All images are abstractions.

Found this in Kit White's "101 things to Learn in Art School" (The MIT Press, 2011) as lesson #14:
"All images are abstractions.
Even photographs. They are never the thing pictured; they are a conceptual or mechanical reproduction of a thing past. This may seem obvious, but it has everything to do with the way we perceive and use images. As pictures are symbolic assemblages of forms, recognizable or not, they are always metaphors. Metaphor is the medium of symbolic language and is the language of art. Realism in art is anything but. The greater the art, the greater the illusion."
---
Kit White accompanied this by an own image after Rene Magritte, a creator of great illusions and metaphors.

Square Seascape, abstract

Searching for the abstract in photography is not always easy: because unless you defocus the lens or do some weired post-processing photography tends to reproduce reality. So where's the abstract coming in?
Well, the following might be an example that needed only a little tweaking color-wise to lead the eye/brain into seeing something different than the subject I was reproducing here. It also has the interesting side-effect of working better when viewed small: The larger you view the image the clearer it becomes what it "really" is.
I also used the square format to make the geometry pretty simple and not distracting from the colors and textures.
But anyhow, I hope you like it:

Spiralling what?

Well this one is not too hard to identify, isn't it? Hint: it's not a snail shell. So it must be a staircase.
Still I like the strong geometry and the almost monochrome colors, which btw. were tweaked here to get a little more dynamic in the violet and the green on the right - which I like as a contrast to the black, grey and white of the staircase. Enjoy!

Rusty Landscape

Finally hit some nicely abstract subjects while looking through a burnt-down barn. This was a partially rusty metal plate. Which I don't see too often: either the metal is fully rusted or only afflicted at the edges. But lucky me....

Abstract Forest

Today I was out in the snow looking for some interesting trees or images from the snowy forest. I shot the following with the idea to isolate single interesting trees out of the plethora of trees.
But I ended with another idea: to give the trees in the wood a ghostlike appearance.
So beware: this image was heavily processed and is not at all like "reality" - which defines it as "abstract"!?



Should be viewed in larger size. Click through the image to access to the original 7360 pixel wide shot.

Back to orange

The thing with rusty metal is that it creates beautiful orange colors. So I revisited one of my favorite installations at the old King Ludwig Canal near Nuremberg. The autumn sun was shining bright and brought out all the lovely shades of orange on this sculpture. My goal was to render it as "flat" as possible to take the three-dimensionality away. So I went for 200mm focal length at f11 - and if I had a tripod with me I would have even gone to f16 or f22 to eliminate any hint of dof.
I just wanted color and some simple geometry combined with an interesting texture.

Rhythm in black and white

These are some of the ugliest places in a wood that I know of: a coniferous forest where spruces were planted much too tight and have grown over the years to form a dull and uniform looking thicket.
But nonetheless there are photographic opportunities to be had and one of those image I shot today shows the rhythmic aspect of such a wood.



Just click through the image to get "the bigger picture" ;-)