Playing with Textures { Abstract Photography Hudson Valley }


August 16th 2021
Playing with Textures { Abstract Photography Hudson Valley }

Wall Fine Art Abstract Hudson Valley Photography

I can’t believe how inspired I’ve felt lately.  Not only to create amazing portraits, but also to do some abstract work, which I haven’t done much of lately.  I’m finally starting to get more free time, and feel less stressed out at work, and thusly my photography prospers because of it.  I love creating, and it can be especially fun with abstracts when you have such a blank canvas it becomes difficult to find focal points, and put meaning into shots.  So instead I just try and make them look cool. Just kidding.  Even with my abstract shots I try and put “emotion” into them.  I realize that my abstract photography might not always have that “emotion”

in it, or that other people might not see it, but I do.  Most of the time.  Although sometimes I do just like it because it looks cool.

I do like the freedom of abstract photography.  You don’t always have to have everything in focus.  You don’t have to have the perfect skin, perfectly saturated sky, perfect black and white conversion.  It doesn’t have to mean something.  It can just be.  I really need to get back to doing more abstract photography.  I think this last little outing has tought me that coming back to abstract photography after doing so much portraiture I look at it in a totally different way.  It’s almost like my trigger finger craves the freedom.  Looking for ways to escape having to perfectly focus on a models iris.

I also get to shoot my primes for hours at a time, and can feel totally comfortable going on a walkaround with just one body, and one prime.  For this last outing I took my 85mm.  Man o man, I totally forgot how much I love the smoothness of the bokeh on that bad boy.  I mean you can see it in this shot.  The out of focus parts are as smooth as a painting.  I can’t get enough of that.  It’s hard to appreciate that kind of stuff unless you shoot lenses that are less than perfect when it comes to bokeh.

It’s funny I feel like my passion for photography is this totally fluid thing.  I always love portraiture, but there are other area’s that I seem to forget about, and then come back to periodically and totally fall in love with all over again.  It’s like I only have a certain amount of photography “juice” and it just ebbs and flows into all the other areas of photography that I love to do whenever it feels like it.  Totally fine by me.  I love being able to surprise myself with new found passion, and new found inspiration.

Did I mention it’s summer time!  Woooohoooo.  I’m so happy about it being nicer outside.

Photography Stats :

Exposure:

1/1600 sec

Aperture:

f/2.0

Focal Length:

85 mm

ISO Speed:

200

This image has a ton of work done to it.  First off I started with a fairly bland shot that was mostly just black and white and built it up from there.  I found this great little building downtown that had these great hand painted flowers all over it.  I can’t wait to take a couple there for some engagement shots, but until then this shot will have to do.  I of course did a ton of color correction on it to start with, giving it a vintage film look, added some vignette, and then I started building up about 4 different texture layers.  I simply had all 4 texture layers turned on with varying blending modes, and masked out bits and pieces I wanted or didn’t want from each one.  Layer masks are a real life saver when you’re dealing with this kind of stuff, because you might like something until you put another texture layer on top and then it doesn’t work anymore.  Also when you’re using textures it’s tempting to just erase away what you don’t like.  Again I think this is a bad idea because you’re never going to know what you want or don’t want until you get all your pieces in place.

Anyways hope yall like it.

-Dave