Mother's Against Drunk Drivingby
MrsFuzzButtComment: Greetings from the Critique Club!
I concur with all of the compliments below!
In this image, my eye is immediately taken to the sign, which is in a strong position in the upper right. it is brighter in light and in color than the surrounding objects in the frame. So you immediately have my attention and now I want to know more. Your title helps, and my eye is taken next to the cross at left, which is in another strong position in lower left. I like the fact that the composition is not 'by the book' here. It gives the image a more natural feel.
The snow really helps this shot. Perhaps I'm too literary, but snow in literature is very often symbolic of death. It is also a suggestion of purity, and I can perhaps see how Leonard was, or is now, pure and without blemish, in death.
The other elements of the image: the building, the tree at left and the shrubs, help make this a very pleasant image. So much so that I have to question the loveliness! Death by a drunk driver is usually a sad, tragic affair, yet here death seems to pleasant and pure. My suggestion would simply be to experiment and see what you can come up with by darkening it, adding contrast, etc. to get a more tragic feel. Some comments below suggest lightening the image, but I would suggest the opposite. B/W may also be an interesting choice to invite immediacy and starkness.
If it is the loveliness you want, then this image becomes ironic and very complex. The pretty colors and tones could be suggestive of Leonard himself, and then the sign up left deliberately upsets the beautiful scene and haunts the image with death and tragedy--that is isolated at that MADD sign. I find the other sign to be interesting and lovely, in a way, even though it marks death. Its tones are pretty, and it seems human made, while the MADD sign gives me a non-human feeling and thus representative of its subject: drinking while driving (in which a person becomes machine-like and non-human because his/her thinking is taken over by a non-living force).
I'm getting way out there now!
Good luck in future challenges, and with quality like this, I expect to see your work do very well!
Thanks,
David
Photographer found comment helpful.
