Taking pictures is narrowing your view in a good sense. Looking through the square hole makes you focus on the composition, colour and details of what you see. It’s all about making choices.
When I was 12 years old I got a camera from my granddad. It was an Agfa, that I know for sure. But I am not sure anymore whether it was a Click or a Clack.
All these years I was convinced it was a Clack-II, but googling pictures of it made me wonder. The image in my memory resembles more of the Click-II.
Years ago I discovered the app Hipstamatic for my smartphone. It was love at first sight. I even have to admit I once bought another iPhone to have more pixels and speed.
As an artist, I love abstract art. Taking pictures with abstract results enhances that love and using the Hipstamatic app for those pictures doubles the fun.
In this article on how to create abstract photos, the focus is on the app Hipstamatic. In the meantime, I also explain how you can make your pictures more abstract without the app.
Of course, we should take pictures of the highlights when we are visiting an unknown region or country. Yet, it is also fun to restrict yourself by taking pictures according to a theme.
It is important for a photographer, or any creative person in general, to always try to improve. However strange it may seem, limiting ourselves is a major contributor to betterment.
I do it often, assigning myself to photograph only round objects, or movement, just vertical lines, S-like shapes, contrasts in thick-thin or big-small, and so on. I can assure you, you will see different subjects to take pictures of.
My personal challenge of 2022/23 to make a collage (almost) daily sparks a lot of creativity and inspiration. The easiest way to work on a collage is at home where I have all my materials and tools, making it extra challenging when we go on a trip. How do I make a collage then?
Last year I solved that ‘problem’ by taking lots of pictures and either making a Canva collage or collecting small items and putting those together in an assemblage. The end result was a photo.
This time I planned to make collages in a creative travel journal, where I wanted to include more elements of a day.
Collages can be created in many ways.
Sometimes, I fill the entire surface with magazine pieces that are put together to create an interesting composition.
In other cases, however, I prefer to leave the collage open and simple, so that I can paint or draw more freely on the background.
To combine collage with drawing or painting is a great way of making mixed media images.
The screens of our smartphones and computers are composed of pixels. However, the way an image is constructed can be either by rasterization (pixel art) or with geometric vector lines (vector art).
Vector drawings take up much fewer data than rasterized images and can be enlarged almost endlessly without losing quality.
The reason for the large files with pixel files is that each pixel has to be described. While a vector file consists of commands such as ‘one point is at these coordinates, the other point is at those coordinates, the connection is a curved line, and the colour is #xxxx’.
My inspiration often comes from working on a theme. In photography, drawing, painting, and making collages it’s a great way to keep getting ideas and expressing yourself.
You might know that my personal challenge at this moment is making a daily collage for a year. I didn’t start on January 1 but at a moment when the idea came to me. And I am not too rigid that it really has to be each day because, as we all know, life sometimes comes in between.
At the start, I just made collages. Yet, to make 365 collages without any underlying thought doesn’t keep being interesting. After a couple of months, I developed a subtheme dedicated to one month. Like art journaling, printing pictures, or making stencils.
A lot of countries have flags in the colours red, white and blue. The USA, the Netherlands, France, the UK – to name a few.
I looked for inspiration by sorting several of my photographs in specific colours. As a result, I made this article about red, white, and blue in pictures.
Thematic photography is an unending source of inspiration in my view. Try it yourself, if you want. Maybe the theme-spark will catch you as well. 🙂
In 2019 I had an intention to make a drawing daily. At times it was a challenge to get inspired.
Luckily, I saw the sponge lying on the kitchen sink and had to think of SpongeBob.
Why not create my own figure, I thought. As you see, inspiration from a strange source is possible.
The nice thing was that I could try to portray both feelings and activities. Fantastic. I made the drawings in the app Procreate.