Broken glass and falling stars

 After a warm month of May I decided to go out and about taking pictures of what I could find outdoors. But despite the beauty of the natural world around me what I ended up being drawn to were the puddles upon the ground around me.

They reflected the sun and clouds beautifully and tinged with oil and blown by the wind the reflections they produced unraveled and became abstract shapes and patterns upon the ground.

Broken glass and fallen stars exploded in their depths or morphed to become some strange moon filled sky. I was enraptured by the abstract beauties they produced.

And so even though I set out to capture the beauty of May I caught in puddles broken glass and falling stars.

Spellbound

Walking back home through the back streets of Cardiff I was struck one by how large and bright the moon was that night. Its strange, pale light lit the night and cast an unearthly glow upon the streets below. I was instantly spellbound.

Taking pictures that night I followed the moon. Capturing passing street lights and strangers, shadow filled roads and the buildings that had been caught in the glare of these strange and beautiful lights.

Buildings became haunted houses, passing strangers became romantic and other and trees became arcane and occult bewitched by the light of the moon.

For that night the streets of Cardiff weren't the same, for that one night the city wasn't the same. Under that unearthly night everything became spellbound.

The world at the bottom of every pool

“Why, if we can get back to our own world by jumping into this pool, mightn’t we get somewhere else by jumping into one of the others? Supposing there was a world at the bottom of every pool.”

C.S Lewis - The Magician's Nephew

 

I've sometimes had a secret fantasy that one day when passing by a particularly clear watery reflection that I would jump in and instead of emerging soaked I would continue to fall directly into another world, one of fantasy and magic.

Of course its just a fantasy but when I set out recently to take photos its something I bore in mind as I scoured the streets looking for puddles that reflected the world around me.

Its been raining non stop for the last week and the UK is groaning under the weight of all the water that has poured down upon the streets.

Out of all this bad weather however came the most amazing opportunities for photography as black and gold patches of water stretched across its lanes.

And though it was challenging, through patient effort I was able to create a number of images that reflected this fantasy. A series of photos which hinted that the depth of these reflections held something more. At a world at the bottom of every pool.

Unnatural vectors

Recently I've really been on a drive to really push myself and my photography in new and interesting ways and directions. This week I mainly focused on me exploring unnatural and man made structures as a focus for my photographic style.

In doing so I was able to find buildings that really accentuated broken lines and strange vectors. This along with the almost sickly light that fell on the nearby trees was able to create a series of images that were by turn strange, jarring and distinctive in the extreme.

As a rule of thumb my photographs tend to create images that blur and celebrate the natural world to the point that they begin to reclaim any man man influences upon them. These works were almost in opposition to that showing the warping effect that man made structures have upon nature.

To this point I was able to create a series of unnatural vectors, ones that would pose troubling questions about our effect upon the fragile world around us.

Urban brushstrokes

After spending the last few weeks focusing on nature I decided that I wanted to push myself in a different direction. The urban world isn't one I explore often with my photography but it was very much one that I decided to explore this week.

I wanted to apply my more impressionist technique to the streets of Cardiff and with the recent wet weather the streets had become glowing canvases on which to paint with light.

The colours, the lights, the people wandering its streets became the perfect subjects from which to create an impression of the city at night. From these elements I sought to capture the neon soaked painting of passing cars. The feeling of strangers passing through the night and the ghostly outlines of the houses that lined the way.

It was through these that I sought to create something different. To build up a picture of the night, build upon a thousand urban brushstrokes capturing the shimmering Cardiff night.

Turner by the sea

Turner is one of my favourite artists; his eye for colour, his capturing of light, his obession with water. I look at his art and realise how much it has inspired a lot of my more abstract work. I look at his work and it speaks to me on a level deep in my soul.

I took the train down to Barry island today. The moon was nearly full and its light fell down on a distant, far out sea and in its glow the beach became luminous and beautiful. I wanted to capture that ghostly feeling, that feeling of the awe and subtle mystery found in nature that's so present in Turners work.

As I took photos I reveled in the oranges, blues, whites and yellows found in the pictures I was taking. I took pictures of the light reflected upon the sand, the moonlight reflected on the water and of the glowing multicolored neon lights of the nearby lights of the attractions there.

And as I took pictures I imagined what Turner must have felt like capturing pictures by the sea.

Creating abstract images: Is it still a photo anymore?

In the wake of the tragedy that has befallen Paris I would like to extend my well wishes and prayers to the people who live there and have been affected by this tragedy. I would also like to say that it's important to remember that the people who did this want to inspire hatred and violence in others from religious and non religious sides alike. To quote mr Lincoln "we are not enemies but friends, though passions may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection"

This week while editing my photography I was left with a condrum that I usually try to avoid; my photos looked better when the tonal levels were heavily altered in photoshop. Now this led to an interesting question that held up a mirror to my own work. If a photograph becomes too heavily altered through an effect is it still a photograph?

In our day and age it has become common place to take images and stitch one sky onto another foreground (often with some extra interesting features stitched in to enliven the picture). I've always had mixed feelings about this process, after all if you have to alter an image so completely to make it a great photo should you be spending more time improving your photographic technique? On the other hand to photoshop well requires skill, an artistic eye and serious technical expertise.

So it might be a little hypocritical to say that when I take an abstract photo, I normally justify in my head that the fact that I have captured it in camera (normally through utilising different shutter speeds), somehow stops it from feeling like cheating.

But this week when I was editing my work I really had to stop and think about the processes I was using and how that reflected on my own work. The photos I were editing were so far removed from their starting point, were they even the same images anymore?

At the end of the day I very much come down on the side of turning photography into art and while I'm having my cake and eating it by posting these pictures while writing a blog post about it I feel like anything that pushes the medium of photography is worth exploring. Are these images true photographs anymore? Maybe not, but are they art though? Most definitely and therefore worth showing to the world.