Abstract

Well hello

Long time no write

I lost the log in to the site …

That’s my excuse an I’m sticking to it.

Ok, last night we was entertained by Mr. Tony Bramley.

We also had along a lass from Moulsham CC I hope you enjoyed his show.

Now, I like Tony. No, not like that …

Photographically Doh! 

I’ve been given a lot of tutelage by quite a few experts.

Tony is one I go back to …

He’s given me quite a few top shots in our club competitions.

Enough about that.

A couple of years back we had a discussion about abstract photography, and when it came up in our themes for this year, I asked if Tony could put together a show.

Yup he said.

So I went to the committee to get permission and tonight was the result.

A pity we couldn’t get it a bit further away from our competition (next week), but then again, it’ll still be fresh in everyone’s memory.

(This is just my take on last nights show, I hope y'all took something away)

He started us off gently with a guide of where he would be leading us, what should we be looking for, the history, famous proponents like Kandinsky, Western, Rothko & how they had moved along from Malevich’s Suprematism, which rejected the notion that art had to copy nature.

History books show us that Hitler, Stalin and Mao’s groupies, didn’t want this subversive crap out there, & they tried their best to stamp it out.

He explained that abstract means the disassociation from any specific instances. Whilst this isn’t a hard and fast rule, we should be looking for shapes, contrast, colours, tones to fire our imagination. Kandinsky himself said that he was looking for emotion … and that you should try to get your inner feelings into your work.

Tony put up a gorgeous shot of a gannet, and we all saw a bird.

Then he isolated the eye, part of the bill, part of the sweep of the neck and a couple of other bits of the image to show that you don’t need form to make a photo

Tony backed this with 70 plus photos, showing various aspects of the genre.

How could us mere mortals get up there with the greats?

Well, he suggested that getting in close with macro work as a good way to disassociate your subject from real life.

How about bold colours? … or the total absence of a tonal B&W image?

The last ten years or so, we’ve had an explosion of intentional camera movement, or ICM for short (Haas was doing this back in the fifties) perhaps this could be an avenue to explore?

Lately we’ve seen the sun (I thought it had left the solar system), look at the shadows cast or the way it bursts through that glass fruit bowl.

Architecture … can you do something with those squares, triangles & circles?

How’s about a panning shot of that landscape? (probably struggle to get that one in before Monday’s deadline)

& don’t forget the darkroom, (dammit, showing my age there) I mean PhotoShop, Lightroom or any other manipulative programs out there.

Do not be afraid, nothing is wrong!

It’s cool being led by someone who, not only has a great knowledge of the subject, but one who clearly has put his heart & soul into his work. (He also had along his set of abstract prints with which he won Photographer of the Year)

He also explained why we were going to struggle with our opus, our work, because people are going to judge our work by comparing it to life, looking for rhyme or reason in our submissions. Do not be of faint heart, he said.

This is going to be one hell of a competition 🙂

Me personally, I loved the show, a solid two hours of very interesting, tantalising and teasing ideas to express yourself in a photo.

(Watch out for this to come up in our Obscura challenges)