Another reflector photo. This one is highly cropped from the original. I like it for the colors. It’s odd; I think my writing is much stronger than my photography, but my writing draws much less interest. Go figure. Perhaps I’ve had too much trouble being funny lately.
Reflector Detail no. 3
Barricade Closeup
I had an appointment the other day to get my hair cut and colored. When I got to the salon (I prefer to think of it as the hair-cutting place), I realized I had brought along nothing to read. But I did have a little Canon point-and-shoot in my purse, so I amused myself while the hair color set in by opening the drawers in the station cart and taking photos. These aren’t very sharp; they’re acceptable only for web viewing. But I like the set. I oversharpened a couple of these—especially the hairbrush closeup, since nothing in it is in focus (and not in a good way).
These were taken with a little Olympus point-and-shoot. I hadn’t done anything with the photos until now.
Charred Timber no. 2
The Hole in My Heart no. 2
I was excited by the colors I found painted over some graffiti on a breaker box downtown. These are just cropped a little and color-corrected. I may try doing something more with them. Taken with my Fuji X10.
Breaker Box
Breaker Box Detail
Reflector
This is a better…ahem…reflection of my attempts to find interesting abstracts within objects. This image was taken with a Fuji X10 and is straight off the card, without any cropping, sharpening, or color correcting. I was taking photos of various businesses in a nearby town, including macro shots of the glass bricks in a bank window. Since this is quite near to the police station, I wouldn’t have been surprised to be confronted about what I was doing. But the only time anyone questioned me—what they actually said, from a car on the other side of the street, was “Can I help you?”—was when I was taking a series of closeups of this reflector on a traffic barricade. I said, “I’m just taking a picture of this reflector,” and rather unnecessarily pointed to it (my camera lens was practically touching it). Apparently satisfied, they drove off. Go figure.
Although I used Photoshop a lot in my job, I was never proficient at it. Now that I have access to the latest version, that’s even more true. I’m also not up to speed on a teeny tiny Samsung HD that I bought recently so that I would always have a camera light enough to carry in my purse or small enough to leave in the glove compartment. Unfortunately, my impatience overrides the need for greater knowledge: hence, playing around.
Original Image of Solar Panel
Revised Image of Solar Panel
VW Hood
Found this reflection I liked in a VW parked on Division Street (appropriate name) in Carterville. Taken with Fuji X10, cropped, no other adjustments.
Tail-light Detail
Pale Moon Rising
These pictures show some of the kind of abstract photography I’ve been trying to do lately: nonrepresentational images found whole or as snippets of other photos whose composition, color, or other qualities resonate with me the way an abstract painting would. The first image is a crop of about one-sixteenth of the original, taken through a dirty windshield with a point-and-shoot camera zoomed out to the equivalent of 500 mm. The second image is a larger crop from an out-of-focus version of the same subject. Technically, both are all shot to hell. (Pun most emphatically intended.) Do the pixelation, luminance noise, etc., matter? In these cases, I’m not sure they do. What I’m trying (and mostly failing) to do is, I hope, sufficiently outside the realm of conventional photography to skirt that problem. But the flaws bother me nonetheless.
Art only for the web? Amateur failures posing as art? (The first shot I planned; the second was serendipitous.) Not art at all? The work of a wannabe painter? It’s quite possible that these images would lose the character I’m looking for if they were printed, with all their technical flaws more apparent. Therefore I prefer to find subjects I don’t have to crop, or crop so much, and to shoot under better conditions using better equipment. Lately I haven’t been able to get out much to do work. I hope that will change.
VAPOR AND FLOW 