Part 1: Abstract Photography for Students, All of my Mentees from Westlake High School
- At April 02, 2020
- By Johnny Stevens
- In Aerial photography, architecutral, austin architectural photographer, Austin photographer, camera control, commercial photography, dichotomy, Drone photography, editing, Fine Art, lifestyle photography, light painting, lighting, Photography education, Photography Mentor, portrait, portrait photography, professional, real estate, real estate photography, shutter speed, speedlights, spot lighting, student housing, student lifestyle, Tilt shift, tilt-shift lens, video, videography
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Part 1: Abstract Photography for Students
All of my Mentees from Westlake High School.
Abstract Photography for Students is a challenge. I thought it was time to assemble all of the educational photographic projects I have done with my senior students of the Independent Study Program at Westlake High School over the last 8 years. I was surprised when I went back into my photography archives to see some of the projects that I have forgotten about. I am doing this in 5 Posts so the reader does not get overwhelmed. This first post is about our Abstract Photography exercises. So here we go.
When I agree to teach a student, I tell them that my approach to teaching is to expose them to as many different genres of photography as possible, so they can learn how to leverage the settings on their cameras, read natural light, learn how to control flash and strobe light, how to work with humans who hate to have their photos taken, and evaluate the environment for challenges.
The photography genres I like to introduce them to are:
- Abstract Photography
- Portrait Photography
- Still Life and Landscape Photography
- Architectural Photography
ABSTRACT PHOTOGRAPHY:
My first student 8 years ago was Elena. With her I learned how difficult shooting rising smoke is. We learned that having a flash at 90 degrees to a smoking piece of incense was better than having two flashes, one in each side. The contrast within the smoke was better and made it easier to identify an interesting moment within the otherwise chaotic billowing smoke. Then we edit the image mostly by eliminating surrounding smoke that did not lend itself to the formation we identified. More often that not (and this goes for painting too) we tend to identify with abstract formations that remind of some variation of human forms. Here are Elena’s images:
I had forgotten about this image, and today it is one of my favorite. It is whimsical and requires some time to process its intricacies.
Elena’s Abstract Smoke by Austin fine art photographer Johnny Stevens
This one I called Wisp of Elena. It clearly has some alien life forms that attract the eye….
Elena’s Abstract Smoke #2 Alien formation by Austin abstract photographer Johnny Stevens
My mentee Nolan shot this smoke image. Very often the way smoke rises and curls, it tends to show formations of vertebrae and human bones.
Nolan smoke abstract photography austin
And this one from my mentee Morgan;
Morgan abstract smoke photography by Austin photographer Johnny Stevens
For Jake’s Abstract Smoke Photography exercise, he created 2 edited versions from this first raw file.
Jake’s original raw file of smoke rising
Final edit of abstract smoke rising photograph
Final edit 2 of abstract smoke rising photograph
My mentee Krishan and I tested our reflexes at shooting water drops in a glass.
Krishan’s composition of 4 drops of water
After an hour of gruelling timing to pull the trigger at the right time we learned that we could not get the effect we were looking for which is achieved by buying a Pluto Valve Drop Regulator. It releases drops timed exactly with the shutter of the camera, but more importantly it releases 2 consecutive drops so that the upward splash of the first drop smashes into the one coming down and creates a beautiful mushroom effect. As seen in these two examples:
water drop 1 by fstoppers
waterdrop 2 by 500 px blog
To introduce my students to compositing in Photoshop, I will often give them the task of taking a series of images and composite parts of them into a master image. In this case I gave Nolan these images from my Mannequin folder of images to create a composite:
Mannequin for abstract photoshop compositing lesson Johnny Stevens Austin Photographer
Final composite by Nolan
Architectural photo shoot at the new Austin Public Library
As a photography exercise and as part of the curriculum for my mentee from the Westlake High School Independent study course, I decided on an Architectural photo shoot at the new Austin Public Library. Nolan and I spent the day there and I taught him my methods of shooting real estate architectural interiors. You can find no better photo ops than the new Public Library. It is a spectacular feat of contemporary architecture. Nolan shot 5 brackets of a top image and the same for a bottom image and then we photo-merged the two together to get a portrait aspect ratio and then we painted in the exposures we wanted from each bracketed image. Here are the 2 images that make up the final master image.
Austin Public Library Architectural photo bottom half
Austin Library architectural bottom half
Austin Library architectural final image
Additional architectural images Nolan shot on location at the library:
Architectural photo shoot at the new Austin Public Library
Architectural photo shoot at the new Austin Public Library bookshelves
Architectural photo shoot at the new Austin Public Library breezway
The new Austin Public Library breezeway 2
Light Painting an Orchid
Light Painting an Orchid.
For his lesson today, Nolan who I mentor in the independent studies program at Westlake High School, we light painted this orchid. We lit the plant with a small led flashlight and looked at each image on my ipad by using the Cam Ranger system plugged into the Canon 5d Mark 3 camera. We ended up with 10 different images of varying lighting on the orchid that we layered and masked together to create this final image. We back lit the flowers and front lit the flower buds. The back lighting helped pop out the dramatic edges of the flower petals.
Light Painting an Orchid by Nolan and Johnny
These are some of the light painted images that we blended together to make the final Orchid image.
Light Painting an Orchid
Playing with Shutter Speeds
If you have time to kill, finding a subject like this spinning light (it a motorized led light that turns on a turntable) offers wonderful opportunities to create abstract photographs by altering the shutter speed. I shot these with my Sony RX 100 camera because I was traveling lightly. But the Sony has totally manual control and shoots Raw format, which gives me lots of room to edit in photoshop later on. The slow motion effect can be quite mesmerizing.
First image is shot at f4 and 1/100 second shutter speed.
Spinning lights f4 at 1/100 second
This shot is at f4 and 2 seconds shutter speed
Spinning lights at f4 and 2 seconds shutter speed
And finally this one at f4 and 5 seconds
Spinny lights at 5 seconds shutter speed
