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 Lewis who is an intermediate photographer from Maryland who says, “This image was taken off of the major highway exit ramp. I pass the area everyday on my way to work and waited until the right moment on a rainy day in early spring to capture the image with some tweaking in light room, I feel like it conveys the beauty of early spring.” Lewis shot this with Olympus E 520, 14 to 40 zoom and ISO 200 in F8 expose the file 438th of a second.

One of the first things that I wanted to mention here was just this idea that that this is not a destination image, it’s just not the national park or the state park. This is something that was on the way and I just really encourage you to think about cultivating a mind set or belief system where you start to more often than not honor this voice that really connects to something that’s so powerful than all of us just a sense of wonder, a sense of appreciation, a sense of gratitude, a sense of being here, a sense of showing up and to say yes to these kinds of moments as photographer. It’s so easy to see a scene like this and to think I can't park on the exit ramp. This isn't really practical. This is just in the middle of nowhere. I will go to the state park or I'll go somewhere else and I see something else like this and we all know that it doesn’t work that way, that every moment is unique, every moment is miraculous, it’s just amazing and the more we can be here now and show up in our process. We’re going to be on the practical level and more creative. We’re going to take more pictures but I also think it really helps to grow a mindset where we do start to become more connected because we spend more time and states that are very empowering for us and bring us a lot of peace and joys, states of wonder, states of appreciation, states of gratitude.

The other thing that I wanted to mention here that’s very, very practical is just this idea of Lewis picking this particular moment. This is something he’s passing. He’s choosing this moment because it’s rain. And what does the rain do for us? It comes in and creates a feeling of a very rich color and rich tone. These things that are dark that can take on the water, start to get more saturated with the water. They get darker and they start to appear to be more rich. You're getting a real powerful sense of that at the red budding towards this close and also the darker branches that are close. This is such a beautiful image at the level of colors.

Another practical thing that we can talk about is the beautiful complimentary color pair of red and green. I'm loving that red and green, they’re color opposite from the painting color wheel. One color is, I feel like they're kind of towards us, cool colors recedes. They start to create an illusion of three dimensions that the viewer can move through the image. Another really beautiful color here is that red plays very beautifully with black, it has a strong sense of black in these branches. And we even moved in these light-green areas to areas that are so bright but they start to feel white. And red also plays well with white, red-white, and black, real powerful triad of color ideas.

The other thing that I'm really enjoying about color in these images, I get a sense of color separating. What do I mean by that? You get a sense that there's a primary red here and then I move into another area that’s very dark. And in some of these shadow areas, there is more of a sort of a blue or cool feeling. And then I get to some areas that feel like pure black. You get to somebody’s white that get so bright that it feels like a pure white. Instead of having an overall color cast that ties all the colors together in a way that rubs the image of depth.

In this shot, I get a real strong sense of the different colors separating, a sort of being in their own space. And that again brings me back to this feeling of being able to front the level of color move through the image.

The other thing I'm enjoying here that’s very classical basic idea and a visual design is one of the major diagonals being played here and also just the sense of a pattern of a pattern of overall movement on diagonals. In the same way that color depth, color separation can create an illusion of being able to move through the image, these diagonals. And now, the contouring diagonal lines and also the implied movement in between in the background the positive space shapes and the different shrubs and trees and also the negative space in between those positive space shapes, all of these diagonal movements sort of angulating movement on diagonals really starts to create a feeling of being able to move through.

Another thing that I wanted to talk about today is that this image isn't just a pattern study, it’s a tapestry study, it’s very complex in terms of the field of visual information. And I love the subtlety that’s been created here and another level of depth in this tapestry shot is very deep with information. And that these ideas that are close or sharp but the ideas that are behind or just out of focus, this is more arterial back here but it’s subtle. And I’m really loving what's happening here with either, you know, just depth of field or depth of field and also Lewis’ treatment. This is one where I’d be really curious to see what Lewis’ just capture and look like if he’d be willing to put up a length to that or share some other version of that file with us.

And the other thing that I wanted to mention is, you know, the Daily Critique is an ongoing sort of basic to basic intermediate class and the theory of visual design. And I really sort of honing our ability to describe why we feel a certain way about an image and I really believe that that helps us in the process of composition if we can verbalize it and then we can start to conceive pre-visualize at every level of the process that can really help us to see. So, it’s not about the right way to see, it’s really more about developing the tools at the level of language to be able to think through when we want to do that work about our image. And we’ve talked so much about simplifying. You know, we talked so much about the potential power of just one subject and cleaning things up. This is another way of saying that’s very complex. And so, I just would encourage you, maybe as an assignment, or maybe this will be, let’s say the assignment for our community, assignments to try to shoot images like this where you are working with more information.

This image is so complicated that for me I do finally just get to the point where I just say it just feels right. I can't really break the whole image down. I can just say that I don’t want to change anything. It’s not perfect from the pattern standpoint. It’s really interesting if I started to try and make it look like that and I might think about more of the dark branches down in here but for me just the way this is, it feels really beautiful. So, I just wanted to mention that idea between the differences, simplicity, and something as more complex.

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Again, I want to say a huge thank you to Lewis for sharing this beautiful image with us and I want to say a big thank you to all of you for all of your support at The Mindful Eye. I hope you have a great weekend. I look forward to seeing you again real soon on Mindful Eye.