May 15, 2016

Blurred Tulips

Just came back from shooting black (and white) tulips for an upcoming foto contest.
After doing the obvious stills from the bouquet I went wild with some long-exposure experiments with moving camera. Lots of shots, little satisfying results - but I knew from experience that you have to be patient.
Two shots came out in a way I liked: The first one called "Tumbling Tulips" was shot at 1 second during which I turned the camera:

Tumbling_Tulips_96966

I like the dynamics suggesting a vase tumbling over. But I can assure you: no flowers (or vases) were harmed in this experiment ;-)
The second shot was of the "drop the camera" type at 1/4 sec. Called "White Space":

White_Space_96960

The colors and contrast was tweaked in post-processing. And naturally the images needed some amount of cropping. But everything else in these compositions comes straight out of the camera from a single long-exposure shot..

May 05, 2016

A little abstract

Well, here we go again: is "abstract" absolute? In my opinion absolutely not! There are so many degrees of abstractification when you look at photography.
And if you define an easily recognizable well exposed subject in a full color photograph as the most realistic image (although lacking 3D) then anything from a black-and-white conversion or a crop that masks the true nature of the subject is already somewhere towards the abstract.
On a scale from totally realistic/easily recognizable (=0%) towards a fully abstract image (=100%) I'd rate the following perhaps at only 10% abstract. It depends a little on how fast you recognize the subject. Enjoy!

Turbulence_96732