Stair Abstracts | « Waterfalls | Main | Mountain Stream by Night » |
|
To take a short break from landscapes, here are two versions of stairs that I shot in Harvard Square, Cambridge. This is what happens when I go out shooting in a city which is relatively new to me! I must be obsessed with abstract subjects. If you recall my new year's resolution, I found some interesting advice in one of the books I got for Christmas (yes, in case you're wondering, almost everything I asked for was photography-related!). In Bryan Peterson's Learning to See Creatively, he suggests analyzing a collection of your images (not including images of people) to determine whether you are biased in choosing certain elements of design. The six elements are line, shape (2-D), form (3-D), pattern, texture, and color. For each image check off which element(s) predominate in that photo, and at the end add up the number of times each element of design occurs in your collection. I don't know whether it makes sense to actually try to have an even number in each group, but I definitely learned something from doing this exercise. From the photos I've posted here, line and texture make up about 85% of my images! I had almost no shape, form, or pattern photos. Of course there is an intrinsic bias because some elements are more basic (line), and other elements are composed of them(shape, pattern, form) so you have to be careful to choose the most relevant elements. Well, I thought I'd share this with you because I found it really helpful in identifying some of my weaknesses, at least in the area of design. I plan on focusing more on these aspects of my photography.
  Hi Marty, Thanks for your comments. The image is not cropped. I actually decided to do some post-processing on the photo that involved blurring because I wanted to emphasize the lines and shapes and take away emphasis from the scratches and dirt on the stairs. Do you think it doesn't work? I think basically I wanted it to be bolder with less imperfections. Do you know of other ways to accomplish this in PS without having the blurriness effect (I am just starting out with PS). I put the image here. Posted by Gaja at January 11, 2005 7:34 PM © All images are copyrighted. Please contact me for permission or licensing. CommentsI like the top one more. The second one is immediately recognizable as a staircase, so the abstract patterns are given away for the known shapes (the brain tends to see the known object and less the abstract shapes). Colors and light are nice in both images. Posted by: Massimo at January 17, 2005 2:48 PM these stair abstracts are great! strong line direction, great colors. nice even lighting. Posted by: zerosun at January 13, 2005 9:16 AM I love these colors, and how you've used the colors to create lines. My advice for this photo would be to select the hand rails and used the Unsharpen Mask to sharpen them up a bit, then inverse the selection and do whatever you did that smoothed everything out - that way you get both sharp areas and smoother areas. Posted by: luminouslens at January 12, 2005 10:32 PM I really like the 2nd one. I'm not at all an expert, but if you want to smooth out the image a bit, you might experiment with this: First sharpen it with unsharp mask (the hand rails seem soft). Then export it as a jpg and use free-version Neat Image to reduce the noise. If you let Neat Image use it's default analysis, it often smoothes out the surfaces of the objects. Usually, for standard images, I'll reduce the amount of noise reduction from 60% to 30% or so, but you might work with it and see what happens. Anyway, it's a worth experiment where one can learn shapening and noise reduction, which is useful with the FZ20. I think the key is to turn out what you had in your eyes/mind without it being an apparent manipulation. Sort of what Ansel Adams did, IMHO. Hope this helps. Posted by: Mark at January 12, 2005 5:34 PM I have a little pink Post-it next to that exercise, and the other one about shooting the same subject from closer and closer. Of course I haven't done either yet! I'm going for the top one, with fewer distracting elements, but unfortunately it's a bit unsharp -- is it cropped from a much larger image? Now the second one is growing on me, though. Posted by: Marty at January 12, 2005 8:13 AM Cool! I mean, both about the picture and the exercise. I especially like the top image because that big stripe of orange dominates instead of the black lines, and I really think the orange hue has impact. I definitely have to try that exercise and I'll report my numbers too. :) My guess is that component I neglect the most is texture. Posted by: claire-obscure at January 11, 2005 11:29 PM That's interesting about Peterson's exercise. I was reading the same book, and the exercise caught my eye as well. I haven't tried it yet, though. Posted by: VISUAL FIELD at January 11, 2005 8:49 PM Post a comment |