to I don’t even know if I can go on to the tower and so almost immediately what happens for me. As I start to pull back from the image and just appreciate it from an eccentric sort of form stand point. Where elements of visual design are there’s nothing wrong with all of that. But Steve is sort, of pushing for this idea of color depth and for this to conceptually this is in my opinion to become deeper. And for me I feel like this is one of these images where the stage has been set. But there’s one of the thing that sort of needs to be there that gives me physically and the reason to get in the image and then I can go even further than that.
And maybe it’s a prop. Maybe it is having a person to the image so I love to hear from Steve or anybody else that wants to sort of join in that discussion when it comes to this image. Here’s the black and white conversion, mi gone way dramatic with this and overdo everything for the daily critique and just to make my point. You can see in the foreground where I made it of a lot of graphic and in fact, this is what I would do if I were working with this image. I would go to black and white where I can really start to lean on the idea, of tone. And value and contrast and it are abstract already so I have a lot more leeway to play. Having said all these, when I look into this image and I think this is the 1st time Steve is going to work with his lens. I’m amazed I know what I ended up with the 1st time I ever shot with a super wide lens. And it’s was nothing as beautiful as this.
I want to say a big thank you to Steve for sharing this image with us on the Mindful Eye Daily Critique.
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