Friday, March 19, 2010

Technique, Subject and Abstraction

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Do you ever find that after you discover a new technique, you start linking that technique with a specific subject? For example, I have found that after using pans and swipes on tall vertical trees I tend only think of using that technique for trees. While it works well for trees, it can work well for other subjects (if I think of it). One thing that helps is to abstract and associate techniques with the abstraction. For example, tall pine trees can boil down to strong vertical lines.

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While lying on the ground shooting hostas emerging from the ground yesterday, I was able to abstract and see it similar to a forest of vertical lines. I have included a couple images from that shoot here along with a forest shot from the past.

Blog_20100319_3 There are a lot of other possibilities during spring - grape hyacinths can look like tall trees with purple foliage when viewed from the ground. So get out there and see differently – abstract and try something you never would have before with a subject.