[robbo]

As I muddle through this process of becoming a respectable photographer, I am trying to figure out what subjects turn my crank, so to speak. Abstract seems to be one of those subjects. So I have been dabbling and would like some feedback.

[AQ]

It is certainly abstract. I quite like it but it is a little too busy for my tastes and some of the whites are burnt out. For an abstract you can see too much of the scarves are. I would have tried a very much closer picture. This would have had less colours, made the exposure easier and given it a more pronounced abstract look.

[robbo]

Originally Posted by Anthraquinone

It is certainly abstract. I quite like it but it is a little too busy for my tastes and some of the whites are burnt out. For an abstract you can see too much of the scarves are. I would have tried a very much closer picture. This would have had less colours, made the exposure easier and given it a more pronounced abstract look.

I tried brightening it up because of some dark areas on the right. I had a feeling some of the white would be too burned out. Thanks for the advice and I will take another look at it.

[robbo]

My wife was looking over my shoulder and told me that the original image that I took this abstract from is better than the abstract. Hmmm... your thoughts?

[Rob Barron]

I'm with your wife (figuratively speaking!) here. The picture has a good balance as the blurred BG also has a lot of vertical lines, just like the subject does. Although I like it as an abstract shot, the great thing about abstract is you do not need to make it look 'right' or natural. Therefore you could do an angled crop - wedge and triangle formations are more dynamic than square verticals and horizontals - and make it less of a picture of scarves and more about the lines and colours.

No excuse to say you lifted the brightness! You could do a selection of darker colours with the magic wand, soften the selection by feathering it and then adjusting only those areas and leaving the bright colours alone so that they don't burn out or vice versa

I think if you want to keep the format as is here, lift the top of the picture to the point above all the row of knots. This then gives a slightly disagonal line that would work as a focus point and give the picture more interest. I've had a play with the larger one to crop it to show you what I mean. This is not angled, just cropped to show the row of knots more strongly. I hope you can see what I mean.

I haven't adjusted the lighting and bear in mind this is now a bit soft as it is a crop of a low res shot.

Cheers,
Rob

[robbo]

Rob,
I kid you 'KNOT", I just made that crop this morning. Again, my usual excuse is that I have to get better with software. I will try selecting areas and making adjustments that way.

[Charlotte]

Robbo, I like the bright colours of your first (cropped) shot Too tightly cropped along the knots though. In this regard, I prefer the crop Rob used, except somehow it ended up a square shaped image, whereas I prefer the landscape orientation of yours.

While I do like your abstract version, I really like your original (uncropped) shot as well It puts the scarves into the context of a market scenario, and I think you got the composition of this one just right. Only thing I'm not keen on with this version is the bright white bits on the BG building, but that can be fixed with a bit of clever cloning.

Not keen on your last entry with just the knots - I don't think the composition works well without the long lines of the scarves - but it's good to play with variations on one shot.

Good work. And it's refreshing to see some abstract stuff up for critique

[Rob Barron]

It wasn't possible to do the crop I did and not have it square Charlotte. It is slightly rotated as well as cropped higher and that doesn't leave space to have both descending lines of the hanging scarves and a landscape composition.

I don't think the two shots should be compared (the originals) as one is an abstract and one is a contextual scene, entirely different pictures which need to be assessed in their own right and not really against each other.

I do like both shots as it happens, in different ways

Cheers,
Rob