October 21, 2012

Abstract Nature

Today was one of those typical misty autumn days. I went out with the agenda of capturing "fading colors". Went home not satisfied with the "catch of the day" - but I needed to look closer and change my angle of view a bit. Found this in one of my shots and did some subtle post-processing to enhance the features of the shot. I also decided to frame it square, not only because on G+ today is #squaresunday (curated by +Tom Golson and +Ken McMahon) but because I love the neutrality of the format: it's neither "landscape" nor "portrait" so is gives little indication as to what subject you're looking at. This came in handy when I created today's abstract in yellow. You cannot immediately judge whether you're looking at a tall object or a wide one - which adds to the abstracness of the image. So here it is. And I hope you like it, the colors, the textures... Abstract 50268

October 02, 2012

Abstract paintings and geometry

When visiting the day of the open studio "auf AEG" in Nuremberg I came across Gerhard Kij's studio with lots of very interesting abstracts like the following one:

Gerhard Kij 59807

It's rich with many details that make you want to wander through the image taking it all in, but it is not too wild regarding colors and it has an inherent geometric structure that makes you think of something derived from real-world architecture. The interesting thing was that next to this image hung a painting that was clearly "based" on some realistic tunnel or similar building. So somehow this image spoke to me as a photographer as it had some likeness to scenes I'd love to shoot.

Could or would I make a photo like Gerhad Kij's image? Certainly not! But it is interesting to see abstract paintings borrowing from real-world geometry. Which in turn means that us photographers should not let us keep from achieving abstraction only because our forms mostly come from well-known real-world subjects.

Visit the artist's website at www.gerhard-kij.de