Week 3
This project is moving towards 365 Days Of Strange Abstract Photos
Monday 17th January
Abstract Composition With Ginko Leaf
This composition came into being after seeing a reflection in the screen of my mobile phone. I photographed it with a Pentax Q camera and then played around with it in Affinity photo. I liked the repeated patterns I got from layering the reflection over itself but felt it need a natural element too. Looking through my back catalog I came across a macro shot of a Ginko leaf. This is the result. I deliberately didn’t clean up the dust in the leaf image as I felt it went well with the grainy texture of the background.
Tuesday 18th January
Architecture
One of the things I love about Pentax DSLR cameras is that Pentax have not changed the design of their K lens mount since the 1970’s. This means it is possible to pick up old lenses for a snip. Of course they are often only usable in full manual mode but I like that. It takes me back to the days of film. The lens for this shot was a Pentax 80-200 mm M lens which I picked up for £25. The lens build is solid and everything was clean and working well. I took this shot of the now empty Debenhams building in Bristol. It seems that I’m getting more abstract as the weeks progress.
Water Bottle
This water bottle was perched high above the street on the roof of a building. Something about the incongruousness of the bottle’s placement attracted my eye.
Wednesday January 19th
Abstract Docks
The Bristol docks are always a good source of imagery. There are people, buskers, and water. Water and the way light plays on it offers so many options it is always good to photograph it.
Rear Of The M Shed
I came across this image while searching for somewhere else in the area behind the M Shed museum. I liked the semi abstract nature of the subject. Something inside something else, layers. The colour also attracted me on a grey overcast day.
Thursday 20th January
Butter Dish
This muted image of a butter dish placed in the centre of an alcove in a friend’s kitchen has a sort of monumental quality. I think this is partly due to the minimalist colours in the kitchen and the clean lines around the dish. Very much a case of less is more.
Form
Focusing close and taking an everyday object out of its normal context opens up possibilities. Again an abstract image derived from an everyday domestic object.
Curtain
The light pouring through this curtain suggested something quite other worldly. With a bit of manipulation in Adobe Lightroom I was able to get this image. It has a sort of Gothic quality.
Tines
The simplicity of this image is arresting. I like the subtle play of shadows behind the black tines.
Conversation In A Lake
Couldn’t go a whole week without some more direct human content. This was shot at the lake in Eastville Park, Bristol. The lake itself was still partially covered in ice after a few nights of freezing temperatures. The ice with a layer of still water on top gave the lake surface a mirror like finish. The bright colour of the scarf that the woman in the photo is wearing caught my eye. Rather than point the camera directly at them I chose to use the lake to form the image.
When I started a 365 project back in 2015 I was very much aiming for street photography and people. Since the pandemic I’ve become much more wary about pointing a lens at strangers on the street. I don’t know if this is something that has been caused by the enforced isolation of lock downs or something else.
January 23rd
Masks #1
Masks have become an aspect of everyday life. Not only on faces but strewn around the streets. I have no figures to prove this but I feel they must be becoming a serious pollution problem.
This one was in the gutter of a quiet back street.
Mask #2
A few yards on in the same street I found another one. It looks like bladder wrack washed up on a beach.
Mask #3
Again in the same street just a yard or so from mask #2 is this specimen. Although it is starting to look like the road surface it is not going to decay anytime soon. To me these protective coverings that are now littering the streets represent the quandary of modern society. Everything is disposable, however although thrown away these masks are still with us.
Having said that there is a certain beauty in these objects that have now become rubbish.
