Abstract Nature Images- How?
Edward Frank
On April 08 David Hay Jones started a thread on ":Experimental Bird
Photography" that started me thinking about abstract images in nature
photography.
An edited excerpt from a post in the series:
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On Thu, 13 Apr 2000 08:44:08 GMT, David Hay Jones
<trv....@jokkmokk.mail.telia.com> wrote:
> I just got some slides back of jays and bullfinches in flight.
>They're almost what I want, abstract streaks of color with a small
>amount of sharp head abd feather detail from the slow synch flash.
I also have taken images of birds that looked like "abstract streaks
of color" against a background. Your fill flash adds some structure
to the image, context for the mind to recognize what you are seeing.
I started thinking about the idea of abstract images in nature, not
just birds.
Why do the images look abstract? I think what makes thesse images
look abstract is the representation of time in the composition. The
blurred image represents a longer period of time than what people
normally percieve- from fractions of a second to several seconds. The
eye sees extremely short segments of time and puts them together to
form a moving image. The camera takes this time segment and forms one
image- a blurr- giving an impression of motion in a still image.
The moment of time captured by the flash in this blurr adds to the
image- it provides an identification of the subject and a
juxtaposition of two differing time elements in a single photograph.
I am not an art historian and I don't speak art gobbleeze, I am a
geologist, a physical scientist. I hope more people will add their
thoughts to this thread, even if they don't know all the proper
terminology. You even have the flash-word bird in the title line,
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When I started thinking about this idea I checked the definition of
abstract in the dictionary (Merriam-Webster, 1974, paperback) and
found: abstract, adj. 1) considered to be apart from a particular
instance; 2) expressing a quality apart from an object (whiteness is
an ~ word); 3) having only intrinsic form with little or no pictorial
representation (~ painting). I also found this definition that may be
relevant: abstract expressionism, noun. art that expresses the
artists attitudes and emotions through abstract forms. These
definitions are not meant to be the rigid definitions of the concept,
but a beginning point for the discussion. In the natural sciences you
start with a classification system, even a bad classification system
is better than none at all. The classification system allows you to
compare and contrast items within the set, and allows you to find
flaws within the classification system so that it can be revised.
That is the role the dictionary definition serves.
In general I would say that an abstract nature photo emphasizes or
enhances one particular aspect of an image, so that this aspect
dominates the photo, at the expense of other aspects of the photo in
order to create an emotion or mood in the image. . An abstract image
makes the viewer pause for a momment and ask himself "what am I
seeing?"
What aspects of the photo can serve as a basis of an abstract image or
be a tool in the creation of an abstract image? (Each time I make a
list, I seem to add another item. Input from others would be
welcome.) The aspects I have considered include: 1) Color, 2) Shape
or form; 3) Texture; 4) Pattern; 5) Luminescence or brightness; 6)
Contrast; 7) Time; 8) Depth; 9) Subject; 10) Juxtaposition; 11)
Perspective; 12) Depth of Field, 14) Special Effects. Many of these
are interrelated and are used in conjuction with other aspects of the
photograph to obtain an abstract image. Others may simply be elements
of a photograph that should be considered when composing an image.
Color- color can be used as the theme of the image. One end of the
spectrum is represented by black and white images. These eliminate
color entirely as an aspect of the image. It represents a false
reality, but at the same time many images actually look better or are
more moving as a black and white print. (I am not saying all black
and white images are abstract- just that this can be a tool to create
abstract images. This applies to the other categories also- I am just
not going to repeat it over and over again). At the other end are
images in which the colors are oversaturated to the point of
unreality. There also are false color pictures, such a landsat images
and infrared pictures, which can look very abstract. A monochromatic
image may provide a degree of abstraction. An image of pale spring
green leaves or a field of single colored flowers may create a mood.
Hand tinted black and white images should be considered as well - look
at the series of sports drink commercials on tv in which the sweat or
blood of the athelete in brightly colored (false color) against the
black and white moving image of the athelete.
Shape- .Emphasis on the shape of a single object or series of objects
in an image.
Texture- Texture is how smooth or rough the surface of an object
appears. Close-ups of texturesd surfaces are interesting as they may
not be readily identifyable as being the surface a rock or butterfly
wing or other common subject
Pattern- The repetition of like shapes or colors in a regular array
forms a pattern. A shot of a zebra showing only its striped side is
an abstract image by dictionary definition. Patterns are emphasized
when the edges of the subject are not seen. You don't see the zebra-
you see a stripped portion of the zebra. A field of zebras together
is abstract when the stipes from one abuts the next without a visual
space between the animals.
Luminescence or brightness- A dark image in which everything but a
small illuminated section are a jumble of shadows. A bright washed
out image where only a dab of color from a darker area is visible on a
field of white.
Contrast- High contrast black and white comes to mind in which the
image consists of only black and white with all of the middle tones
eliminated. i can't think of a color equivalent or low contrast
equivalent effect.
Time- As I said in my note above, people veiw reality as a series of
moving images. The camera captures a segment of time, and holds it
still in the photograph. Images may compress time- showing a long
period of time in a single image. Blurred motion photos show a longer
period of time in an image than is percieved by the human eyed. The
motion blurred bird images discussed in the "Experimental Bird
Photography" thread are one example. Another is the milky texture of
flowing water obtained by longer exposures. At the other extreme are
extremely short time segments unperceptable to the human eye. I can
think of a photograph of the small droplets formed by the splash of a
single drop back into glass of milk. I am sure all of you can think
of many more examples. These reveal aspects of an item we usually
don't see and given other elements of the photograph may yeild an
abstract image.
Scale- How much of the subject are we seeing? Very large scal images
include Arial photographs of the Earth or satellite photos. I have
some very abstract looking images shot from an airplane. The ground
below is covered by a field of white snow. Streams meander back an
forth as black bands across this white surface. Photos of objects we
normally see when taken from high altitude may look abstract because
of a difference in scale. We may know what the image depicts
intellectually, but emotionally it seems detached because it is
outside of our normal perception of scale. At the other end of this
spectrum are extreme closeups. Closeups of sections of a butterfly
wing, or SEM photographs of an insect's surface, many microscopic
images may be percieved as abstract because they are smaller than
human scale, are processed differently by our minds, are not
emotionally recognizable. These images often include other aspects,
such as pattern and texture, that may further enhance any abstract
nature found in the image.
Subject- What the image depicts.
Juxtaposition- The juxtaposition of two or more incongruous elements
in an image.
Perspective- Unusual perspectives may add to abstract qualities of an
image. One example I can think of is a series of images taken of
hydrothermal pools at Yellowstone National Park from National
Geographic Algae and bacteria in the pools make them very colorful.
Shot at ground level the photos were very nice. Some images were shot
looking straigh down on the pools. Here you could see round to oval
pools of color, banded edges of flowstone outlining the pools, and
textured encrustations of the subaqueous pool bottoms. These were
the impressive photos in the series,
Depth of Field- related to perspective is the idea of depth of field.
Using long telephoto lenses, and a low angle, you can transform a
field of scattered flowers into a mass of color. With a wide angle
lens a small object can be made to domiate the picture and overshadow
the mountains in the background. These certainly are tools fro the
photographer to consider.
Special Effects; There are a variety of special effects filters- star
bursts, fog filters, softening filters, false color filters, etc. I
generally do not like using these special purpose filters, but in a
complete discussion they must be considered tools.
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Digital Manipulation of images- The type of discussion I have started
here tend to devolve into cat fights about "pure nature photography"
and those who use "digital manipulation" of the images. These are
fueled by extremists on each side. I hope this discussion doesn't
devolve in this way. When you take a photograph you are in some way
altering the image you see. It is typically a still representation of
a moving image. It may further be changed by using filters,
polarizing, ND etc, by changing perspective, by changing depth of
field, by changing shutter speed, by changing focal length, by
viewpoint, by varying the composition of the image. So no matter how
you cut it or lable it, the process of taking a photograph, the use of
a camera, requires descisions which alter how the photograph appears
and alters the reality of the image. To say this is a legitimate
unaltered image is nonsense.
In the long (and interesting) Ansel Adams thread there were arguments
saying how is the darkroom manipulation of images by Adams any
different than digital manipulation of the image by a computer and
Photoshop? I isn't different in most ways. What you are trying to
accomplish with a photo is important. If you are trying to make the
best true to life photograph of a bird- then your in camera
manipulations and darkroom or digital manipulations will be striving
to make the most true to life imagae that is possible. At other times
you may be trying to creat a mood and the in camera, darkroom, and
digital manipulations are geered toward that end.
The disagreement between the sides lies in the degree and type of
manipulation. Nature photographers as a group want the image be as
true to life as possible with any manipulations of the image being
minor and transparent. The art of nature photography is to capture
the best representation of the subject in terms of composition,
exposure, etc, within these parameters. Larger degrees of
manipulations, through the use of colored filters, star burst filters,
and the like for color images is frowned upon by the group as a whole.
So it is the degree of manipulation that, although they must admit it
is gradational, to which many nature photoraphers object. -The degree
of the distortion of reality-
Digital people tend to have a broader view of what amount of
manipulation is acceptable. This is the problem. A digital image may
easily be flipped left to right to provide a better looking
composition. If a viewer knows this has been done, they may feel
cheated, because this view does not conform to what they perceive to
be the acceptable boundaries of manipulation. Double exposures
created in the darkroom cause a similar reaction. It is in some ways
a denigration of their "art" to manipulate images in the darkroom or
digitally beyond waht they consider acceptable. It is a personal
affront.
Using digital image editing, objects in a photograph may be removed or
others may easily be added. This is the breaking point in the
arguements. The existance of objects in the image is sacrosanct- the
addition or removal of objects from an image- aside from cropping is
unacceptable to many nature photographers- this is beyond the bounds
of acceptable levels of manipulation. Much of the animosity between
the believers on each side is because the people on the purist side do
not trust people who use digital manipulation, They can not tell
whether an images has been manupulated beyond what they believe to be
an acceptable level, so all digitally manipulated images are
inherently suspect. Digital photographers and manipulators or
inherently suspect, and not to be trusterd. Digital photographers
tend to view computers as just another tool, and are mystified by the
reaction of digtal-opponents. They feel the digital manipulation is
just an aspect of the creative process. These sides get into vehement
arguements with neither side listening to, or understanding, what the
other is saying. I believe this is a fair summary.
Please feel free to comment on anything I have said, expand upon it,
disagree with it. I am intersted in what perspectives you may offer
and what you think about the subject of abstract images in nature.
Edward Frank