Simplicity in Shapes

Shooting abstract images can be as simple as reducing an object down to different shapes or colours. Our eyes take in a huge amount of detail from the world around us. From the photographer’s perspective, this often leads to cluttered and uninteresting images. One way of simplifying an image is to reduce the amount of distracting detail by focusing in on a subject. Another way is to completely ignore the usual rule about positioning and isolating a subject. Abstracts are non-representational  views of an object: you can’t tell what it is by looking at the photo. Abstracts can be simple shapes, colours, curves or lines, empty portions of the image balanced against texture or colour in unlimited numbers of compositions.

The April photo-challenge for my photography club is ‘abstract’. The only requirement of the abstract, is that you can not tell what is the source or subject of the image. The two images are up for votes. Take a guess by adding a comment. At the end of April, I’ll let everyone know what the images are.

My mother did guess the object in the second image, so it doesn’t appear to be too abstract.

Photographing abstracts can teach you how to see shapes and form from all the clutter that our eye sees. This is particularly helpful in car photography when you are trying to capture a small portion of the car: a fender, a sweeping line or colour transitions.