Hi everybody, this is Craig Tanner for the Mindful Eye and the Daily Critique. Today’s image was submitted by Yan who is an advanced photographer from Seattle. Yan shot this with the full frames Canon marked pre1DS, 24 to 105 zoom at 50 mm and with that exposed the file for 1/60th of a second.

Starting something new today, I am going to do from time to time on the Daily Critique, I am going to start talking about the ideas connected to cinematic visual design, how we might work with that in our still photography, we’d love to hear your feed back, about whether you think that it is help full of not. So let us get right into it today.

I love the lighting design in this image, I think he understand a really masterful job of lighting of this portrait, I love the fact that the highest quantity of light in the main contrast is here in the main subject in the eyes, and the top half of the face. There is a real beautiful flow of light on the face. But this is definitely the most dynamic part of the lighting and then all those supporting parts of the image are sort of really beautifully softly under lip. And I love the catch lights from the eyes.

Also a really beautiful quality of wind and the post, really beautiful space shapes and when you look at just sort of the over all framing, over all qualities of line, over of feeling of forms and shapes and images also quite a bit of unity base of repetition. Really beautiful repetition from foreground to background in terms of the filling of the form in dimension in space shape and quality of line and that really plays beautiful off of how quality of lines in the way the model has been posed here in the space shapes. And I am really enjoying the rhythm here on the image, and very rich from a color stand point. Red and black, very, very powerful color combination. Those are the two main color ideas that I am getting when I look at the image.

For today, let just start off and talk about three very basic ideas and then sort of tie them together in some ways when it comes to the way, in a classical sense that cinema talks about designing its shots.

We are going to talk about three planes of movement, we are also going to be using toward access. So plane and access would be interchangeable. So we are going to talk about the X, Y and Z of planes of movement.

X- movement is from left to right, right to left is horizontal movement. Y movement is up and down, and Z movement is to me, the most powerful visual plane because it is where we suggest that the viewer can actually move into the design of our shot. We know that is an illusion, we know that we are just dealing ultimate here with the two dimensions. But we can create the illusion of the third dimension and in cinema this is called the Z dimension, the idea of moving through.

So, first let us talk about the X axis, the horizontal movement. You know the ideas of visual design are based on first of all natural law of the universe, things like the qualities of light at the most basic level of energy, things that we really can not change, if they do change them. Who knows what will happen but we probably would not be here anymore.

And then, other elements of visual designer, ideas of visual designer are more based on things like trends. You could call them cultural trends, social trends, things that maybe related to a period in time and history, or related to a country or a part of the world.

But visual design is not just pull from thee, it is based on the things that we experienced in our lives as human beings that will go anywhere from laws of the universe, two things that we could call sort of cultural of social laws than those obviously a lot more subjective.

And so what is really interesting about the X axis of movement is in the west, we read from left to right. So from a visual design standpoint, it is easier for the viewer to move from left to right and because of that from the earliest stage of cinema, the hero or the protagonist or ideas that would move the story forward, a lot of time would comment from the left and move to the right and opposing concepts, the antihero, the antagonist, those concepts would come on from the right and move to the left.

When we combined that with a very basic scenario connected to the Y axis which is just an idea of gravity, it is much easier to flow down hill. So from high to low or up to down is the easier movement than from low to high. It is interesting when we combined those two ideas then we can start to talk about diagonal movement and we’ve talked a quite a bit on the Daily Critique about how powerful diagonals are. So if we were to combine this to ideas and look at the major diagonals, we can draw a diagram here that might be really interesting for us to think about particularly when we are designing in the image like this, it is a post shot. It is in the studio, we are sort of pulling this shot together potentially one element at a time.

Easiest diagonal movement, so we’ll call this number one, would be from top left to bottom rights. I will put an arrow here so you can distinguish all the lines if you want to do a screen shot.

The second easiest line of movement would be what Yan has in this image would be from top right to bottom left. The next easiest one of movement would be from bottom left to top right and then the hardest diagonal line of movement would be from bottom right.

But we are now combining the idea of coming in from the right, going against the grain right to left and having to go uphill. Hardest diagonal would be from bottom right if we’re implying visual movement to top left. And what’s really interesting in terms of thinking about that in these images, we could really sort of think about these diagonals and applied movement as sort of positions in the hierarchy if we are talking about making it easier for the viewer or going more about the idea of natural law. So here, we got gravity combined with more of a cultural or social law. We could literary say it the one, two and three sin four position for the diagonals is best or easiest to potentially worst or your difficult again subjective. And we can design where or not we want to work with this. But what is fascinating about this image is we can just flip it and we can go from the idea of a two-position diagonal to a one-position diagonal, so if we flip this, we now have movement that is the easiest for the viewer. For the reasons that we’ve mentioned, and if we get rid of all that and look at these changes, just be curious to hear from Yan to hear from the model when she sees this, and to hear from the audience how you feel about the difference in the image. How do you move in the image, how do you feel about the image over all that has not affect on it.

Let us talk about the Z point in movement, we said that this is very powerful and really the two things I would think about changing in this image have to do with the Z access, for the third dimension and most of it has to do with—this is a subject matte that part of the arm and the posing cube.

This feels a little bit cut off to me, it feels a little bit incongruent with the other arm, just the lighting in the way that it is cut off, this starts to looks like something else besides the other arm for me. And the posing cube itself I question the color here. If we are talking about Z access of movement, a lot of times we are talking right in our main subject to separate from near to far and the interesting thing to me about this color is it’s sort of doing two things that might seems like opposites. But for me anyway it’s doing two things that cut down on Z axis movement or simplicity, and some areas in here, this fabric starts to harmonize some of this sort of coppered or very the desaturate combined skin tones. And so it is the same as the main subject then instead of their being an illusion of separation in this being closer, the model being in the middle and this thing in the background. If it harmonizes these two things come on powered with each other and we loose that feeling of depth on the Z axis.

But when I get out into here and this pattern and this other sort of lighter color, I almost start to get a feeling out in here of a completely different universe in terms of color. It starts to become a color in to itself, and then that starts to—on this powerful plane of movement starts to create a subject that is potentially more powerful than the main subject because it is a different on this Z axis, and so we can’t obviously move the arms around and do a pose here where I would think about a variation where we bring this arm around, bring this arm around, bring the posing cute just to get rid some other stuff.

Bring the posing cute actually closer to the camera, maybe the hands clasped when you shoot over that, creates more of the lead in with the flow of focus and line to the face as a variation, but we can change the color of this. I am going to flip it again and please hear me sad of the hideous job of changing the color. I did it very quickly and very rough. If we change that to red, what happens for me now is that the foreground idea separates from the model and the model seems to standout more on the implied Z axis of movement and instead of having a potential to harmonize them all, it harmonizes with the background which ties close and farthest away together in a way that also for me to be simplifies movement on the Z axis.

It would be just really interesting to hear what other people think about that. Hopefully this is a good start and a good introduction to sometimes on the Daily Critique talking about visual design for still photographs as it might relate to designing shots for cinema, we’d really would love to hear what you think this is helpful or not. I want to say a huge thank you to Yan for all the ways he supports the TME community. This is such a beautiful shot, and I want to say a big thank you to all of you for being here. Hope to see you again real soon on The Mindful Eye.