Hello m cole – I enjoyed your thought-provoking essay, and the shoutout, but I feel somewhat compelled to give your iguana photo a more accurate critique based on the ‘new language’ – I don’t think you’ve done your own photo justice (or used the language as precisely) so if you’ll allow me:

Your photo is not particularly “obvious” as you make it seem, I’d say it’s more cryptic, it’s nicely positioned inbetween: when I look at that it takes a moment to understand what I’m seeing – while the iguana is centered, it’s hidden and in that moment captured, I’d say the presentation really isn’t all that obvious.

As for formality, it leans formal, but even then it’s not over the top – you’ve got a center-weighted composition – in spite of the leaves and such, the energy is really coming from the middle and there’s not much else there to hold vision. But I feel your purposefulness, you placed that subject in the center on purpose, I can tell that, so while it has a lot on the frame, I’d suggest its slightly more formal than informal.

The green is certainly oversaturated—which a lot of people like –and I would not say the content is nuanced and alluded to so much as presented pretty directly – so in that case it’s “shouting” – look at me! A super cool bright image of an iguana. It’s not subtle, it choses (or you have made a choice) to be very direct in that presentation.

So even in its directness, the image is visually quite simple—there are leaves but the strong consistent color actually simplifies the tableau—my eye isn’t dragged here and there catching little bits of energy, not sure where to land, I’d say it’s a reasonably light degree of visual noise here. It’s simple.

It also feels authentic—it feels like you noticed and captured this shot, as opposed to conceptualized and executed it. That’s a nice attribute in wildlife images. I feel you saw this and I sense that delight even. You really discovered it.

It’s also nicely wabi sabi, perfectly imperfect. It doesn’t feel manufactured or hypercleaned up, it feels real, lending to the authenticity. If it felt too clean, it might look AI-generated or photoshopped to death. This has neither.

So that’s how the language would describe your iguana. And as a teacher, I’d propose the language is not limiting or inactionable. Quite the contrary, I’d say if you wanted to work on some skills, you might try this with less shouting and see what happens: can it work in black and white? Can the subject be more hidden? I might suggest the cool thing is the iguana claw, it's in the light and sharply in focus - it might be fun to darken the iguana face about a stop, so our eye goes to the claw and then a moment later we notice the big face and it's sort of an intense "oh wow!" - let the viewer freak themselves out more, the the viewer participate more by hiding the iguana more.

Maybe you don’t need to put the subject dead center—it works fine for such an interesting subject, but try an off-center composition—where maybe I think the image is of something else and then I realize it’s an iguana! And no, I don’t see multiple beats here-- there is only one beat in the image, not itself a problem of any kind, but if you want to push yourself, see if you could find another beat—something to contrast the iguana to, something else to notice that might be interesting against an iguana. (Like hiding the face more - this would make a pair of nice beats.) It’s also very “object” as opposed to “moment” – another photographer might have taken this exact same image a few moments later, watching you get it. IF you wanted it to be less object-ish, maybe you wait longer until the iguana is eating or leaping or doing something – not that I have any issue myself, but as a student you might want to experiment with ways to make the image more dynamic, more specific to you standing there, to your morning.

All that is to say, I think the language is useful to being able to describe an image as more than “pretty!” and depending on your objectives, there is a lot to be worked on if that was your practice.

So that’s a critique! Nothing even like a mechanical reproduction—I find the subjectivity and art in photography implicit and – fwiw—nice photo!