Abstract Photography

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PHOTO CHALLENGE | Explore around you to look for shapes, color, and light that can lend to an abstract or sem-abstract photo.

Abstract photography is a great opportunity with creative freedom to create anything your heart desires. Abstract photography goes against many photography rules, giving you the freedom to take a photo of anything that grabs your attention and allows you to express your artistic nature. Abstract photography has a way of allowing the photographer to express ideas and emotions without the intention of creating a traditional or realistic image. By avoiding and going beyond the usual representations of an object, scene, or any particular element, it reveals details that are normally ignored and triggers the viewer’s imagination.

Elements of abstract photography that create strong images:

  • Simplicity | Harmony between elements that fit without cluttering the frame

  • Composition | Balanced, imbalanced, dynamic, static, open, closed, busy, simple

  • Light | Bright versus dark, harsh versus gentle

  • Color | Warm versus cool, vibrant versus subdued

  • Texture | Smooth, rough, hard, soft, and countless variations

  • Emotion | Any mood you can imagine, born of the elements above

  • Balance | Using the elements listed, you want them to work together, not against one another. Color, light, and contrast will show the greatest in the balance of the image. If you notice one of them before you question what you’re seeing, that would be an imbalance.

    An important question to ask yourself is, once you remove the subject, what’s left? Color, texture, light, impression.

Before you think too much more into the abstract, know that you don’t have to take it so literally, even though photography is so literal, it’s more common to see semi-abstract photos than completely abstract. That’s especially true if you ignore images which are blurred and distorted beyond all recognition; very few pin-sharp photographs are so unexpected that it is impossible to figure out any sort of subject. That’s not a bad thing, though. Maybe you can tell that a certain photo depicts a building, but that doesn’t mean it is a purely literal image that takes no cues from abstract photography. Semi-abstract work can have a lot of impressive qualities.

  • Look for Shapes, Not for Subjects

  • Isolate a Slice of Life

  • Embrace the Mystery

  • Be Willing to Experiment