Hi everybody, this is Craig Tanner for the Mindful Eye and the Daily Critique, today’s image was submitted by Axel who is an advanced photographer from the UK. Axel says this is a young girl in Multan City in Pakistan and she was taking a break from work and he took this picture, shot this from a Nikon D70 not sure of the other Meta data here.

One of the things I personally find very powerful about this portrait right away is the gesture and the expression, I get a sense of a confrontation or wariness. It is a little bit in a in between expression which leaves it open to projection or interpretations of the viewer. I think that is powerful, but when you combined the expression with the head being pretty much straight up and down and looking right at us and then the hands are being sort of folded and in front of the heart.

Both of those gestures are taken together pretty guarded, pretty powerful combination of ideas in terms of body language and expression gesture. I think that is really powerful here, the other thing that I like about this portrait is the closeness side that also has the courage to come in and get very close which makes all the energy of the body language and all that will a lot more powerful and a lot more powerful here. And I think black and white is a beautiful choice here, one of the things that is really doing from me in a composition is making number one expression and gesture even more powerful, colors come with their own emotions so they can really sort in getting the way of the energy of body language and gesture of the expression.

And the other thing that it is doing is creating a very powerful rhyme or rhythm between these patterns on what this girl is wearing, which is sort of appealing through out and then happening in a bigger way, was sort of light and dark, and light and dark. It is happening down here to with the pattern of the wall that she is sitting in front of the background and I really like this in the image, it is a really beautiful counter point to the little girl. It is to me another character in the story, there is a rhythm in terms of just a form in the texture in here that runs with the clothes, there is an over all shape that rhymes the little girl herself real powerful. Just the shape at the top and just the idea of different parts of this in the lay out of a relative to the idea of the little girl, and it is also for me as the viewer it creates another level of story. I just wonder what is in the back, how does connect to her, does it connect to her visually, definitely does with the energy moving in this direction. I love that part of the image.

When I am looking at the image like this, I am always immediately if it starts out in black and white to think about variations and to me sort of altering things on a black and white shot. Number one is easier because you do not have to worry about colors being mutually depended on each other and black and white is already abstract and so much of the time. Once I start thinking in black and white, I start to get myself a lot more creative free way in terms in changing things. So I like this shot a lot, just the way it is. I want to give another version to sort of make her come out from the wall a little bit; make her more of a main subject.

And I just want to talk about a couple of things related to adding an images. One of the things I want to talk about just want to mentioned right away here. We are not going to look at the black and white image and so much of the time, what I will do right away is going to curves and this case is a great scaled image already so everything is sort f background through out to color up this down, and down as up in terms of making things lighter and darker.

Well we will go in the curves, and I will just play around with the curve in a real dramatic way, to let myself see what happens in the images contrast changes. For instants, we might just do something very, very wild like this, flat in the curved way out.

And I will start to look at some possibilities if the ton in different parts of the image and value, I start to change. What would make, this is a very radical example of a contrast flattering in big time almost sort of pasteurize look. But what happened in this image, if things to flat now that the girl is subject to come forward, what if we go in the other direction. What is that do for the image. Is it making the girl comforter as making a wall more powerful so on and so forth, and by doing very, very sort of wacky out of control things. In curves, just starting to correct something in the simple way, it can start to give us ideas about where we might go with the image.

You know it is funny to just play around right here, I could stop right here if we are open to having a postures sort of graphic interpretation of this image and I would like it quite a bit.

When I did play around in curves, what I did find to be true for myself in terms of working on this image and let us just throw this away. Is that they want to flatten out background out a little bit and bring the girl forward, and so I just want to show you the work that I did in a very rough way and then talk about one other thing in terms of editing.

Copied my background to pretend I have good work flow and all what I am doing in photo shop. I came in and I did create a curves layer that was much flatter and I applied that locally to the wall, and so that just changed right there. And again, I have done this in a pretty rough way, I am just sort of playing here today and not trying to finish this in a perfect way I came in on a blank layer, and plain it paint it with black in over lade mode to make that background grow darker.

Again, I know this is very rough and very blunt that I came in with the levels adjustment, create a little bit of a lighting effect on the face. And then I came in with levels to add more contrast back into the very flat background. And a lot of times, here is what we have done so far.

It is rough, is have done that pretty fast. But a lot of times I play like this pretty fast and then what I might do from here is save all this layers and essentially just flatten this on the top layers I just done a command shift E with the eye balls on their own.

And now everything is on this one layer, I might from here play around with the capacity a little bit. And then we can just turn this on and off to see what does doing well, it is where we started. And then if I find a pretty good blend with the work that I have done a lot of times. What I would do from here is essentially starts from here now, start over and let my self added on this version and sort of active is, this is the first version.

One of the things that are fun to be true for people that are editing in photo shop, when I watch them at workshops and stuff is, let us say that they are open to making a big radical change to an image like this.

If you do not get the original idea sort of all your plate, save it off and get out of there, and then count with the starting point and you keep going back to where you started. It can be very inhibiting in terms of letting you make the changes.

And with this paint black and white file, if I go on a little bit slower in terms of the work that I did before, we could have created this different effects and have the transmissions and the way that we applied them locally to be very same less, about taking a little bit more time of the mask. And then how much I am willing to change this from that point forward, so much of the time is if we are doing pretty good photo shop is not gathering so much on what is believable because again this is in black and white and it is abstract t begin with.

It is being more gathering with what will let our selves do in the context of editing. And a long time ago when I used to hand print all my work, my black and white color where back in the analog base. Somebody really help me a lot on my printings, and I said could you get an originals away.

Get a good work plan and then work from there, and forget about your original transparency, it would very inhabit if you could keep going back to that it allows you to drive you crazy. And hopefully couple of these ideas today could be helpful. If you have an idea on going in the curves and black and white, I am just really playing in there, looking at relationships in the image over all, and maybe getting some ideas about editing on alternate version of an image. Maybe it already works for you.

But just giving yourself some ideas about looking at the image there really sort of extreme filter of high contrast or low contrast so on and so fort. Might teach you of something to about playing in curves, which is very powerful but very complicated dialog box, and then just as idea of maybe saving of your layers and the version in getting to a new place. And letting that on almost be sort worth of a work print, and then you start to add to that and work on the layers to that, and you know we talked about this before that sort of final idea related to this idea of editing. Over time is working on things and then putting them away for a layer two three and then come back in to them.

Love this image for all the reasons that I mentioned, it is just a very, very close portrait. Very powerful gesture and expression. Love the rhythms that are happening with the texture on the wall and the patterns and the clothes. I want to say big thank you to and so for sharing this image with us on the Mindful Eyes Daily Critique.