Introduction to Urban Abstraction
Abstraction. A very conceptual process, the product of abstract art is individual to every on looker. Each spectator perceives the art work in their own way, some feel different emotions from the work, others see different shapes and objects. Colour, saturation, depth of field, shadows and highlights create a completely different feeling to abstract art.
Artist Work
Marco Breuer
Marco Breuer, a German photographer known for his radical approach to his medium. These three examples of his work have the same colour pallet, bronze and copper tones, but that is not the case throughout all his work. One theme that runs continuously through his work is the combination of photographic, artistic and abrasive techniques to create texturized images, see far right for example, where he manually manipulates the medium. This techniques give the images raw feelings and make them look incomplete, consequently they appear abstract.
Aaron Siskind
Aaron Siskind was an American photographer, heavily involved in the abstract expressionist movement. His take on pattern and texture include a very concentrated variety of decaying, monochrome images. Here are three select photos from his body of work, all three focus on ancient looking objects, wallpaper, mould and bark. Although all three have a similar angles, face on, the image on its own creates depth from shadows, highlights and contrast. For example, the first image, like the rest, is taken face on, yet the peeled texture of the image, throws shadows and therefore adds depth and layers to a seemingly plain angle. All of the images stir up emotions of depression and despair.
Aaron Siskind was an American photographer, heavily involved in the abstract expressionist movement. His take on pattern and texture include a very concentrated variety of decaying, monochrome images. Here are three select photos from his body of work, all three focus on ancient looking objects, wallpaper, mould and bark. Although all three have a similar angles, face on, the image on its own creates depth from shadows, highlights and contrast. For example, the first image, like the rest, is taken face on, yet the peeled texture of the image, throws shadows and therefore adds depth and layers to a seemingly plain angle. All of the images stir up emotions of depression and despair.
My photographs
Batch 1
This contact sheet is the first batch of photographs of this project, it is a collection of images that contain different textures. These textures have been highlighted due to the specific angle of the camera and the shadows the mid-day lighting produces.
Batch 2
This is my second batch of photographs. These textures are much more messy and, in some cases, natural forms. There is also a larger array of textures and patters, for example, bubble forms. This batch is a considerable improvement on the last as is displays a better selection of media to photograph and multiple angles of shot.
Edits
Below is a small collection of simply edited images from my batch two contacts. Editing these photos will give them a much more professional feel, more in depth textures from contrast and level manipulation and a totally different outcome to the image.
Editing Process
Original Edited
Firstly, as a general rule, I adjusted the hue, saturation and levels, this increased the depth of the image. To then blur the background, I selected the lasso tool and drew around the stick with a feather of 100px. Then inverted my selection so the outer would be the area changed by the effect, to blur this area I selected Filter, Blur and then Lens Blur. A menu then opened and I manually adjusted the opacity. This created a false depth of field effect.