John Valls’ work in Cuba focused on a tobacco farm and was shot over the course of six years to reveal “…the slow rhythms and quiet pleasures of daily life on Fidel’s family tobacco farm.”  (I’m not sure if that is the Fidel.)

Thanks to all my readers/viewers, I appreciate you taking the time to check out my work and all the comments over the years.  Now if I can just figure out how to grow my readership to crazy numbers!

So what does this have to do with photography?  Have I gone way off course?  The photography comes in with some recent shots I took for Awesome Toy Blog, an action figure and collectible toy enthusiast’s go to place for news, information and the latest sightings.  Sideshow Toys has a series of Buffy the Vampire Slayer collectible statues and I photographed their most recent addition to the collection, Willow, for Awesome Toy Blog.

1. Stop waiting for permission to do something awesome
2. Silence the inner critic
3. Don’t ever be afraid to fail
4. When you do fail, get up and try again
5. Remember, your ideas are better than you think they are (see #2)
6. Ignore the haters (they too are critics; see #2)
7. Ignore negative people (they’re energy mongers)
8. Stop waiting for things to be perfect because they never will be
9. Execute (remember #8)

Although these simple statements can be applied to any ambition or dream we have been putting off because it is not the right time or we are too afraid to fail they really speak to me about my pursuit of photography.  My inner critic is very loud sometimes and needs silencing.

The GVAL’s mission is to

create a venue for local artists to show their work and be recognized for their talents. The league strives to increase artistic awareness and appreciation in their community and surrounding areas.

Part of that mission includes working with local business and venues to secure space for artists to display their work and Bergie’s is one of those spots.  This is the first time one of my photographs has hung in a public place so I am not sure what (if anything) to expect.  But it is still cool.

My photograph is of a green door in the El Presido area of Tucson, AZ.  It is on the north wall of the main room.  The art will be on display through July 31st.

How the leading line is achieved and what is used to construct it is completely up to your imagination.  Railroad tracks are probably the most common example of a leading line.  But fences, roads, the edge of a building, or a row of similar objects can all make a leading line.  As mentioned in the Framing the Subject post the “rules” o f composition are not absolute so much as they are guidelines to use and expand upon to produce images that are appealing.  As photographers we have to interpret and often break or reconstruct these rules to get the images we are after.

The image in the upper right is using the yellow lines of the road as the leading line to start the viewer in the lower left corner of the photograph and leading them to the center and the sunset.

The photograph of the tunnel above is simply directing the viewer’s eye to a termination point of the light at the end of the tunnel.

Finally, the image of the path on the right takes the photograph viewer from the shade to the light and finally the museum building at the end of the path.  In this photo one could argue that the path, or the leading line, itself is the subject rather than termination point of the museum.

A good (and relatively easy) rule of photography composition to start with is framing the subject.  Simply put, framing a subject in an image is a photographic technique similar to physically framing your image in a picture frame.  Only in the case of photography you are using elements in the image to frame the part of the image that you want to draw the viewers attention to.

When you are composing your shot look for natural elements in the scene that could act as a frame for the main subject you want to draw the viewer to.  It does not need to be a solid, four-sided physical frame however.  It can be an implied frame, a hint of a frame on only 2 or 3 sides or anything you feel is appropriate for the image you want to make.  Remember the rules are made to be broken.