After about three and a half months with only two short photo trips I finally managed to get away and shoot again.. it felt great to be outside wandering in search of strange and beautiful things. I went out to Utah to explore some areas I'd visited years ago and wanted to reshoot/explore, and met up with Guy Tal, Marc Adamus, and Jay Goodrich. Good times.
Here's one of the weirder images I made, a detail shot of natural plant oils floating in a small pool of water in a deep gorge in Escalante National Monument. Marc secretly timed how long it took me to compose the image... 45 minutes! What can I say, I get lost in the details
Thanks for your thoughts!
Canon 5D2, 24-105mm, 4 exposure blend for depth of field
Comments
37 commentsEva - yes that's one of those little fluffy seedlings, I find it gives a sense of scale and a simple anchor to reality without distracting too much from the psychedelic soup of colors.
As for the comp...that's quite a marathon for one shot. I've spent many hours waiting for the right moment, but never that long composing an abstract. Not my favorite of yours, as I'm more partial to your tree monster photograph, but definitely your style. And it is with out a doubt, unique.
Just kidding mate. Nice scene and well done with the composition. Personally, I would not have the patient to stick around very long for a detail picture while being in a place what could offer more possibilities for bigger views.
gio
Gio - I like the bigger views too, but I find it's much easier to make something creative, unique, and different with more intimate photographs like this. And as Marc mentioned, this kind of stuff was really the gem of the day. Truly inspiring scenics/views are very, very few and far between IMO. As far as print sales go too, I've had just about as much luck with these kinds of abstracts as with grander scenics -- in fact I've already sold a print of this one!
Regards, harry
Definition of abstract, and the coolest thing it is natural. Very creative to visualize this.
Paul
I love the patterns and intricacy of shapes and color - the blend looks very natural - did you use any software or manual blend?
Brigitte
Curious why you needed a focus blend on what appears to be a relatively flat surface.
This is pretty wild. What a great collection of colors. The display looks like some contemporary, speckled linoleum or some wild, travertine tile. In fact I never would have guessed this was liquid if you hadn't described anything.
A question for you. This is basically a flat surface right? The plane of focus is just exactly the surface of the water. Why would you need to blend for dof? The only thing I can think of is that you weren't shooting straight down to where your film plane was parallel to the surface? If you're at an angle to the plane of focus then I could understand the near/far focus and depth coming in to play. Just curious man.
Lon
Lon/John -- I had to shoot this at an angle, because otherwise the colors of the sheen wouldn't show up (and my camera would cause a shadow in the sheen). Thus the need for the focus blending.. you'd think it'd be easier to photograph a flat surface, huh!
Chris
Make you an offer I guess, right?
Almost like metallic chips floating about and heck of job seeing and capturing this one. This will fit in nicely with your portfolio.
Well done Floris
Guy