Hi every body this is Craig Tanner for the Mindful Eye and the Daily Critique.

I have a really interesting submission. Today, Mark from Minnesota has submitted five images that he has taken on the same scene. And under the back story in questions and comments, Mark’s says. I like to take pictures of American Flags when I travel to illustrate them in any places that I find them. He says, “However, it’s tough and difficult to shoot the flag in a new interesting way. So I’m submitting five different images, I just took of one flag and I want to ask you about how to creatively approach the same subject over and over again.” And he says, ”I guess I’m looking for your thoughts and creativity composition etcetera.”

So, we’ve been looking at this first version for a little while now, and I want o do is. I want to go ahead and show you the rest of the images that’s Mark submitted on this scene. There is number two and I want o get them all up on this screen at one time. There is number three, here’s the number four version obviously so far we’re coming min tighter and tighter and now we go back to a pulled out version where it’s sort of the widest shot yet. But we’ve got the combination of the flag and color in the rest of the scene in black and white.

Now, what I want to do is get them all up on the screen at one time. So, I’m going to add two and I’m going to add thee and I’m going to add four and five. First thing that I want to do is talk about Mark’s question and then I will come back and talk about the images because I think there’s something really interesting in the question here. Mark’s says he finds it difficult to shoot a flag in a new and interesting way and one of the things I would say right away is I would love to talk to Mark about the project. I hope that he sees this and he comes on and we get a good discussion going about Mark’s submission and he’s back story here. I think a lot of taking this forward has to do with the project itself. And I think if the idea is documenting the flags as you travel and putting them in a context, then we don’t have to be concerned so much with photographing the flag in a new and interesting way.

What I’m trying to say here if that if this project is about a series of images that just document the flag in places that are thought provoking or there’s a visual story that’s being told because of this selection of this particular flag and this particular place. Being very interesting all by itself, so in other words it’s interesting, so you can just walk up and shoot with the sort of normal lens and take more on the documentary shot. Then, I think that something amazing just in and out of him self could happen. Particularly if we’re talking about this project becomes a show, so that each one of these images is documentary and what do I mean by that it’s very much like this.

It documents the flag in a space that’s fascinating for the viewer. And we do that over and over again. To me, the difficulty in this work would not be so much a design standpoint or seeing in light of those kind of things. They could still be very important. But the difficulty would be in essentially finding the flag in places that just by the selection process. The places are interesting enough to carry this off. It’s a very different thing in trying to say how can I creatively photograph a flag or how can I make each flag beautiful. And I really do to make a point here which is that can become very, very difficult and become very tiresome. That could be true in our photography in overall. If we’re constantly having the sort of one up ourselves and we’re constantly pushing to just make it about beauty or just making about the idea of the design being thing that really speaks to the viewer. Then, we’re basically training our viewer to say each and every time I show you a photograph, then, it has to stand all by itself and to be really fascinating. And I think one of the really cool things about project work when we say to the viewer; look I’m not really going to hit you over the head every time.

What I’m going to do is take you on a journey and the spaces I’m going to show you are interesting and at the end thinking about the whole thing. Every time you know you’re going to seeing a flag in a setting and so you don’t have to start over. I’m not saying to you that every one of these shots is going to wow at the level of design in the way that I photograph that flag. What I am going to say to you is something potentially even more powerful than that which is a story that the viewer can make up, questions that they have because the selection of the flag in the environment is really interesting. And to me, when I look at these images, this is the one that’s the most fascinating to me because of the all of the thing that I’ve just talking about. There’s a real quirkiness with the chairs. They seem very modern and very sleek, these are very rustic.

From a composition standpoint this works really well with the chairs in the flag in the shot because to me, in addition to the psychological difference between the chairs and the rest of the shot, chairs are also visually outrageously heavy. They break the line of the structure that’s very important to the image. They’re backed by the shadows, super high contrast and in this particular composition, from the visual design standpoint, they exist in the space in a way that’s pretty balanced because of this shape up here that’s white helps to balance, that’s moving to a diagonal to the flag. I just really like the way this shape up here and the way it plays out, the positive and negative space shapes. The way those ideas if look at this, it’s the chair that’s become very big and just the feeling of the balance on this side of the structure to this side of the structure. The way you see more the roof here and very little roof here, all these things tome from the visual design standpoint are working here too in a real basic kind of way.

What’s Mark comes in, he starts to sort of work this scene and now it’s just about the flag. If I just want to talk about something being more beautiful then not from design standpoint, I would personally chuck these two and I would hold on to these two. Again, these two are very, very similar. I have a personal dislike. It’s very personal of color mix with black and white. I just take the flag and turn it into black and white an in these two are really interesting to make a documentary shot. They are also beautiful and I get hit over the head for the beauty kind of way, it’s easy for me to say.

But these two shots where we’re starting to make this more about sort selection and trying to do something with the subject. Fall apart from me, I get overwhelm with the chairs here and there’s also no enough information psychologically to sort make it this pay off to me. This is a shadow of these chairs and the square has all the symmetry and it all falls down here and I start thinking about that and it’s not really attention from it’s just something that sort of not working.

This on the other hand is coming in and doing something with a flag where you’ve got this really cool sense of design. And you got the rectangle within the shape that’s like this it’s more square same thing with the flag now in a bigger sense. You got the rhythm of the lines and the rectangles and then you have the difference in the texture between the wood and the feeling of the flag and to me that’s really fascinating.

So that’s sort of my take on several different things that Mark talked about. I like this one from trying to make this one beautiful, I darkened it. It really bring out the difference between the flag in the background. And then I darken the top right and bottom right corner to hold the high end. This is where Mark started, if I was going to work on this one; this is where I might end up. And I would make this one just black and white, now we just say black and white and then I love this, to me this is another one where those chairs are really working in the space.

That’s my take. I want o kind of stop there because I’m hoping that they’ll be a discussion. People would comment and I’ll give them more feedback about what they think and I want also love to hear your ideas about how you might approach a photographic subject. I want to save my answer to that for Mark and for the community. A little bit later in a week. I’ll do the self critique and I’ll pick an image and talk a little bit about approaching a subject.

But I really don’t think that we can take this out of the context of this idea that Mark has a project here. And I love to hear to Mark coming and weigh in about outside of just documenting the flags. What does he see ultimately doing with this and I think that question. In the same way that you ask a question about a picture, what I’m trying to say here, I think a really interesting question for this critique in this discussion is what is Mark is overall trying to say with this project. And I think that’s starts to answer the question about approach. We can talk about near to far, high to low, walking all the way around, abstract versus literal. More of a story and more layered versus something that’s more straightforward and so forth. And I do want to talk about that later in the week. But for now, let’s leave it that almost more of a question. We’d love to hear your feedback. I love this submission, I love that image.

One of my favorite photographers of all time is Joel Sternfeld. He’s a good photographer to Google in and look at his work and this reminds me very much of a Joel Sternfeld photograph. There’s something very ironic about this chairs and then the structure and the flag and I just love the story that’s being told here this is an image that really fascinates me and really makes me think. It’s very provocative both emotionally and just from the standpoint of story. Big thank you to Mark, big thank you to all of you for being here on the Daily Critique!