Hi everybody, this is Craig Tanner for The Mindful Eye and The Daily Critique. Today’s image was submitted by Debbie who is an intermediate photographer. She said she shot this at Mona Lake in California. She said was really drawn into the idea of this being such a calm and beautiful place but then having this real strong feeling of the rock crane and rough texture the top formations that you'll see if you go to Mona Lake.

Debbie shot this with an Icon D318 to do a millimeter zoom, 44 millimeter focal length so I'm assuming after the crop factor this is sort of very short telephoto focal length. And Debbie shot this at ISO 200 start down to F11 and 133 per second was the shutter speed. Under questions and comments Debbie says that her first instinct was to stop down even more go to a slower shutter speed and soften the water but she felt like that rough formations needed the balance in texturing a water.

And so let's get ride into it. I want to get to Debbie’s question in just a second. One of the things I love about this image is color right away. I'm really enjoying colors that are more tertiary and starts off like a classic blue or an orange at sunset. These are more painterly colors, this blue-green down in here in somebody pastels in the sky instead of the classic primaries. These painterly colors can almost ride out of a gate with color give the image and feeling that’s more extraordinary. So I'm really enjoying the play of more painterly colors here. I think it go really well to with more of this so real sort of lakescape here in the top formations.

The other thing that I'm enjoying this is another good image to comeback to this idea of implied flow of energy. I'm really enjoying that one time the repetition of this feeling of the line, of the top formations and then the cloud. But I'm also enjoying how the movement from one subject this rhyming to the next subject, to the next subject is dynamic and if we talk about implied flow of the movement, again this would be a contouring line. And then we could say, “Well, what’s the implication is if we’re just sort of connecting dots from one subject to other.

If we look at—let’s say high energy point on this subject and we could definitely say this two areas would be high energy points. And then we circle one of the high energy points out here and maybe a couple in here. What we were seeing is that if we were to connect the dots, if we were to say that a view it might move from here to here that that movement is dynamic. It’s happening on diagonals. And instead of doing this, instead of having energy centers for one subject to the other, let’s say that all get lined up in a vertical line. It could be horizontal line to depending on the image, but in this case we have this sort of stocking vertically of ideas.

And at this powerful energy centers started to be on tangent with other high points of energy, then we can start to get an implication of a wall of high energy points that are very static, and we could imagine that might block the flow of energy. It also might remind the viewer that hey, you know really, there is just the X and Y access here. This is really all you got.

And when we start to have flow of energy, this moving more an arch or moving on diagonals, that kind of movement can create the illusion that you actually can get inside of this photograph that this is near, this is further away and this is further away. So I just want to continue to talk about this idea of implied flow of energy. Another very practical way to think about is to just go into your image and circle some areas that are high contrast and high energy from a color standpoint so on and so forth then connect the dots and just see how at this skeletal structure of the image things are playing off of each other. Is it dynamic, is it static so on and so fort.

To answer Debbie’s question, I agree with her approach here at least to my eye. I really think that the top formations are being help by the harmony of the high contrast texture in the rough up water. The interesting to see another version of this, I mean obviously once subject that we would lose on the longer exposure would be the gals and the gals are really cool they're real small in the video but they are there and they're mimicking this movement line that’s repeating, that’s huge part of the design of the image and a bigger print, that really come forward.

But I really do like the rough up texture of water here with the tough and in some respects. I sort to think about it like this. These all has the rough texture sort of about 2/3 of the image and this part is the simpler part. And that really gets me down to the point of perfect world change, it such a beautiful image. This is one who are definitely would look at a tighter crop on the panel and that could just be very subjective, so I want to make the critique today about something is really practical. And that is how you like think about cropping and also really paying attention to the feeling that you get from negative space that you might include at the top of the image, remember that the top part of the image before we even add anything at all under the frame has an enormous amount of visual light because of gravity and that’s through everywhere on the planet this top part very, very visually heavy.

And I'm constantly asking myself about how I cut images at the top. Particularly if I’m going to start to leave quite a bit a negative space, the last positive space is the clouds here and then we have all of these area where there is really sort of no detail is just negative space. And if I want to get practical about thinking about that one thing that I can quickly do is say, “How this play off of the bottom part of the image does from the balance standpoint? Do I need this much to feel a sense of balance?” And just looking at it right now you could say in summary stock there is almost the same amount of sky at top is there is water below this lower formation. And for my eye, that starts to be a little bit static. In some respects, you can say that there's a little bit more and when the top the frame already having so much visual weight, I start to feel like this area that doesn’t have any other subjects starts to take over a little.

What I would like to do is slow down a little bit more and experiences the texture in the feeling of going out to this island so on and so fort even the gals. And so if I go to crop tool out and I crop down from the top and actually come quite a waste down very, very close to the top of those clouds. What happens to my eye is I really start to slow down on the subject on the lower part of the image and something else happens. I start to feel more of a sense of dynamic balance from this lower part where you have the rough texture to the upper part this more arterial.

Remember, this is a panel crop so in terms of overall relationships and subject placement is not rule of thirds anymore it’s more like rule of fourth or rule for fifth. So having quite a bit more of this rough part it just a little bit of the feathery area part at the top is going to be more congruent with the ratio of the framing device. And the birds are going to come forward more.

Let's just go back and forth and you can see what you think. So really and the lot of respects, this critique is about something very simple. It’s about looking the negative space at the top of the image and cropping from the top. It such a beautiful image to start of with. I’ve been to Mona Lake several times and it’s a kind of place where I've seen lots and lots of great shots and then when I got there I thought, “Wow, this is not an easy place to shot.” And I think it’s very, very difficult, I think Debbie has done a wonderful job of framing this and working with really beautiful quality of light and moment, all kinds of things that really working well here. We want to say huge thank you to Debbie for sharing such a beautiful image with us on The Mindful Eye Daily Critique.