[Kombisaurus]

I was playing around with my 50mm f/1.8 when it arrived last week, just walking around the house taking shots at f/1.8 to check out the bokeh and DOF and how it performed indoors and so on.
Anyway, I have a chrome fruit bowl in the kitchen which reflects the room around it which got my attention.
In both shots here, the camera actually locked focus perfectly on the side of the fruit bowl (you can see specs of dust sitting on the bowl nice and sharp at high-res), but the shallow DOF ensured that the curved edges were out of focus and the way it reflected the room around it meant that the reflection wasn't sharp either.
But I actually quite liked the colours and tones and flowing lines that resulted.

What do you think? Does it work? What elements in it don't work? What would improve it? Do you guys take abstract photos yourselves? If so, show us!

[guerito]

For me it sure does work. I like the colors too, and I like both pictures.

If I were the owner of this magnificent fruit bowl, I'd experiment a little more and set up things to reflect, like an apple or some tomatoes or something. This is actually the only gripe I have with the second picture: The left and lower part of the reflection is not really recognizable and seems like clutter. But it's great nonetheless!

[Rufus]

Clutter?

If you think that's clutter, you should live here!!!

[Petographer]

I really like the tones and colour of the first. G has a good point about experimenting .

Clutter?

If you think that's clutter, you should live here!!!

But what about the photos? :/

[Toad]

I really like the first one - the burst of white on the right of the bowl and then the red really sets the whole thing off. Well done!

[Don Schaeffer]

To me a little cropping would make sense:



and some enhancements:

[Irma]

Both are great. I like very much the composition and reflection in the second one because it is a picture where you can tell a story. I don't know I was imagining to set part of the story near the bowl and complete it in the reflection. The colors are beautiful, and it would provide a lovely mood. Perhaps a cork near the bowl and some glasses of wine in the reflection. Well it is just my idea, perhaps I got up too romantic

[shuttertalk]

I think they work awesomely well. Nicely done, Kombi.

I like the lighting and the colour... and also the composition (zooming in on a particular part) works really well.

[Kombisaurus]

Thanks for the kind words and advice guys.

umm.. G.. yeah that was clutter. I'm just glad it was "not really recognisable".
I enoy photography and all, but if people expect me to clean my house before taking photos then I might as well sell my camera right now!

For those shots, I didn't actually move the fruit bowl from where it normally sits at all... but you got me motivated to take a couple more shots with it today. See, this will teach you to encourage me! :p

Welcome to part 2 of my fruit-bowl adventures!
These are still all taken in my kitchen/dining-room (same room as the other ones), but I did actually move the bowl around and look for some interesting shapes and colours to include in the reflection this time.
I find this stuff quite interesting to photograph. It forces me to see the world simply as shapes, tones and colours instead of physical objects, and I find some of the most everyday items that normally go unnoticed can be really quite interesting and beautiful (such as venetian blinds which are my new best friends).

Although images like these aren't the kind of thing I'd hang on the wall,I think they can make good desktop wallpapers, as they can provide a nice mood, yet icons don't get lost when they are sitting on top of images like this compared to many other photographs.

Having said that, I think the b/w photo of the spiral candle-holder is actually my favourite of the day - (the fruit bowl in the background).









I took many variations, but I think these are enough to get the idea across.

[shuttertalk]

I'm liking this series very much... especially the richness of the colours and the abstract shapes and forms. You have to stare at a photo for some time to make out what it is, and that very cool indeed.

In the 2nd series, I like #2 especially. What is that wavy curly white thing?


By the way, the very first picture - I am so tempted to put some bright red elvish inscription on the inside - "one ring to rule them all..."

[Irma]

I love the second one! Beautiful blues and golden colors. The shapes are very interesting as well. The black and white is lovely. The light is great there. I find very nice the gradient from sharp to blur in the same piece.

[guerito]

I enoy photography and all, but if people expect me to clean my house before taking photos then I might as well sell my camera right now!

How much do you want for it, then?

A lovely series you got there! I also love #2 of the second batch coz' I love blue. The others are beautful, too.

[EnglishBob]

How had I not seen this thread before? Great shots, love the colors and tones in these.

The Canon 1.8 is a great lens, I use mine a lot, much more than I thought I would. The depth of field is incredibly shallow when wide open.

[Don Schaeffer]

Extreme cropping is the sign of subject poverty.
Just kidding!
--Don

[EnglishBob]

I wouldn't dare post a reflection of my surroundings right now.... this room is a tip.

[Kombisaurus]

Extreme cropping is the sign of subject poverty.

--Don

But Don, the topic of this thread is "ABSTRACT reflections"... There is no subject. In fact they are quite deliberately NOT photos of anything in particular, just abstract experiments in form and colour; an attempt to see what I can do without a recognisable subject. The only reason I'm using the fruit bowl is because I don't have a lens that will give my that kind of effect (and I saw the fruit bowl and thought "ooo.. what can I do with that?").

Regardless, I know this is the "photo critique" section and I'm prepared for honest and open opinions, but it doesn't mean I have to agree with them. Even if these weren't abstract photos, I still wouldn't agree with your statement. It may be true at times, but just because it makes a snappy one-liner doesn't make it fact.

And while on the topic of cropping, on a very practical level it is almost impossible to show the whole fruit bowl without showing the camera and photographer in the reflection.. and I didn't want to photoshop myself out of a heap of shots.

hmm.. I just noticed you edited the post and added "just kidding" to the end. I'm not quite sure what to make of it now. :/

[Toad]

Well this is just the type of thing I like to do these days - so I may not be the guy to give you "artistic" advice.

Subjects and vision: love it - as anybody here can tell you - I am always preaching to zoom in closer and closer - crop tighter - look for the sublime in the details.

Execution (2nd series): great color saturation, cropping, difusion (anistrophic?).
My eye is bothered a bit by the softness of the images though - like they are not quite in focus or there is slight camera movement. Abstracts like this that have specular highlights and shines (liquid, glass and metal reflections) need that extra little bit of sharpness that brings you into the forms. A tripod with an aperature of F16-F22 and long long exposure (suggestion only).

Not to take anything away from these images - they are great - the second set is even better than the first (blue #2 is my fav). Very refreshing!

[Kombisaurus]

Thanks Toad (and others),

I agree with you about the softness. These images *were* sharply focused on the bowl (and slight imperfections, brush-marks and dust can be seen in 100% crops), but that means little really as it is the reflections that need to be sharper, not the bowl. Unfortunately, the bowl was designed with fruit rather than good optics in mind
I even applied sharpening to enhance the detail in those images above, but it all got swallowed up when I resampled down to 720x480 (which just goes to show it wasn't very obvious to start with).

But here is one of the sharper shots with a blue cast (which I got just by manually pulling the white balance down to 2800k - the wall that gives that blue is actually a muddy purple colour).



And this is one of my new favourites I think - it is a bit sharper than some of the others, and has the white balance set to 4200k which makes the colours fairly realistic (but it was chosen for effect, not realism). It's interesting that adjusting the white balance doesn't affect the rich gold much, but affects the more subtle tones a lot.



For those of you wanting to make sense out of the shapes and colours and spoil the mystery, here is a wider shot that simlpy documents the scene. You can see why I love the vertical blinds - those columns of light feature nicely in all the shots and the golds, reds and greens in the painting literally jump off the wall in the afternoon sun. The black thing that everything is resting on is an old couch, and the spirally thing with the red blob is a candle holder and candle. The wall is actually a purple colour, but the paint often looks brown depending on the light. Don't worry, I didn't paint the whole room this colour

[shuttertalk]

Ah everything falls into place. Now I know what the objects in the reflection are!

I agree with Mr. T - keep up the good work. This abstract stuff is interesting and doesn't need a "subject" as such, because the interesting shapes become the subject in the frame.