Hi everybody, this is Craig Tanner for the Mindful Eye and the photo of the week on the daily critique. This weeks photo of the week was submitted by Edmund who is an intermediate photographer from Massachusetts. Edmund submitted this image as part of The Mindful Eye’s community assignment board. And this was submitted for assignment No.5 and it was a conceptual assignment and it was just the word added to so people that wanted to participate in this assignment used that as a concept and they can interpret it however they wanted.

And I just love this image from Edmund. Let me give you a little bit of backstory here. Edmund shot this on Canon Mark 2 N. he shot this with a 24-105 zoom lens at 24 mm and was shooting from a tripod and he exposed the violet F4 for 1/6th of a second. Edmund says that this is a self portrait taken in a garage and he was trying to convey a menacing, mysterious attitude or personality and he work with harsh lighting and a low camera angle to do that.

And you know one of the things that I love right away about this image s, I love color and I just love the complementary red and blue, or red and cyan fro the printers color wheel. It dominates the color scheme here, very, very powerful. Something else is really powerful. You get a real strong sense of red and blue almost everywhere in the image. I mean this is generally blue down here. There are few other colors to give some more dimensions but overall, this is blue and the whole background id blue.

And so another thing this needs is when a third color idea does come in here, skin tone and this hoody which is grey, it really helps to even though Edmund himself is not the most dominant color. It really helps to bring Edmund as a subject. This is a self-portrait. It really helps to bring him forward in the image. And the other thing that this grey does is it creates a visual sea level of color. I talk about this quite a bit. When you’re using a real strong color it can be really powerful to have it in there, that is true grey, wether it's true white or true black it just creates a baseline for the other colors and it can really help colors to separate in a very powerful way. So I just love the way Edmund’s working with color here.

He mentions his lighting set-up. I love this harsh lighting, you know Edmund is going for this menacing feeling and it's not only the high contrast of the lighting that really sort of has attitude all by itself but it's also the archetypal of villains being lit like this where their eyes are in shadow, the real strong top light. You think about the Godfather movies is a classic movie where the villains have the top light and the eyes go into the shadow.

One of the things I love about the lighting here is the fact that even though Edmund has this real strong top lighting when you come in to the shadow under the hoody, I’ve to work a little bit but then you see that the eyes are narrowed just like the mouth. And that really draws me into the space of the image. it's not obvious, the shadows makes me work but there’s detail in there and t really draws me further and further into the image and so having some shadow detail in the areas that could be really important to the image very, very powerful.

I love the low camera angle here. yu know one way to create heaviness or put more weight on a subject is to shoot low to high and have that subject sort of you know over everything because as things that are on the top of the frame have a lot of weight because of the idea of gravity. It's easier to move from high to low than it is to move up in the frame and t works really well for athletes and people that were sort of trying to put up on a pedestal whether it's we’re trying to put them up on a pedestal and show sort of any kind of form of power. The low to high camera angle can be a very effective way to do that but just so many things they’re working really well here.

I want to say a big thank you to Edmund for creating this image. one last thing that I want to mention about this image is just open more time remember this is a self-portrait and the concept of self-portrait to me is powerful on so many levels but let's just talk about this level today. Edmund has created a story here, and if you’re willing to get in front of the camera and you’re willing to become a character in your own story. The story of your pictures, you’re always available as that character and it really expands in my opinion your creative horizons as a photographic storyteller.

A totally different energy here but amazing attitude nonetheless and this one was submitted by Cindy who is an intermediate photographer from Texas. I love so many things about this. The gesture is just outrageous and the fact that this girl is wearing a cast and still skating is just incredible. And the backstory Cindy let's us know that she’s written “Never Stop Skating” on her cast. The quality of light here too is really just simply amazing. It's creating so much dimension here. It almost looks like this has been set-up in a studio with a key light, just a little bit of high and coming n with a 45 angle with the beautiful lighting here and then a real nice shadow here, very dimensional.

I love the paint here, Cindy says she took a bunch of shots painting and there are only a few where the girl was sharp and she actually had to composite too here to get the board and the girl sharp in this shot. So love the feeling emotion on both in the background and the hair. I love this up here to give more dimensions to color and the rhyme to the skateboard. It's really beautiful the way this sort of book ends the shot. And this case, with all of these energy moving in this direction, I think it really works here that she’s coming from top left to bottom right, on a diagonal, and there’s more space out here sort of a classic way to deal with implied motion, a great image on a lot a levels from Cindy.

A great image here from Dave, who s an advanced photographer from Colorado. This s a shot of his personal trainer and I love in this case high to low camera angle. I know it goes against a little bit of what I was saying before but what’s really selling the attitude here is the expression that showing the struggle against the weight or the really hard work, or the determination however you see that. And when the camerae over here, the graphic simplicity is very, very powerful using the floors as a background. The lighting and the color treatment here are also really pushing this in the direction of something that’s very historic. And when I think about determination or tenacity, I think about something that’s just sort of singular and single minded and historic.

And I think the way Dave has shot this really goes along with that.

And then last image here that we’re going to showcase is From Peter. Peter was the one who came out with this assignment. He’s from Sweden and what a great shot of this color, the black and white treatment is brilliant. This just looks like a demon faced, someone just challenging you and I love the really beautiful framing here with the cloud here, cloud here, a little push back in framing with the trees and a print. You should see that this is a house and the car looms over the house, which is a really powerful idea. I love these other reflection of the trees here and the way Peter’s working with the quality of light. Real neat image, a lot of great images for this assignment.

And again I just to say a big thank you to Edmund, who’s picked as the photo of the week, very, very hard to choose from these and thank you to all the people that are participating in our community on any level. A big thank you to the people who participated in this assignment and I just really challenge you to give back in some kind of a way. And a really powerful way to do that is to submit to the assignment part of our community. When you show up and you do your best work, in this way you inspire other people to do the same. And t can be way more helpful than you can even imagine to just submit a photo. Not just to The Mindful Eye Community form obviously to any way to participate and show up is just a real powerful form of giving back with your photography.

A big thank you to al the people that make The Mindful Eye work by showing up and sharing. I really appreciate it and hope to see you again real soon on The Mindful Eye.