Hi everybody! This is Craig Tanner for The Mindful Eye in the photo of the week on the Daily Critique.

This week’s photo of the week was submitted by Abby, who is a beginning photographer from California. Abby shot this with a Canon 40D 55-250 ISO zoom lens at 55millimeter. So after the crop factor conversion, this is a short telephoto shot somewhere around 90 millimeters and ISO 200 in F13. Abby exposed the file for 200 of a second. Abby says she took a trip to somewhere near Sta. Barbara California and on the way she started to see this beautiful sort of empty grasslands with solitary tree and solitary cloud and Abby came out with the idea of friends in solitude and then took this picture.

So I want to come back to two things so far. I want to come back to the idea of titling. I also want to look at the technical information in just a minute, and Abby had some questions under questions and comments and I want to look at those at the end of the review of this beautiful image.

Right away when I look at his image the main thing that I think about in terms of visual designs is the real powerful use of negative space in this image. Positive space shapes are subjects and negative space is the area around our positive space shapes or subjects that helps to separate them from the rest of the image and make them come forward. In this image, you really just have three main subjects you have the cloud and the tree and the real powerful diagonal and then the open land down here, the fence and the grass and line of the mountain this is all kind of one positive space shape. So obviously, most of the image is the negative space of the sky.

One of the things from the visual design standpoint that I love is the way how the image has been managed. I just love this gradient from lights sky to darker sky at the top. There’s such a powerful sense of movement up in the image to the cloud and it is nice having the dark negatives space above the cloud. It kind keeps us flying out of the image at the top of the image. The other thing that I love about the negative space in this shot is that these subjects really helped to, at one time move me through all the negative spaces there is such a powerful connection here. There are also subjects that to me have a powerful effect on people psychologically just at the level of becoming more contemplative or slowing down. So from an architect type standpoint the solitary tree in the field, solitary cloud in the sky could work with a lot of negative space.

To me, so much at a time negative spaces is a place of image where people can go to be contemplative and it also just suggest this openness that allow psychologically for us to have an emotional response to an image. There are a lot of things to me that really make all the negative space pay off. It might not be as interesting of an image of the solitary subject it doesn’t have as much psychological impact and let’s just say there’s no cloud, so we just have a lot of negative space basically pushing down on one subject. I think another thing that’s very powerful here is not only are these subjects are diagonal they’re on the diagonal, the easiest diagonal for us to move on in the image we want to start here and we want end up here that’s very powerful.

In addition to the solitary tree and the solitary cloud being very powerful, to me there archetypes that are suggested here that really lend themselves to an image that have a lot of negative space where we can be contemplative. The shape of the cloud itself starts to represent an archetype that’s very powerful to me this looks a lot like a wing right when I look at it or I can see the shape of other things that are possibly animated or alive in this shape. Now the other thing is you have the archetype of light to dark or you can think about beginning to end and the connection between clouds and trees. You also have the connection of just the repetition of these two shapes.

The other thing that I love in this image is that the other idea in a very subtle way if I start—come down to the bottom up brings me over to the tree in the way that is sort of congruent with how we want to move. We like starting higher and moving down to a lower space and you have a sense of that on the mountains. You also have this beautiful simple sort of ghost of repetition of the fence that’s another archetype, very, very powerful once the viewer will get to it. That obviously we take on more weight in a bigger print.

To me this is just a stunning image. It is a great example of simplicity working really well. It is a great example of negative space working really well. It is also a great example of a two simple but very powerful visual design concepts. Working the major diagonals and specifically working the diagonals that have the most visual weight because of how we move to the frame, and also repetition and also archetypes they’re important.

Here are the other things that I want to mention. Let me do the technical thing after I say what I am about to say. Titling you work—to me it’s so powerful. Shooting to a concept is powerful. It’s not the way to work, the only way to work, but it is a way to work. So coming up with concepts first and then going out and shooting to them. Letting a concept, frame your shooting session and becoming visionary in your work. You know there is a school that just takes documentary pictures or whatever.

At this point of my life, I couldn’t be any bored with that. And the truth is a lot of what happened to documentaries connected to news and things like that and most of us have already figured out that yesterday’s news and looking at that has turned into a sick form of entertainment on this planet. That is not making the world any better and we also know full on good and well now that looking at old pictures of horrible things don’t decrease the odds that those things will happen again in the future. They increase the odds dramatically that they’ll happen again. So why not understand how valuable framing is and in our own creative process why not get conceptual, why not frame our shooting sessions with our vision for the best that we can be instead of just going out and reacting. I think it’s a really powerful thing to consider.

On a real basic technical note, I might not stop down this shot. This is just out there you could focus to infinity. I would encourage everybody when you hear this if you have the time in your day to do a Google search for your lens and see if you can find the diffraction chart, study with your lens so that you’ll understand where your lens is the sharpest and that you are not stopping down and get a range of really horrible reflections on the lens. I don’t know what it is on this lens but what I know a lot of the lenses that I own a F13 overall is not very sharp at all, so just a thought on an image like this that may look really beautiful in huge print.

I just want to wrap up with some questions that Abby had here. Essentially, as a whole series of questions she send out, “I wonder if this image is too simple and I wonder if it would works?” I just want to say this at the end. My hat is off to Abby and all the people that contribute like this to TME. It takes a lot of courage to share your work. We just had a weekend event in Atlanta and we have those critique session and there were probably 10 people that had never put their picture up before and we talk about the fears surrounding that. And there were people said they literally felt physically sick when their image came up and we started to do the critique. And so it’s nice to just recognize the elephant in the room. We all have a lot of fear around sharing our work because we don’t want the love that we’ve put in to these things to be rejected and most of the time that’s what this fear is all about. It’s just the fear of love being rejected.

One of my favorite quotes of all time I don’t know who said it is that “Great love is never rejected”, because if we do something from a place of really loving it then we get the benefit of enjoying it to begin with. If we can keep coming back to that and just put our stuff out there that we love and then let mystery or whatever take over from there then we’ll keep coming back to being in a space where doing the things that brings us joy. What else is there? At the end of the day there’s anything else, there’s nothing else of value. We would kid ourselves. There’s no other value in life, there’s only being enjoyed and then taking out to the point of sharing with somebody else so that they can experience joy. That’s it at the end of your life I guarantee you I’ve been there at the end thinking that I was dying. Those are the only things that you’re concerned with whether you were true to yourself or whether you helped other people be true to themselves.

And so my hat is really off to Abby who submitted this image. She’s questioning image but she has the courage to share it and this image has a big impact on me and I love it and it’s beautiful. I am curious to see what other people think of it. In the beginning, as a photographer when you’re starting off it’s just like anything that we start off, we’re unsure and the only way to get to a point where you’re more sure is to have the courage to share.

And so I just wanted to mention that. Again, thank you to Abby. Thank you to everybody that contributes to The Mindful Eye. It takes all of us working together to make it work and I hope all of you had a great weekend hope to see you again really soon on to my blog.