"Your Assignment Is..." Photo Challenge
Now that the 365/52 Photo Challenge has ended, the Rockbridge Camera Club is starting a new challenge "Your Assignment is...", for 2022. Each month we will assign a photographic technique, and you may submit images taken using that technique.
Click here for description of the challenge and instructions on submitting your photos.
Click on the box below for the description of this month's assignment.
Click on any image to go to larger images and the photographers' full descriptions.
April Submittals: Abstracts
Chuck Almarez - Wall Texture
A Mural of Time was created over the last 100 years on the side of this commercial building in Clifton Forge, VA. The concrete, mortar, and stone have each taken their own path through time to create the many images, textures, and colors that make up the whole.
Chuck Almarez - Swirling Rust
The Flow of Time is captured by the underlying rust and the liquid shape of the missing paint on the fender of this ’39 Chevy.
Chuck Almarez - ICM+Orton
A Forest Blend was created using intentional camera (ICM) movement which, in this case, was simply rotating the camera during the exposure.
Bob Kovach - Wood Grain
This started out as a photo of several weathered wood boards. Then in Photoshop I converted to B & W and applied the twirl filter.
Bob Kovach - Sunset
This originally was a photo of a sunset, that was imported to Photoshop and made abstract by applying the noise and wave filters.
Bob Kovach - Glass Beads
This abstract image is a photo looking down into a glass vase filled with glass beads.
Taken with a Nikon D850 camera at f/5.6, 1/500 sec., ISO 400.
Taken with a Nikon D850 camera at f/5.6, 1/500 sec., ISO 400.
Ted Burrowes - Diagonals
What makes an image abstract? For me, abstraction is quite subjective and comes on a sliding scale, and an image is abstract in inverse proportion to the importance of my knowing the identity of the subject. I suspect that this first image will appear to most viewers as being fairly abstract. But if you were to rotate the image about 120 degrees clockwise, it might more quickly be recognizable as a color-enhanced close-up image of a good-sized lightning-scarred beech tree with various smaller neighboring trees alongside. Once seen that way, does its “index of abstraction” become a bit lower for you?
Ted Burrowes - Whatizit
Grapevine tendrils can easily catch my eye for their interestingly curled patterns. In this case I have attempted to accentuate the abstract possibilities they posses by using a mirror. For this image I used a single tendril set on a mirror. Here my eye is repeatedly drawn in to tease out where and why there are similarities in the image's various curls as well as why they are also different. For me, knowing that it is a tendril in a mirror does little to reduce my assignment of its “index of abstraction” - the shapes in and of themselves simply dominate my experience. And, of course, it has clearly minimalist credentials as well!
Ted Burrowes - Mist-ery
Another way to take a subject, and distill something more abstract from it, is by using intentional camera movement. Here I chose part of a bookcase at home that is illuminated dimly at night from a streetlight, and used my iPhone 13's capability to take remarkably good photos in remarkably low light. Simply moving the phone rapidly and irregularly, without needing to make any special settings, produced this somewhat misty image that my eye keeps being drawn into. Perhaps it is actually more minimalist, but I'm happy labelling it as abstract.
Peggy Fleming - Three Rubber Bands
iPhone
Peggy Fleming - Philo Birkin
iPhone
Peggy Fleming - Clock Shadow
Morning sun casting colors.
iPhone
iPhone
Lad Sessions - Gum Balls on Clouds in Snow
Gum balls on clouds in snow?!!
Sony A7III, ISO 100, 1/400, f/7.1, EV -0.70, processed in ON1 (weather, textures, HDR look filters).
Sony A7III, ISO 100, 1/400, f/7.1, EV -0.70, processed in ON1 (weather, textures, HDR look filters).
Lad Sessions - Panorama
Birch leaves in a snowy forest on Brushy Hills.
Sony A7III, ISO 100, 1/80, f/6.3, EV -0.30, processed in ON1 (radial blur, color enhancer, sunshine and dynamic contrast filters).
Sony A7III, ISO 100, 1/80, f/6.3, EV -0.30, processed in ON1 (radial blur, color enhancer, sunshine and dynamic contrast filters).
Lad Sessions - Rock Faces Along the Chessie Trail
Sometimes natural scenes can be viewed as abstractions instead of (as well as) representations.
Sony A7III, ISO 100, 1/40, f/4.5, EV -0.30, processed in ON1 (vignette, color enhancer, tone enhancer filters).
Sony A7III, ISO 100, 1/40, f/4.5, EV -0.30, processed in ON1 (vignette, color enhancer, tone enhancer filters).
Michael Smith - Abstract 1
I was playing around in Lightroom and Photoshop with some shots taken on the Chessie trail. This image started as a crevassed rock face that was transformed with different filters.
Deborah Pugh - The Unseen Portals
This image was taken with the Canon 100mm Macro lens. An ordinary leaf bears witness to all that we can’t see with the naked eye.
Canon 5D Mark III, 1/200, f16, ISO 200, 100mm.
Canon 5D Mark III, 1/200, f16, ISO 200, 100mm.
Deborah Pugh - Morning Mirrors
When you look at the morning dew and actually bring it into focus with a macro shot, the beauty and form amaze me. It is one of the reasons I love macro so much because after you see dew this close, you can never return to a time when it was unseen.
Canon 5D Mark III, 1/200, f8, ISO 200, 100mm.
Canon 5D Mark III, 1/200, f8, ISO 200, 100mm.
Deborah Pugh - Ravens Roost on the Mountain
This is an image I took at Ravens Roost and used my editing software, Affinity Photo, to split and mirror the image. Since its appearance is so changed, I considered it abstract.
Canon 5D Mark III, 2 seconds, f8, ISO 125, 24mm.
Canon 5D Mark III, 2 seconds, f8, ISO 125, 24mm.
Pat Kovach - Metal Sculpture
This was a photo of an interesting metal sculpture, with some camera motion for abstraction.
Taken with an Olympus camera at f/8, 0.8 sec., ISO 100.
Taken with an Olympus camera at f/8, 0.8 sec., ISO 100.