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 George. He is an advance photographer from New York City and this image was submitted as part of a portfolio that George submitted to our inspiration image showcase.
I talked about last Friday when we had a video looking at images that came out of our assignment called “The movies” that we were going to start on the photo of the week including portfolios and images from our community assignments. And so this our first time we’ve work with the portfolio, we’d love to get your submissions for this type of inspiring video on the Mindful Eye. So, I’m going to give you the back story not only for this image, but for the whole portfolio. We’ll spend more time on this image and since it was the photo of the week and then we’ll see the rest of images in George’s portfolio which is titled “Gotham City.”
George says that this was his first attempt to try to pre-think a portfolio and then go shoot it. Portfolio was shot over a two month period and he said that each shot had to be in the morning. I don’t know why that’s true, it may be that George wanted the morning lighter maybe that this was just from time standpoint and when he had the time available to shoot. He said another part of this was he wanted to have sky be a motif that ties the portfolio together. So, he also had an addition to shooting in the morning have to have some decent clouds and George said because of the sky was an important part of the design of the portfolio that he shot. All of these images with the polarizer and many of them were shooting north and south so that he would get the most dramatic effect from the polarizer and just a real quick aside.
You get the most dramatic effect from the polarizer when you shoot it at 90-degree angle to your light source, so George is doing that in a lot of these shots. He said the other thing about these images technically they were all shot handheld, which seems to be the only way to shot in New York City and I think what George is talking about there is with all of the new security regulations. A lot of places now particularly in big cities, either tripods aren’t allowed or if you get your tripod out, it won’t be our for long because security will show up not long after that and ask you for a commercial permit or something.
The other thing that all of these images have in common is black and white and not only black and white, but for me a pretty specific treatment in terms of how similar it is throughout. Some of these have been pushed to the point from a tunnel standpoint that they almost look infrared. There’s also a little bit of a filling in the shadow part of the light of these images of high dynamic range. One of the things that are interesting to hear from George is any thoughts he can give us in the discussion section, comment section of this video about his black and white treatment for these images, which I love.
Let me give you the Metadata real quick on this it was shot with a Canon20D, 10 to 22 zoom effective focal length to 14 millimeter, so very wide here and ISO 400, stepped down to F13 and exposed the file for 90th of a second. Real beautiful, dramatic architectural image. One of the things that George mentioned in the back story for this particular image was that part of which drew to him to this in addition to the beauty of the flatiron building here and the sky. It’s the fact that there were no people. The area had been roped off for either a commercial shoot or a movie shoot and that does add this sort of an incredible energy to this image particularly in you know anything about New York City. Very, very rare for this phase around this building to be the void of people and it really sort of goes along with the kind of this almost a real black and white treatment.
From a visual design standpoint, one of the things I love about this image is just how beautiful the energy is and the rest of the image that moves in a congruent way with this real strong diagonal movement of the flatiron building. You have this real sort of dark black anchoring point. It gets rhymed and a more open shadow here and the net transitions back into this area that’s very, very dark like this. Then the energy in the sky moves up in this corner and then it keeps going all the way down here to sort of dark area these planners. So, that movement in the image, anytime we play off of major diagonals.
It really doesn’t matter how the image is framed whether it’s square, rectangular or panoramic, the diagonals within any framing device create a very powerful sense of the illusion of being able to move through the space. That kind of movement can also do a really great job just by itself of tying the whole image together and creating visual unity. So, cross hatching of major diagonals are just working one of the major diagonals.
Something else that I wanted to mention here that talk about from time to time, but I think it’s really important for the success of this image if you want to talk about traditional design and unity is the way this building and this building play of each other. George is kind framed this doing a little bit of almost an equal weight. Little more in front of the building which works well because it’s moving so hard in this direction but the fact that these two buildings has started being exactly parallel with each other which could be very static. In this image, also work against this strong feeling of the repetition of all of these diagonals. The fact that this is a little bit higher and you get diagonal movement here, I think it really helps the image a lot and in the shape here too of course is a rhyme.
Another really interesting thing to me about looking at this image is that having shots so much commercial architectural work for so long that when I get to this part of the image. There was a part of me that wanted to come and straighten up the chairs, but then this one chair is sort of the perfect code of kind of parenthesis to the whole building. It’s in the perfect place and I think it really helps to pay the image off. This is the kind of thing where I can imagine that this thing was a skewer on tenure and turned in some other way that this whole configuration might pull the whole image out of balance. The fact that this is turned almost sort of opposite to the building and it’s a graphic idea and it does rhyme sort of the main ideas in the building.
I think really helps the image’s small detail that helps. And the sky here not just for this movement of the diagonal, but the negative space shapes that are happening in here and some of the positive space shapes that are happening are really beautiful just in terms of the way they run the main idea, really stunning shot of the flatiron building.
Now, I’m going to give five or six seconds to the rest of the images when we look at the rest of the portfolio and one of the things that I am going to point out is just the way that George has work with the sky. It’s such a major element of the design and it’s really interesting in all of these images to see how it plays off of other parts of the image to create repetition or rhythm and visual unity. This is a major part of the design and then you get this that comes around and it sort of makes this circle. I love the anchor here, the reflection of the sun in the building, great job of using the distortion of the wide shooting straight up here to create a beautiful image.
I love the wing feeling here that comes off the building, such a strong archetype. The skyscraper itself is already encouraging us to look up and sort of think about the air above us in heaven. All of these sort of powerful archetypes that we might think of and looking straight up at the top of the skyscraper and I just love the way that it also plays off of the way George has used the smaller buildings in the city is an element of visual design.
The rhythm here is just incredible, it’s just amazing not only of the overall shape here of the top. I think that’s Chrysler building, but also the texture that’s happening in here and how that rhymes these textures just really sort of amazing what’s happening from a rhythm standpoint and loves the treatment again here in the black and white. Same thing here, great rhythms how these shapes that play off of the arching part of the building and then this cutoff corner here works really well in this composition for me because of this. I love that this is sort of discovery that I have after looking at the image format. This is almost sort of like the whole shot within the shot in the reflection. Really beautiful, again, the way the sky is rhyming the texture of the leaves and the cross hatching of the diagonals here and love the black and white treatment. And again, now you look at this shape in here and you look at the shape in here and then you look at the bridge, one of the most major elements of visual design in the image.
It’s just really beautiful the way that just layers up all the way through the image and really beautiful counterpoint there with empire state and this could’ve been the photo of the week too for me. I just love the play of straight lines and the angles and the feeling of the triangles and rectangles with the curving line and again. The sky comes in and just pays this image off, I love the way this shape in here, rhymes, this idea moving on the diagonal. Gorgeous portfolio, I want to say a big thank you to George for sharing this with us on the Mindful Eye and the photo of the week on the Daily Critique and I hope everybody has a great weekend!
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