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.

A metal and plastic sky

A year or so ago I discovered the joy of finding reflections in unorthodox surfaces; puddles, rivers, concrete and windows. All these I poured over looking at new angles from which to take photos at.

One day I was at a bus stop with my camera and when I looked up I was inspired for above me was a second sky, one of metal and plastic. I always meant to return to explore more of the strange sky but I never did, until now.

Its been raining over Cardiff today, so I was taking shelter under a bus stop with my camera when I looked up. Immediately I knew what my latest blog post would be about. I explored a number of stops in my area as the light over head changed from a grey grizzled sky, to a deep bruised colour before finally setting into night.

It was a new world, a colourful and bright on that shimmered and shivered with all the colours and reflections of a metal and plastic sky.

The swamp waters

Down by where I work are some swampy waters to which I sometimes go, filled as they are with rushes, reeds, trees and tangled beds of roots. Fish swim in their murky depth and sometimes I can imagine that stranger, larger creatures prowl just below the surface of the waters.

Sometimes I am joined by a single solitary heron who patiently stalks the water looking for any fish who are foolish enough to pass by beneath it.

Water drips down from a grey sky creating ripples in the waters below, the reflections on the waters surface momentarily disrupted.

Its somewhere I go when I want to think, to watch a world quietly going by without a man or woman to disturb it.

And in these strange swampy waters briefly I find peace.

Night by the riverside

On the weekend I took the bus up to my local park, I had felt a desire to take pictures on the riverside there for a while but hadn't got the chance until this weekend. But I stopped procrastinating and actually took the trip there.

The night had transformed what was a tranquil area in day time into something quite otherworldly by the cover of darkness. I met with a friend and wandered this suddenly wild world. The street lamps along the way made each path leading into the darkness into a living fairy tale. One where a fey and strange creature could lay in wait to pounce at any moment.

The tree branches stretched over the river over a grey and purple sky. And in that moment I could imagine that in that night I was on a silent road by the river that would lead to grandmothers house where the big bad wolf would devour me whole and where the fey folk would ride out across a bruised sky.

On a night by the riverside the world was suddenly filled with dark and mysterious magic.

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.

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.

The golden glow of autumn

Autumn has fully rolled in now and with it came mist and long golden nights. I took the opportunity to explore the streets of camera as it did so.

I hadn't tried my had at softening the focus of my pictures in a while but with the world outside covered in a layer of mist I decided it was the perfect chance to do so. I took the urban streets as my starting subject but slowly that changed as my route led me towards the rivers of Cardiff.

Railways, road, houses and power lines slowly gave way to trees, plants, reflections and water all shining in the gold of nearby street lamps. The world is heading towards autumn once again all shining in the gold glow of autumn.

A beautiful blur

 Sometimes I forget why I do photography and need to be reminded. See its not for me about the pictures I take when I travel (although I enjoy that) or about experimenting. For me I'm most alive when taking pictures when the photo I'm taking speaks to my soul and most of the time it does that when its abstract, when the world is a beautiful blur of color and motion.

I went out tonight and I took photos for me, I twisted the camera trying to create the images I wanted. To capture the feeling that would refresh my soul and for me that's not found in static images or people protraits but in an abstract expression of how truely beautiful the world is.

When the world you capture with your camera is a beautiful, colourful blur its all you need to keep the art in your soul alive.