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 Luis who is an intermediate photographer from Georgia. And we have quite a bit of backstory here but I want to say the backstory for further along and the video presentation today on the photo of week was if I give much backstory. And all, it's going to give away something about the process of finishing this image that I think it’ll be a lot more fun if we talk about the image first and give you a chance to really look at it in a sort of and trying to imagine what Luis has done here besides just take the picture.

One of the things I loved about this image when the submission came in was color. The color to me seemed to be extraordinary and as I started to look close at the image, it thought hey, you know I think something else is going on here. and then I did read the backstory and then I was in on Luis’ process but outside of the fact that the colors are extraordinary so your sort of expecting to look at the same which is, Luis’ kitchen sink and to see a lot more chrome is just really beautiful to see. Yes, the chrome of the sink is there but then you have this feeling of more of a patented look on the silverware. And you know we could’ve sort of call this a bronzer coppered look but really beautiful the way these two metallic ideas from a color standpoint are not only playing off of each other but really helping the silverware as a subject to have a lot more dimension and depth.

I love the water droplets that are adding another layer of information, another pattern, another overlay and one of the things in loved about this image is I looked at it and sort of laying into it made it bigger on my monitor. I love this texture. So I started to really be taken at first by the color. And then I started really, be taken in by all these different levels of information in a subject matter that you know, you think of being pretty flat just shooting straight into the bottom of your sink. And then started to really be taken with these other colors, just these touches of pastels and brighter colors that are playing now with the metallic colors. And I love how some of these colors such as pastel blue, even comes up in some places on the silverware.

The other thing that I love about this image is, I love the fact that the composition looks off-handed and there’s quite a bit of tension on this composition for me. I almost feel like I want to reach in and rearrange this a little bit to sort of make it perfect particularly this utensil here, as it runs along the edge. And some of the negative space starts to sort of open up and seemed a little bit overwhelming and flat now but then, you have the overlay of the color and the texture. this is an image that I personally think with either work, either very small really well, very small, smaller than your seeing now which is unfortunate about the presentation that in this size to me is not the optimum size for this. I’d like to see it either very small or huge, well sized, something very, very big. I just have that feeling about this image.

Last thing before we pull you out on the backstory that I love about this is, just this concept of every picture that we take goes through one filter. Even if you don’t own a filter, it goes to the filter of what we believe to be true about the creative process as it relates to photography. And one of the biggest limiting beliefs that photographers have in my opinion is, this idea that their photography is connected to places that are extraordinary and how many times are we photographing the bottom of our kitchen sink? Not enough, we’re not photographing the things that are available to us all the time enough.

And the thing about looking at these things that are ordinary is, it helps us to have a better life. It helps us to appreciate just what we’re experiencing all the time instead of leaving for the vacation or leaving for the workshop or whatever it might be that we think is going to allow us to somehow engage. It also helps us to see, it juts helps us to become better at seeing when we start to look at things that maybe mundane or ordinary. And we think about things that we might do as artists, relative to those things to give them just another layer of information. And maybe it is just as simple as framing in the right way.

In this case, Luis has really had a lot of fun with finishing the photograph. And so I just want to say something about that, you know, one of the limiting beliefs that photographers have is that it all has to be done in a camera. And I'm not saying that there’s anything wrong with that approach, that’s fine if that sort of a place that you’re coming from but the reality is that really doesn’t have much it all to do with photography as an art form or medium.

Slide film is a fairly new concept and slides are sort of just started to push us in that direction, it's in the camera and also camera’s being used to documents so, the so called truth for the news and other things from a societal standpoint but, the history of photography is shooting a negative. And when you’re shooting a negative, it's a foregoing conclusion that what you do with that negative in terms of finishing and printing is a huge part of the process.

So one of the really fun thing is about the image today is that Luis shot this on an old film camera. One of my favorite camera’s I’ve ever owned and I kind of have three. This is my first professional camera I’ve ever owned. It's an 85 mm lens, F18, aptitude of that 56. Shot this is at 30th of a second and handheld. And boy, do I pay for the days when I could shoot my film cameras at shooter’s speeds that we’re lower than my focal length because you could get away with t on film.

Digital, you know gives and it takes away. It has an incredible ability to resolve detail that the price that we pay for that is any little problem in the capture process is exaggerated. And one of those problems is just very hard to overcome as handheld at shooters speed below the focal length of your lenses. And Luis shot this on tin x400 film and used window light. The window light is very beautiful here, made of black and white print then coated the print with a texture and rubbed it off in some places so you can see where after painting the texture on, his coming and he’s manipulated the texture in some places.

And then Luis got all the paints, painted the silverware sepia and then started to add some pastel colors. And then he rephotographed the print digitally and made this image. So, I love the image. I also love the process here. I love the idea of the capture. It's just beginning and love the idea. You know I’ve been saying for a while now, hey want to get a 35 mm film camera and sort of play around with film again.

I think we are going to start to see a little bit of renaissance to that; just a huge thank you to Luis for inspiring all of us to reconsider the ordinary. And the everyday, and to also be open from the belief system standpoint about creativity to all of the things that we can do after we’ve clicked the shooter. And I want to say a huge thank you to all of you for being here supporting The Mindful Eye. Hope you have a great weekend.