Abstract photos

[Barnwell]

I don't usually shoot abstracts but these are for a local club assignment. I haven't posted in a long time - these look really large in the post preview.

,



C&C welcome.

[Urbanflyer]

Abstract is tricky--these have potential. If more of the slats/louvers/whatever were in focus you might find it is more interesting.

[Dave Humphries]

I think #2 works very well as abstract Paul,

For me, #1 feels too wide an angle, I can see far too much context, if I'd taken #1, I would;
a) crop from the RHS to remove the window frames
b) crop from the bottom to remove the second bit below
c) crop from the LHS so that the brightest lit edge of slat emerged from the top left corner of the composition

or zoom in to achieve that composition at the time of capture

Note that I did not say move closer to get that composition, because you wouldn't, moving closer would affect the depth perspective of the elements making the composition, probably adversely. You may well already appreciate this yourself, but I mention it for the benefit of others with less experience who may be reading.

Personally I'm not too bothered by the 'out of focusness', else the texture might also give too much context or distract.
Talking of which, in #1, the edge of the slat that looks like it was damaged and over painted falls in to that category for me and I'd be tempted to clone that away in PS (YMMV).

I guess this brings a bigger question to mind; does an abstract image 'fail' if we can guess what it is?
My answer would be 'not always'

HTH,
Dave

[Shadowman]

Nice ones.

[Wavelength]

I like both very much; nice finds indeed

[lovelife65]

These are both very nice. Like the idea and attempts.

[Barnwell]

I think #2 works very well as abstract Paul,

For me, #1 feels too wide an angle, I can see far too much context, if I'd taken #1, I would;
a) crop from the RHS to remove the window frames
b) crop from the bottom to remove the second bit below
c) crop from the LHS so that the brightest lit edge of slat emerged from the top left corner of the composition

or zoom in to achieve that composition at the time of capture

Note that I did not say move closer to get that composition, because you wouldn't, moving closer would affect the depth perspective of the elements making the composition, probably adversely. You may well already appreciate this yourself, but I mention it for the benefit of others with less experience who may be reading.

Personally I'm not too bothered by the 'out of focusness', else the texture might also give too much context or distract.
Talking of which, in #1, the edge of the slat that looks like it was damaged and over painted falls in to that category for me and I'd be tempted to clone that away in PS (YMMV).

I guess this brings a bigger question to mind; does an abstract image 'fail' if we can guess what it is?
My answer would be 'not always'

HTH,
Dave

Thanks for the comments. I will try cropping them some more. The defect in the paint does bother me but I'm not sure I can remove it very well. I just use LR. Not sure what these are - some type of coarse screens for water treatment I think.

[Manfred M]

Paul - something to keep in mind is that the human visual system can accept soft, out of focus backgrounds, but the foreground has to be sharp, otherwise the whole image tends to not look right to us.

This is definitely the case in the first image, but much less so in the second.