Linhof Technikardan S45, Nikkor-M 9/300, Lee Orange 21, T-Max 100 (EI 200), N+1 dev in DD-X
Perfect for the season!
By the way, I take one or two pictures of the Agave every roll or two. Differing light, angle, exposure. The lab that develops my color must really wonder why I've taken a dozen frames of the same stupid cactus! I've just started with xtol on B&W at home, and there's a cactus shot on every roll there, too. This is your fault Stephen.
Don't have many abstracts. I shoot social documentary of people. I got some freaked out HDR of people, but most are just straight photography.
Here is one that may fit in...I shot it in the coat room where I was working as a process cameraman.
'Coat Hanger' 1974. Hasselblad 500 CM
I didn't like the work print and trashed it partially developed. A week later when cleaning out the trash in the darkroom I saw that it was partially solarized and the chemicals had developed into an interesting patina and I liked it. (Actually this is a recreation, the original is in LACMA) I finished processing, dry mounted it and showed it to the then curator of LACMA and they took it into the permanent collection.
That was back in the 70's when you could get the curators on the phone for an appointment. Nowadays you can't even find out who the curator of photography is for many museums...it is top secret.
I find a narrow definition of abstract as a piece has absolutely no recognizable relation to the external world overly narrow. This site says "There are three basic types of art: representational, abstract, and non-objective. Abstract art typically starts with a subject that exists in the real world but then presents those subjects in a new way"Yes I am very strict
The 'abstract' originally is a genre in painting. The point is that there is a fundamental difference between an abstract painting and an abstract photo in the way you work.
Making an abstract painting is a straightforward process. Every stroke of the brush simply adds something to the canvas until it is ready.
Making an abstract photo is much more complicated because the camera registers an image that is inherently not abstract. So you need an extra process to convert the photo to abstract, which can be done by cropping, post-processing on the computer, walking over it while it is raining, or any other manipulation you can think of.
What I say in my post #23 is that any reference to this process, or to the source of the image, nullifies your attempt to get an abstract image.
For example, you can start taking a picture from a dog, and then you modify a print from the photo using a special chemical process to make it abstract.
However, if you tell an observer that the abstract photo is actually a modified dog, then the observer suddenly doesn't perceive the image as abstract anymore. This effect is even worse when you give the abstract a title of an object in real life (for example "Lame dog"), because you are instantly sabotaging your own attempt to get something abstract. A dog is not abstract and an abstract object can't be a picture of a dog, they are mutually exclusive.
Fantastic!
Many nice pictures. But there's no such thing as a photographic abstraction. Every one of them is something objective, actually seen, something extant and then corralled, composed, and framed by the camera and our mind. To be an abstraction, you'd have to go in the darkroom and randomly swirl or blotch around developer or dyes or something like that, and not even use a camera. Pattern studies intended to resemble abstract paintings are not the same thing. And as far as I'm concerned, that's a good thing. I too enjoy discovering fugues and waves and shattered patterns in the real world, and how we either consciously or subconsciously respond to those, and how we can capture that moment on film and relive the Gestalt of it, and visually convey that same feeling to others. Sorry to go philosophical here; maybe this should be discussed under an Aesthetics thread instead. But because some on the foregoing images are exemplary of exactly what I'm trying to explain, it seemed appropriate to throw in my two cents worth.
In other words, such photographs stand on their own, and should not even need to borrow the term, abstract, from the art world. Yes, it's a convenient pigeonhole on a forum like this one. But is that what is really happening when we take these pictures - are we really just trying to mimic something else? I would hope not.
Many nice pictures. But there's no such thing as a photographic abstraction. Every one of them is something objective, actually seen, something extant and then corralled, composed, and framed by the camera and our mind. To be an abstraction, you'd have to go in the darkroom and randomly swirl or blotch around developer or dyes or something like that, and not even use a camera. Pattern studies intended to resemble abstract paintings are not the same thing. And as far as I'm concerned, that's a good thing. I too enjoy discovering fugues and waves and shattered patterns in the real world, and how we either consciously or subconsciously respond to those, and how we can capture that moment on film and relive the Gestalt of it, and visually convey that same feeling to others. Sorry to go philosophical here; maybe this should be discussed under an Aesthetics thread instead. But because some on the foregoing images are exemplary of exactly what I'm trying to explain, it seemed appropriate to throw in my two cents worth.
In other words, such photographs stand on their own, and should not even need to borrow the term, abstract, from the art world. Yes, it's a convenient pigeonhole on a forum like this one. But is that what is really happening when we take these pictures - are we really just trying to mimic something else? I would hope not.
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