abstract color

Well, I started off simply enough with a plan to post a black and white image of a live oak leaf shaped like a heart. I’m ending up with an image created this evening using a prop martini glass, an LED light panel, the iPhone 7 Plus, Lightroom, and Photoshop. If not for it’s being my turn to post on the Daily Photo Game, this guy wouldn’t have come to visit. Also sprach Zarathustra.

The morning sun rises hard on the east coast of Florida. There is light and shadow with not much in between. It causes random things to take on a lyrical significance for fleeting moments before the elements move on. A new light is shed on the ordinary jetsam of a previous day’s work. 

I love the collision of styles in this image. The abstract blocking of plastic strips hung from the dock ceiling combine with impressionistic and accidental imagery scratched and stained into the sheets of plastic. Like piano keys, they play a visual kind of music. The textures and Rorschach shapes contained on the plastic have a life all their own. I see a courtyard with two windows, alien faces, hands, a illustrative figure on a city street and a cacophony of abstract color and shapes. I have attached a magnified view as well. The compositional form animates well with diagonal linear and lyrical flowing design elements to move the eye around the otherwise formalistic grid structure. Backlighted color pops the complimentary blues and yellows keeping the attention centered in the composition. Discovering and capturing this image at a defunct paper mill was a real pleasure. The more time I spent with it during post-processing, the more I appreciated its subtle beauty, in an gritty industrial kind of way. As Robert points out, the remnants of what used to be, are good fodder for photographers. Enjoy.