Abstracts, an evening at home
Abstract photos are a way for me to see the world a little differently. They are good exercises in composition. Can I make an interesting photo out of something ordinary and uninteresting?
A good photograph is a living thing, not literally of course, but it should have a sense of life to it even if an inanimate object is portrayed.
I speculated that every living being must have 3 parts; structure, motive power and control. So for an abstract to have some life to it, it must have these three elements as well. In photography, composition is the structure. The structure must have a sense of balance, it can be symmetrical or asymmetrical, but balance is the overall sense of harmony in the structure of the scene.
Motive power is the sense within the picture of movement, a direction of purpose. A movement of the eye from out to in.
And finally the focus point is the control, the thing that brings all the other elements together.
In seeing ordinary objects as extraordinary we give them life and make something interesting out of something uninteresting.
You can see these in hi-res here.
Every artist needs a philosophy
When I was a kid everyone used to tell me what a great artist I was. I was very good at drawing and copying what I saw. My eye hand coordination was excellent. I worked at 6 Flags amusement park doing portraits and caricatures during the summer. I was pretty good. But I wasn’t really an artist.
Art is about the expression of truth as the artist sees it. When I was a kid I didn’t understand much of anything, I had a good childhood and I just went along with the flow. I had no great truth that I had discovered about myself that needed expressing.
Truth leads to understanding and understanding leads to the ability to live in harmony. That’s my point of view anyway. So I have set out to understand three truths. One, understanding the truth of nature. Two, understanding the truth of my fellow man. Three, understanding the truth of myself.
With the desire for these truths firmly entrenched as a part of me I can now follow my feelings about what I see to guide the camera. What I see is filtered through my emotions. I need both a philosophy to filter that emotion and the technical skill with the camera to capture it.
If you want your art to have more meaning, you need to have a deeper and more meaningful philosophy. Technical skills alone will not create great art. Your philosophy needs to be something that is unique to you for you to have a unique creative eye.
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