Recently I tried my hand at creating some abstract art with a few of my photographs. I was motivated to try it by a couple of things. First, I had plans to enter an art contest with a group that I usually enter with each month. This month’s theme was abstracts. In the past, I have entered macro photos of some of the flowers and insects and sometimes did some cropping and/or color changes when asked for abstracts. But this time, I had recently read an article about a National Geographic photographer who did a project on coral reefs and then turned some of her images into abstracts. I had already created the Snake Scales piece, I thought that overall, it was a pretty interesting idea. And I thought it might just work with some photos of things other than coral reefs or snakes.

I actually found this to be a lot of fun. One of the things I enjoyed was that I could do pretty much whatever I could imagine with these images. Unlike classic nature photography, where you’re trying to show a subject in a realistic (but also artistic) manner, with abstracts, they can look like anything you want. I really enjoyed the lack of rules or expectations and just tried all sorts of manipulations until I liked the results. I have no intention of becoming an abstract artist, but it was fun and produced some different artworks. I would love to hear from you guys and have you relay your thoughts. Do you like these, hate them, or just feel, blah? If you like them, which is your favorite? Why? Please be honest. Thanks!