Introduction
Abstract in photography mainly focuses on shapes,colour,texture and patterns. The viewer is often unable to see the whole object.The subject of the photo is often only a small part of the idea of the image. Viewers may only know the essence of the image subject or understand it by what you are allowed to see, often the image will not be a literal view of the subject itself. The impact of aspects of the subject become a form of expressing the point, the abstract tends to bring out some or all of the aspects: patterns,textures,angles,proximity(closeness and distance from a subject),crop(especially of segments or parts of an image), colour variation,tonal variation,shape (2D),symmetry,perspective(especially depth),reflections,highlights and dark areas and Focus on depth of field. In abstract photography there are dimensions rarely seen in other media. In other terms it mean to separate or withdraw something from something else, this term is regularly applied to art in which the artist has started with some visible object and abstracted elements from it to arrive a more or less simplified form.
Artists that inspire me
These are a few images that I took around school the other day, the theme that all these photo's are focusing on are focus and line. As you can see they all fit into the focus theme, because there are some objects that are in focus but there are also objects in the background that aren't in focus. Only some of the images fit in to the line theme for example the image I took of the tree, you can see all of the different lines going through the tree going different way etc.
The theme I have decided to focus on is line and focus, I have chosen these themes because there are many different options to take pictures of, for example trees (they have lots of different lines going through the bark) and I have chosen focus because there are many different things to take pictures of and focus on them also to have objects in the background that are not in focus which could make the image more effective.
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Whilst I was taking these images I decided to add another theme, which is light. I added light because I found that light was in the background or the centre of all my images, for example the first image, there is light from the sun reflecting on to the roof in the second image, there is direct sunlight into the lens of the camera also it is shining on to the stone chairs. The third and forth images are quite similar, they have both been taken from the ground into the grass but again there is direct sunlight shining on the grass and into the lens. On the final image there isn't much light at all but I still found that this photo still fit into my light theme, because even though you can't see the sun directly it doesn't mean that it isn't there, I took this photo from behind a tree, so if you look close you can see that the sun is behind the tree and reflecting off of it. Also they all fit into my lines theme the first image there are lines of the roof, the second image the sun is behind a tree which has created lines with shadows, the third and fourth images are of, grass which contain numerous amounts of lines. In the fifth image, in the bark of the tree there are lots off different types of lines, straight lines, horizontal lines, jagged lines etc also I took the image looking up at the tree so there are also lines from the branches. There are only five images because we thought that by taking less images we would focus more on the quality of the images instead of the quantity, which was true for everyone. If we had to take 10-20 like we usually do then we would focus more on the amount we were taking instead of the quality of out images.
This is one of my favourite images out of the 4 I have taken, because by having the sun directly hitting the lens it doesn't let you focus on anything else in the image, apart from the light from the sun and the shadow on the concrete chair and on the floor. If the sun wasn't there the audience could of got distracted by the background instead of the purpose of the image which was the light and the lines/shadow on the chair. But I still think that I could improve this image, some things that I could do to improve this image is: I could of taken the photo from a different angle, by taking it from a different angle it could of made it look more interesting because this is quite a simple image because it is just straight on and there is nothing different unusual or interesting happening. And I could of used an effect to make it more effective and different. For example if I took the image in black and white it would of made it more effective and would of added more tone on the grass and where the shadow is and more texture on the concrete chairs.
Paul Strand
Paul Strand was an American photographer and film maker helped establish photography as an art form in the 20th century. His diverse body of work, spanning six decades, covers numerous genres and subjects throughout the Americans, Europe and Africa. Strand mainly focuses on line and light in most of his images. As you can see in this image he has focused on a shadow, which has many different lines. Even though you can't directly see the light in the image the photo is made up of light, because the sun is shining through a building of some sort which has created a shadow on the floor made up of lots of lines. This image can help me to improve my images because i am also focusing on line and light, it can also help me improve my image by showing me that i don't have to take a picture with light directly in the image, but instead have a source of light shining onto an object to create a shadow with lines and also has light.
Paul Strand was an American photographer and film maker helped establish photography as an art form in the 20th century. His diverse body of work, spanning six decades, covers numerous genres and subjects throughout the Americans, Europe and Africa. Strand mainly focuses on line and light in most of his images. As you can see in this image he has focused on a shadow, which has many different lines. Even though you can't directly see the light in the image the photo is made up of light, because the sun is shining through a building of some sort which has created a shadow on the floor made up of lots of lines. This image can help me to improve my images because i am also focusing on line and light, it can also help me improve my image by showing me that i don't have to take a picture with light directly in the image, but instead have a source of light shining onto an object to create a shadow with lines and also has light.
These are some of the images that I took at home, at relatives houses and around the area I live in. In these images I have again focused on line and light, in some of the images they are just lines but in others they are of line and light, also I added focus to some of theses images, so there would be an object in focus and the background would be out of focus. I enjoyed taking pictures using tees two themes because, I could go out and explore different ways I could take images and the different angles I could take images. In one of the images I done something different and took a picture of a tap/water fountain, this may not be an obvious line but it can be see as a line, it just isn't straight it is more of half an overall.
Francesca Woodman
Woodman's photographs are based on many different themes but she mainly focuses of surrealism and symbolism. Her photography explores Gender and herself, looking at the representation of the body in relation to its surroundings. She puts her self in most of her images, although these are not self portraits as she is partially hidden or concealed by slow exposure that blur her moving figure which gives a ghostly feel to the image. In most of the images that she takes she is normally in a deserted place, or and empty room. The photo that i like the most is the one of i have chosen as an example. In this image she has used herself in the centre of the image, as you can see her arms are in the air straight this is so that she partially blends into the tree (that is why she has used some bark to rap around her hands/wrists). Also in this image she has focused on zig zag, it may not be obvious but she has created a zig zag with the way she has taken the photo (the angle) with the three trees, also she has created a zig zag with her arms and the top of her head. |
These 4 images are by Paul Strand and they have got to be my favourite images that he has taken, I find that they are quite interesting and they will catch a persons attention. I found them very appealing because of how he has taken the images, he has taken all 4 of these images from different angles. Also he has focused on the same theme throughout his images, which I think is line. As you can see in all of his images there are likes, whether there straight, zig zagged etc. This is the type of work I would like to do in the future, so I develop my original images further. I will develop my images further by using different effect's on my images, take them from different angles etc. My favourite image has to be the first image, of the stairs because I like the angle he has taken the image, because you can see what exactly he was trying to capture in the image. I also like the last image, because instead of using shadows he has changed it up and gone straight for buildings and man made objects. Also it fits into his theme of lines because of all the buildings lined up and bunched up together,I think that was because of the angle he took the image, he took it from the right looking up so it looks very dominating.
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I really enjoyed taking these few images because because I had a good them to work with, my theme was again light and line but I am now looking at an artist called Astrid Klein, she focuses a lot of her pieces on lots of line and all sorts of different lines which is also what my main theme is about. In the 9 images I have taken (above) they are all related to light and line. Having that theme made it easier to take pictures of all sorts of things around the school, also now I have Astrid Klein I can compare my images to see what I have done well and what I could do to improve. in the 9 images I think that what went well is how I have taken in Astrid Klein's work and taken on board things that people have written about her, how she really concentrates on her images and makes sure that every little detail is there, which I think I have done. I have thought about my theme carefully and made sure that all images has at least one aspect of my them in the photo, for example in a few of the images there might be light in another there might be line but there could also be both, light and line. To improve these images I could of looked at different things, things that I haven't taken a picture of before.
In these 30 images I really enjoyed taking, I took a lot of time taking them, concentrating on my theme and making sure that they all fitted into my theme. Also, after I had taken the images I compared all of my images to some of Astrid Klein's work, nearly all of them fitted perfectly, apart from a few that were smudged and were really randomly taken. I took 30 images to make sure that I got them how I wanted, at the angle I want and made sure they were not fuzzy or smudged. I deleted a few but i was quite happy with the rest of them. It was quite difficult to take pictures that fit in to my theme because of the weather, it was quite dark that day and it did start to rain which made it even more difficult because my them is partly about light.
Final Piece
I have chosen these three images to be my final piece as I liked the many textures that are clearly shown in all of the images, also I like how there is one main focus in each image as the background is not in focus so there is nothing that distracts the audience from the purpose and draws your attention to one specific aspect. I was influenced by a famous photographer called Paul Strand, although my work is slightly different to his the main thing that inspired me was the fact that his image were very simple however they are still very eye capturing, all of his images that I looked at seemed to be based on one specific object. Instead of being exactly like Paul Strand and do the same as him I have changed what I have taken the image of, as I have taken images of nature and Paul Strands images are mainly of man made objects.