Hommage a trois (2): Peter Doig

Peter Doig impressed me with his "blotting technique". He uses it to add structure and light to many of his images, like the blots of light in his cabin-series or to add some foreground like falling snow like in his image "Blotter". I remember an image where he almost hid the scene behind a curtain of blots or streaks. This adds a nice layer of abstraction to an image but also can have the effect of pulling the observer in - because you try harder to look through the front-layer.

My tribute to his technique is this
Night Tree:


I only used a gradient mask to desaturate the colors at the bottom and make the night-sky blue. But other than that there is not much post-processing going on in this image.
It is a photograph of ice on a canal with a tree-like crack in it and blotches of snow.

Enjoy!

Hommage a trois (1): Georg Baselitz

Well, Georg Baselitz is certainly not into geometric abstraction, but his famous trick was applied here: turn everything upside down.



And when you look closely at the lower left corner you can see my reference to this famous artist.
(As always: clicking through the image to the flickr-page and then selecting "All Sizes" gives you the chance to view this image larger)

Hommage a trois

I've been touching on abstract paintings and how I found some inspiration there.

In recent years I visited exhibitions of three modern painters:
- David Hockney: Images
- Peter Doig: Images
- Georg Baselitz: Images

Hockney is certainly the artist most closely linked to photography as he worked with photocollage, used photos as originals for his paintings, and played with perspective that seems clearly inspired by photography. I was also astonished seeing some of his larger works assembled from a multitude of canvasses, thus "stitching" huge vistas together. As a corollary his art is not too abstract as you can easily identify the subject of his images.

Doig has clearly some "photographic" influence in his work esp. with regard to light and shadow. I like his series "Concrete cabin" (see one from this series here) where the bright sunlight blotches the trees of a dense forest and a glaringly white concrete building is shining through the wood.

Baselitz perhaps is the odd artist here with regard to photography, but he is famous for his style of painting his subjects upside down and thus giving the observer a fresh perspective. This is somethings that works equally well in photography and is not even easy to detect: I once saw an abstract photography that was obviously based on wave-patterns on water. The artist had turned the image upside down and he admitted that I was the only one remarking on his trick.

Abstractification through B&W: Is it a conversion?

have a look at this photo:

Snowtree:


What's your bet: is it reproduced in (its natural) color(s) or is it a b&w conversion?
Well, I can tell you: there is not much of a difference here. This image was "converted" to b&w but it looked almost the same in color (after application of a suitable white-balance).
This is (again) a case where the artificial abstractification only emphasizes what is already in the picture. I think this is a major point if you like to abstractify photos without "overdoing" it.

The other interesting observation is the absence of gray. There is not much gray in the original image and I used no curves to separate blacks and whites any stronger. The only post-processing apart from the b&w-conversion was setting the blackpoint at around 64 (255 = white)

Lenses, Reviews

Yeah, hardware is what makes a photo, right?
Well - at least lenses are necessary*. But not sufficient to take good photos.
That's why I'll delve no deeper into this subject here than to direct you to some of my reviews at Camera Labs:
Nikon lenses
Sigma lenses
Tamron lenses
Tokina AT-XD 80-400mm 4.5-5.6 review

So if you ever wonder what I think of the lenses I use and those lenses I gave back/sold, have a look over there...

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* unless you take photos without a lens

(Curved) Glass and Patterns

Here are two examples I captured in Auckland. What astonished me most was the distorted reflections in the windows of the high-rise. This is an indicator of how curved the glass was and adds a nice layer of abstraction to this images.

Glasshouse:


Reflections:

Two Examples of Geometric Abstraction

If you look for it you can find some opportunities for creating (semi-)abstract images without the need to rely on any post-processing, reality-modifiers or camera-tricks. It's what I call abstract reality.
What do you need for this? Well, just the right subject, an interesting angle of view and the right framing. It works on the brain simply by taking away the 3rd dimension plus any well known reference-subjects depriving us of the sense of size and perspective. There are some classical examples from macro-photography, but the following image shows that extraordinary magnification is not necessary.

Rhythm:


If you recognize what this structure is the image does not seem too abstract at all. But I bet you did not often had a view like that. So how long did you take to identify this structure?

Here's another, very obviously called Grid:


I used b&w-conversion here to strengthen the sense of abstraction. I find myself often combining different methods for abstractification to achieve a greater overall effect. And it seems that certain images lend themselves more to one or the other method of abstractification but I have to think a little more about it and find some good examples (mental note to myself: reserve for future article)

Btw.: It is mere chance that both images are of man-made objects who's regularity lends the images a strong sense of geometry and pattern. So remembering my article About Abstract Art you could classify this as "geometric abstraction". Trying this with a natural subject tends to produce images more of the "lyrical abstraction" kind.

And another remark: Pattern can make for very interesting images, even if used in a very realistic context. A nice example is the winning image of the "CORRIDOR" challenge over at Nikongear. I'll come back to this in another post, combining reflections and pattern in high-rise buildings.