PHOTOGRAPH AND ABSTRACT ART - WALKING THE FUZZY LINE
Do not adjust your screen. This image is out of focus on purpose. I've been experimenting again. Having some fun walking a fuzzy line between photography and art. Abstract art in this case.
When you were a kid, did you ever stand still and squish your eyes half closed to look at a scene? It makes everything blurry and simple. That kind of visual play seemed pretty normal to me as a kid - I did it all the time. I look back on it now and wonder if I did it instinctually as a way of eliminating excess detail in a scene that seemed too cluttered. A simple way of making visual art perhaps.
I still think it's a valuable technique for finding the beauty in a scene. It has the effect of distilling things down to the basic elements - composition, colour, line and shapes etc.
The image above was taken on a road I drive along often that runs alongside a field. There has always been something about it that I find beautiful. Strangely the photos I've taken of it for the most part I find unappealing. The other day I realized that perhaps it's because what I see as I zoom along it in the car is not the same thing as what my camera captures when I stand still at the edge of it. Flying past/through a scene in a car has a similar effect to squishing your eyes shut. So for fun, I stopped and decided to try taking a photo out of focus.
It worked! Suddenly I can see the beauty again. The image becomes all about the colour palate (cool winter blues, white and tans), the lines (of the road, telephone poles and the bushes at the edge of the field) and the shapes (lovely round and layered bokeh from the sparkling ice on the tall grasses and bushes).
I know this image doesn't fit with the others I usually post and I would be the first to admit it is unpolished - falling rather haphazardly someplace between art and photography. But there is something about this that appeals to me.
If photography is an art form, why should photos only be in focus?