About a month ago I attended a presentation on Abstract Photography at the Joseph Miller Center for the Photographic Arts in northern Virginia. Joseph Miller stipulated that the “subject” of abstract photos should not be recognizable: “What do we mean when we say “abstract”? Here is one definition: “An abstract is characterized by non-representational designs depicting no recognizable thing, only geometric figures of color and form.” An excellent discussion of abstracts can be found here. Until this presentation I had seen many a photo of mountain layers at dusk or dawn that were labelled abstracts, and probably labelled one of my own as such. With this new definition in mind and the idea a presented in the linked article that abstracts are everywhere, I thought I would try to post one abstract photo a week! To start out with I will post two I took last year, one from an experiment that I did almost 2 weeks ago, and one from last Saturday, but I will not be telling you the subject! I invite you to post your guesses in my comments (be sure to identify it by number) and when someone gets it right I’ll reveal the story behind it.
March 27, 2012: Ok, this may be hard, so I won’t wait for specifics – give me your best guess! I just received notice that this photo was a juried selection for the Second Annual Joseph Miller Abstract Photography Exhibit for May 4 – 28, 2012 at the Joseph Miller Center for the Photographic Arts in Gainesburg, Virginia.
March 21 2012: Just a quick upload before heading out super early tomorrow morning to drive to Charleston, South Carolina (about 9 hours – ugh!). Perhaps the better question for this one is whether or not it can be called an abstract photo – I suspect it is easily recognizable. Hope to have more to upload when I return.
This is an old wheelbarrow that I have lovingly used for over 11 years hauling rocks for rock walls and a dry creek bed, and more compost, top soil and mulch than you can imagine! I made use of full sun to get all the color, then punched it up in Abobe Photoshop CS5 simply by setting the black point on a curves adjustment layer. It was not saturated beyond that. I composed it on the diagonal to add some interest, and tried to capture the age of this tool by including the dented bottom. Technical Details: Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 24-105mm f/4L IS lens at 105mm, 1/320 seconds at f/11, ISO 100; on a tripod.
[caption id="attachment_292" align="aligncenter" width="520" caption="2. What is it?"]
Laila Zekiros
15 Mar 2012Hi, Deb. Great post and link. I would have guessed shovel for #4. My guess for #1 & 2 is the bucket (scoop-thing) of a loader. ???
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15 Mar 2012Hi Laila! Thanks for your great guesses! I suspect that #1 and #2 could be any old rusted steel thing, but I found the object photographed in a boat “graveyard” on Tangier Island….
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12 Mar 2012Hi Ron! Thanks so much for stopping by and being the first to guess! You nailed the 4th one – definitely a rusted wheelbarrow. For the 3rd you got the polarizing filter, but the subject is so very ordinary…. The first two are definitely much harder, and although the first appears to be a steel girder it is much larger and this is only a small part. A hint – they are both the same item, just taken from a different angle. Thanks again and really happy to hear from you!
Ron Nicol
12 Mar 20121. Rusted steel girder with hole
2. Rusted pump and casing
3. Stressed plexiglass with polarizing filter
4. Rusted wheelbarrow
Obviously you’re good at abstract photography because the only one I’m pretty sure of is 4.