When I picked up a toy camera for the first time I hunted everywhere for a photogenic subject. I ended up photographing walls, bushes and what not. Budding photographers have always been plagued by the lack of interesting subjects around them. Depending on the cultural values in a specific region it may not be suitable to photograph kids or women. Landscapesmay be difficult to come by — there are electricity poles everywhere in my area and in the country-side where I reside. It’s difficult to achieve the backdrop of a clear blue sky or the silver clouds because of the pollution and haze. Well, that’s the world we live in.
It’s a different matter though that after about 1 hour of driving distance I do come across wheat fields and the likes. While photographers travel great distances and exercise extreme patience to get the right location and timing to get the magic shot, as a budding photographer not everyone has that privilege.
Welcome to the creative realm of photography. A slight different approach and everything around us turns photogenic. That’s a world where there are no real subjects. There’s abstractness composed of normalcy yet surreal. Yes, macro comes to the mind… but do not forget bokeh either. It’s actually the creative vision of a photographer that helps him achieve results which gather acclaim. So instead of putting it point-wise, this is only for those reading between the lines :)
Red by BrittneyBush
Shooting abstract also extends into ‘creating’ abstract. We’ve all gotten used to pursuing razor sharp focus, accurate compositions and the likes. How about we take a U-turn and try the other extreme? The essence lies in understanding how the camera behaves. Today optics are complex and it takes time to learn and get used to how your camera behaves — precisely what it will output in a certain lighting, composition, setting, lens, zoom-level, ISO, shutter-speed. That’s where ones expertise is tested handling these controls manually. Not only these techniques get you great results, make you a more successful photographer and widen your creative horizons.
When you are able to turn lines, reflections, gradations, shapes, forms, textures into a subject and can make abstractions out of depth-of-field, bokeh, blurs you’ll realize a new world full of countless options. Photographing abstract from your surroundings brings with is a lot of lessons and shall give you the creative edge you need as a photographer.
Stairs@Adalaj by Yogesh Moorjani
