Friday, July 18, 2008

Abstraction



The next monthly assignment for the Bay Area Photo Club (www.bayareaphotoclub.org) is "Abstraction". I've looked at a few definitions and examples of Abstractions on the Internet and I'm still not confident I get it. Certainly an abstraction has to be abstract and to me that means something not easily recognizable for what it is or possibly something easily recognizable as multiple things. This photo is of a stone column taken at a restaurant I ate at last night. I took the shot with my Lensbaby which blurred everything except the center of the shot. I didn't feel the shot was abstract out of the camera so I created a hard mix blend layer in Photoshop CS3 to help with the Abstraction process. I'm not that sure yet if I like how the pic turned out all that much, but I think I do. Also I'm not sure that using Photoshop to assist in the creation of the abstraction would be looked upon favorably by the club's judges on presentation night...but I have to start somewhere. I would really appreciate any comments about the photo itself or about it's applicability to the assignment!

2 comments:

Jan Klier said...

Interesting assignment. I think your photo works as an abstraction for me.

I can imagine two ways of approaching the question of abstraction:

1) And this applies more to art - you take a photo (or image) that has some structure to it, but one that is not readily apparent. Or in other words you as the photographer do not pre-impose any particular interpretation of the image when you create. Every viewer is free to take the visual and create his own interpretation.

2) This one borrows more from the business world - you take something that is very specific or detailed, and you generalize it to where it can be applied to more cases then just the one that you started with.

If you think about it, both definitions do the same - they take something specific and remove the specifics so that it can be applied more versatile - whether it's your business process, or how the viewer interprets the image.

I had that experience many years ago. A good friend of mine paints abstract paintings. And I fell in love with one of them and bought from her. It still hangs in our dining room. The interesting part is that it has this big red spot in the painting, which is otherwise mostly green/blue. Somehow I always connected with the red color there, so much though that it took me a long time to realize I always hung the picture upside down, because I had come to love that spot int he bottom left corner - not where my friend had painted it....

So back to your picture. Had you not told me in the post what it was that you took a picture off, I would have never guessed. My initial visual connection was one of fire and embers. Possibly part of a housefire in its later stages. Or some red-hot steel rods somewhere....

Nice work.

Barry Armer said...

Thank you Jan!

I feeling better about the image based on your comments. I think your approach to abstraction and mine are very similar at the core, you just did a much better job of expressing yourself than I did. :-)

Cheers,
Barry