Winter Trees by Deborah Ritondale

This month, NYI Associate Dean Jerry Rice has written the Photo of the Month Review. Jerry's keen eye can help readers decipher any type of photograph. A lifelong lover of fine photography, when Jerry talks about photographs, everyone at NYI listens. We know you'll enjoy Jerry's observations on this month's photograph.

At NYI we teach our students a simple Three-Step Method for setting up every photograph they shoot:

• Step 1. Know your subject.
• Step 2. Focus attention on your subject.
• Step 3. Simplify.

This simple Three-Step Method is the secret of every successful photograph ever taken. We teach our students to consider these three steps every time they look into the viewfinder. To consider them before they press the shutter button.

When our students mail in their photographs for analysis by their instructor, the instructor starts by commenting on what we call the three Guidelines. Of course, the instructor analyzes other elements of the picture too — focus, exposure, filters, etc. But the key to every good photo — and the essential element of every great photo — is adherence to these three Guidelines.

How do they work? How can you apply them? It's beyond the scope of this Web site to teach you every nuance, but you will get an inkling from the Photo of the Month Analysis that follows.

Winter Trees

Photo by NYI Graduate Deborah Ritondale

At the beginning of every Picture of the Month article NYI has duly informed its readers of the familiar NYI Guidelines that apply to all photographs. I suggest that you familiarize yourself with them if you haven´t yet done so. Then, as you read the evaluation of this month´s picture, see if you can identify the use of the guidelines as you study the photograph.† It´s a good exercise and it will prove to you that you thoroughly understand the concepts we teach.

This month´s photograph, made by D. Ritondale of Briston, Virginia, makes excellent use of converging lines in three different ways: the automobile tracks in the snow, the fences on either side of the road, and the trees lining both sides.† Repetition in any form, whether by subject matter, by shape, by color, or whatever, will almost always strengthen the picture just as repetition in writing, music, dance, etc. will reinforce the original concept.

Although the original photograph is in color, the picture is essentially monochromatic and made up of various shades of gray ranging from dark to light.† The one obvious bit of color seems to be the yellow road sign advising us that the speed limit is 15mph.† Worthy advice, too, considering the icy road conditions that seem to prevail in this wintry scene.

This picture makes obvious use of geometry (the leading lines) as prime compositional elements.† But surely the shades of gray, coupled with the modicum of yellow, serve to establish the mood of the picture.† And what is that mood?

That is something that you, the viewers, must decide.† Moods, and feelings in general, are subjective to the nth degree.† Artists can suggest to you, even give you specific direction, but you ultimately know how the picture affects you.† Chacun à son goût (each one to his own taste), as the French say.

I personally feel that there is some sense of mystery here, a feeling of the unknown or at least unexpected. I wonder what lies at the end of the road, but I dare not hazard a guess.† The road ends at the horizon´s vanishing point, but it is shrouded in fog.† And fog, beautiful as it may be, carries with it a possible dread, unanticipated peril. Some, like Carl Sandburg, found fog enchanting. "The fog comes on little cat feet/it looks over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on."† The whimsy, for Sandburg, may have been evident, but for me the fog has an ominous quality.† What about you?

The snow itself displays yet another mood.† Read what John Greenleaf Whittier wrote about winter. "The sun that brief December day rose cheerless over hills of gray, and, darkly circled, gave at noon a sadder light than waning moon."

So many poets have found so much to say about the effects of winter, so well portrayed here in Ritondale´s photograph.† But I think Robert Frost summed it all up neatly when he wrote, "whose woods these are I think I know/he will not seem stopping here/the darkest evening of the year," and, "the woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep." For all us—you, me, every one of us—miles to go before we sleep.