While abstraction in photography is certainly more than 100 years old, probably about as old as photography itself,
abstraction is still a fairly new deal in the grand scheme of arts. With flickr groups dedicated to abstract photography
(here) and the
lomograph gaining popularity every year, abstract photography seems to be ready for some breakthroughs to shake it up, because unfortunately so many people are grasping for labels for their work that lots of what gets called abstract photography actually isn't that abstract at all. My biggest problem with most of this is a tendency to call an image abstract because it has limited depth of field and was taken with a macro lens (or micro for you nikonians out there). That's WEAK SAUCE! Or weak tea. Whichever you don't prefer. I don't have a problem with recognizable shapes within an abstract photo, as in
Paul Strand's photo from a
previous post. I don't know exactly what my problem is. I guess I have a bee in my bonnet right now.
Anyways, last week I was swinging my camera by it's strap and tripping the shutter via timer mode to get these images. These were all exposed at f22 for 1/30 to 1/15 of a second while whipping the camera around as fast and recklessly as possible. The last image isn't mine it's by Paul Strand, and it's AMAZING.
