Circular

by Lori Arnold
(Salt Lake City, Utah USA)

A photography experiment, this is the capture of water movement, Colored Glass and light.

I think the outcome is unique for sure... It has a lot to leave for the imagination...

What do you think? Maybe strange? Sometimes strange is ok…

It is meant to be abstract.


(For convenience, all links below open in new windows)
Lori's picture is indeed abstract.

With abstract photos I can't help but try to make some sense of what is there. Just can't help myself. I am one of those people that thinks there just has to be something there.

Of course, this could be my downfall – maybe I should just loosen up a bit and ask myself 'do I like this?'

The answer is – yes! But as this is the photography tutor section of the site, just 'liking' a photo is not enough! What makes it likable? And what could improve it further?

On the likable side of things, I really like the colours here. It looks as though these have been achieved by dropping coloured glass beads into the water.

I also like the shooting angle here. Straight down into the glass. It creates a tunnel effect.

It's always a good idea to explore different shooting angles. Very often you'll come up with something that really sets your photos apart from the crowd. Click to read a digital photography tutorial on shooting angles.

I'm not sure the swirly water effect has worked here, because it has made the photo too blurry. And this leads me onto some ideas for improvement.

First, I would either do away with the swirls or try to make more of them. Here's a suggestion . . .

break some polystyrene up into the tiny balls. Drop two or three into the glass. Give the glass a swirl, then take a photo with an exposure of around half a second.

This will give streaks going round over the top of the beads.

My other suggestion would be to crop this photo. Go for a square crop, centred on the middle of the glass. At the moment there is too much emptiness on the right side of the photo.

Cropping is easy to do, and every piece of image editing software will do it. You can read a digital photography tutorial on the crop tool here.

I like the photo though . . . and I'm still sitting here trying not to work it out too much!

Thanks Lori for the submission.

Ed.

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