ABSTRACTION

But it is a pipe.”
“No, it’s not,” I said. It’s a drawing of a pipe. Get it? All representations of a thing are inherently abstract. It’s very clever.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

Want to know how to create your own abstract pieces?  As long as you have a SLR with a zoom lens the following photography tip is a piece of cake.

The key to this technique is to make sure that your shutter speed is slow enough, somewhere in the region of  1/2, 1/4 or 1/8 of a second.

This is easily achieved by shooting in manual mode, setting your ISO to 100 and your aperture anything from f/22 or wider depending on how much light is available in order for you to reach a correct exposure.

Once you reach the desired shutter speed, go ahead and focus on your subject and as you press the shutter, quickly zoom in and out at the same time.

It does take a bit of practise, be sure to clean your lens first and don’t overdo it (like me) or you may end up sucking dust onto your sensor with all that fast backward and forward zooming.

If you look carefully at the above image of Patchouli you can see the profile of two cat faces, one superimposed over the other.

The sky is the limit, use this zoomy technique on anything, flowers, signposts, people, landscapes, seascapes.  Just a fun thing to play around with and something to get your creative juices flowing again.

Doesn’t Paddy look positively angelic in the image above?

All my love

moi ♥