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Shooting Challenge Abstract Gallery 3
Me and my friend Louie went to Caribou Coffee to wake up a little before taking abstract pictures. While he was in the bathroom, I took his camera and started taking pictures of the architecture of the inside of the building. They had these weird squares lining the ceiling, and I took a picture of them. I thought it looked pretty cool, so I decided to just go ahead and use it as my entry submission! -Alec Lambert
I spent the day walking through downtown Los Angeles and decided to stroll through the LA river. I came across some graffiti on the wall and took a few pictures with my new camera. -Alexander Delgado
This is a close-up shot of a fabric flower but If you do a Rorschach on yourself you might see other things in there. -Andreas Trapper
This creature slowly flew into me as he was dying. I safely put him aside in my flowers and waited patiently for him to leave his beautiful carcass for me to photograph. -Anna Mancuso
I went down to the mall in D.C. to see if I could get some inspiration for the photo contest. My goal was the Capitol but I got sidetracked at the Air and Space Museum where I found a really neat aerial structure with a bird on top of it. Although, I was happy with the shot, unfortunately, I realized that there was a spot on my lens. I left it in the shot as it kind of fit in with the theme. -Anne Jansen
Shower curtain rings on curved metal shower curtain rod. -Anne Masterson
I took a photo of a basketball in bright sunlight with harsh shadows with my iPhone 2G using an attached macro adaptor (little tiny thing that I got for like $10.) I then tweaked some of the levels in Aperture. I like the way that the photo is enough of an abstraction that your mind can flip whether or not you're seeing tiny bumps with shadows (the actual image) or tiny dimples with a steep, dark back wall (in shadow.) The fact that you can achieve an optical illusion with it tells me it's abstracted enough. I actually prefer the illusion way rather than the real way, try viewing the photo both ways. -Ben Bunch
I was heading to an ultimate frisbee game with some friends when, in the parking lot, I saw a school bus. The sun was near setting, and the light was hitting one of the reflectors on the side of the bus in a cool way. I only had my point & shoot on me, so I threw it on Macro mode and shot away! -Brendon Klassen
These lights hang in a local privately owned coffee shop called Lit. The counter is made of stacked wood glued together and laminated. These antique lights hang above the salted brownies, which are more delicious than the name conveys. The rest of the place is very modern aside from the classic movies projected against the back wall. I was there when I read the details of the photo contest, so I went with the first thing that I saw. -Brian Chambers
The following story is true. The names of places have been withheld to preserve the abstract-ness of the photo. Took the kids out for a day of sightseeing at a popular state seaport attraction which some people would consider... "Mystic". Anyway, I caught this shot while walking through one of the exhibits, and even though it was rather dark and I had no tripod with me, a steady hand and my VR lens pulled the shot through. Some very minor Photoshop touch-up and here is the result... Hope you like it! -Chris Stanton
My husband and I went to the Miramar Aviation Museum. This photo was taken inside a decommissioned helicopter. When I took this picture, I was just thinking about how our soldiers are given the bare necessities, in terms of comfort, in contrast to commercial aircrafts, which provide cushioned seats, t.v.'s, pillows, etc... -Christi
I was looking for a way to add different colors to an abstract shot. Looking around the house, my cd collection seemed to be the most colorful. An out of focus shot was the best way to make an everyday item abstract. -Daniel J. Dovalina
I wanted to shoot my Ibanez AR-250 guitar with a bokeh effect for this week's challenge. I took some black foam core and drilled a few holes into it with a small drill bit and stood it up in front of a lamp. I kept the foam core about 6 feet behind the guitar and set the aperture wide to keep the field of depth shallow. I tried to focus on the neck of the guitar and the humbucker to make it a little more "abstract." -Giani Waghelstein
We were playing around with the reflections from the bathroom mirror and the medicine cabinet. We opened the medicine cabinet so that the reflections bounced off of each other creating a never ending path into another dimension! -Grant Magnuson
This is a large rivet in the seat of an old rusty tractor at my friend's place in Pennsylvania. This is not the shot I had intended to submit. I had planned to shoot a close up shot of turbulent water (a subject I am well acquainted with). I went so far as to get a new tripod for the shoot, but as I came to the stream I often shoot in, I was crestfallen to find that it was completely dry. -James Fryer
Ok, so this photo is not *completely* devoid of reference to the visual world we know, but it's close, especially if you're someone who (like me) can't read Cyrillic.
This photo is actually a closeup on the open cockpit of a Czech MiG-21 fighter jet. I found this airplane on display at a local airshow today, and this composition
caught my eye as I was walking around the plane. The combination of a big capital "EXPERIMENTAL," the urgent but enigmatic warning in Cyrillic , and the turquoise and beige colors
lent a real "cold-war top-secret science experiment" feeling to it.
-Jeff Miller
a
Glass of wine with blue dye and straws coming out of it. Testing a newly made light tent with flash only on one side. I had to use a really low aperture and high shutter speed because the external flash I was using had no adjustable power. -Jorge Jiminez
Picture Puzzle Perfect. I generally do not attempt to utilize depth of field in artistic photographs. I think my new camera may give me more flexibility than my old one. Maybe I should give it more thought and see what I can come up with. And maybe I didn't use this technique before because I couldn't?... But that is another reason why these challenges partially exist and should continue to do so. Get us out of our comfort zone and really learn what our cameras can do. -Kay Owens
I sat in my room with the lights off and the door open just slightly, with the hall light outside my door on. This gave me a long 1-inch strip of light. Then, I took picture and rotated the camera while the shutter was open. This was actually the first shot of many I took. -Louie Livon-Bemel
I've been really into B&W recently so I decided to go to the Museum of Flight here in Seattle since they have a bunch of WWI and WWII planes and figured I could get some nice B&W shots and abstract photos at the same time. While crossing the T. Evans Wyckoff Memorial Bridge my wife told be to take some pictures of the bridge for the challenge. I've only been married for about a year and a half now so I'm still in that whole listening to your wife and doing what she says phase, so I ended up clicking a few even though I was sure I'd get much better abstract pics of the planes. Long story short, here's my submission of the T. Evans Wyckoff Memorial Bridge. -Mark Lee
I shot this tree at about 130mm, with an exposure of 5 seconds. The result was an eerie silhouette which I was all to happy to pull the color out of. After finalizing all of the processing I thought this picture looked like a scene from the game Limbo, and I've had one other person confirm that opinion. -Matt Katzenberger
This photo was taken at the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Las Vegas, NV. When I heard that this weeks shooting challenge focus was abstraction, I knew this place would be perfect location. If you've been to Las Vegas but have never seen this building, I highly recommend it. It's truly a work of art! -Michael Contreras
A quick tribute to Lego bricks -Mike Case
I took this shot at one of Nobu's famous restaurants. If you walk inside and immediately turn around and look up, you'll see this cool looking rock wall with light bouncing off the rocks. It's hard to imagine what this would look like if you didn't know, so I can't seem to figure it out, but it seems to me like it would fit the "abstract" theme. -Nolan Gaudreau
The shot is looking inside the grill on my friend's bass amp. I shined a flash light in from a different vent to get the light inside. -Peter Duff
The pins on a VGA cable. I like to think it looks sort of like those poles that people like to fight on in Kung Fu movies. -Peter Glitsch
Made while exploring the area around the apartment we spent the weekend in. There were some piles with rubble, wood, wire fence, gauze, and other assorted sillies and junk. I made a few shots of different things, this one came out the nicest. -Pixel Snader
This is actually an ash try that i found in a swap shed that cleaned up nicely :-) When i found it, it was covered in rust and who knows what, looking much like something you would find under a NYC bridge... but i saw that it had potential, so after hosing it off out side and then washing it in the dish washer it was actually pretty cool :-) -Randi Warner
I'd been noticing a fancy but cheap plastic pitcher in my office's kitchen for the past few days, thinking about how out of place it was. Then the abstract contest was announced and I had my target! I waited until Friday afternoon when the sunlight was narrowly shining through the office's basement window and placed the pitcher directly in the beam. I decided to incorporate HDR as well for more range, so the final shot is composed of three shots and a bit of contrast adjustment. -Ryan Newton
This picture was taken on a day trip from Los Angeles to Catalina Island. I was sitting on the pier after a day of ocean kayaking and the texture of the pier seemed like it could be very abstract if taken at the right angle. I reduced the exposure on the camera way down to make it difficult to tell what the time of day and light source was. The focal plane of the picture is intentionally not centered with the shallowest depth of field I could get on the lens. -Teerapat Khanampornpan
Send an email to Adam Harris, the author of this post, at aharris@gizmodo.com.
Aug 10, 2010 08:19 PM 
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