Recently, I’ve been trying my hand a some abstract photography using the Kowa MFT lenses. In particular, using the buildings and landmarks fro some of the places I frequently visit. Even the most mundane of buildings can create an interesting abstract image if you crop in to a small area – Try using shadows to your advantage to create further abstract shapes within a shape. Applying filters to create a more artistic feel can also help produce a more abstract image.
For me – photographing abstract images, I give my self two options, either look for the abstract image intentionally and use a longer focal length to crop in to the building and take the shot and fill the frame with the cropped image, or create a wide angle shot of the building or landmark and crop in to the abstract shot afterwards in post processing. If you are going to try the second method – you need to make sure the overall image is good resolution and sharp – depending on how much you crop, especially if you intend on printing the final image.
An abstract image doesn’t have to be cropped – you can create great abstract images with wide angle lenses – it’s all a case of looking for interesting angles and textures to create different tones and shapes in the final image.
Below is a selection of abstract images taken with the Kowa MFT 25mm and also the Kowa MFT 8.5mm – see if you can spot which one’s started out as an abstract shot – or were thought about later!
In Photoshop I added a grainy film effect and some vignetting to add to the creative feel.
