Weekly Abstract and Experimental Thread #13 (6-17-2025)

The weekly Abstract and Experimental thread
This weekly thread, starting on a Tuesday, allows us to showcase our abstract and experimental photos and get some feedback.
Opening up discussions, not only on content, style, composition & techniques, but also on the creativity of the image.

It’s easy to participate
Post an image with a title and description. To make it easier to view in the forum, all comments should include the original title and at least one of the original images as a quote.

Thread Guidelines:
This weekly thread is for sharing and developing abstract and experimental photography skills.
We want to see wild, creative photography.
Give your entry a clear title and mention the technique used.
Provide constructive feedback on others’ images.
Try to go beyond simple praise or dismissal and explain why you like it, or what caught your eye.
”Likes” are encouraged too.
Negative feedback and suggestions are also OK (be polite, honest, and constructive).
Giving feedback is just as important as receiving feedback, both help to improve our artistic and technical skills.

What is an abstract or experimental photo?
Different ways to see and investigate the world around us. Abstract photography reduces a subject to shapes, tones or colors making it unrecognizable. Abstract subjects are everywhere.

Experimentation might include, Infrared, dragged shutter, zone plate, motion, 3D, fluorescence, multiple exposure, birefringence, ultra violet, optical including adapted lenses, tri color, fractals, manipulated Polaroids, pinhole, Kirlian (bioelectrography) and many other methods. Experimentation can be for artistic expression or pure science. It is often more difficult than standard types of photography. This is fine, we aren't expecting perfection. Every experiment enhances knowledge. Your idea can help others explore the universe around them. We love experimentation. You can explain your process or keep it a secret.

This will be a looser collection of photos compared to other weekly threads. This is good. It will be a place to get away from standard animals, babies & sunset photos. We don't hate animals, babies or sunsets. Show us your creative abstract and experimental images.

Thanks for looking and participating,
barondla

Wanted to photograph the bubbles in hand sanitizer. Bought the oval bottle with the flatest sides possible. Avoiding curved sides gives less distortion and sharper images. Shooting through the thick plastic bottle was bad enough.

Thanks for looking and participating,
barondla

This one is a recent experiment. The technique has a name but I don't recall what it is. You go round and round the subject taking photos from every angle then you stack them in a layered stack. You can ask software to blend them but I seldom get a good result with that so I do it manually, fiddling with each layer's opacity and blending mode and crop. Then when I get a result I like collapse the layers and edit it, in this case with Silver Efex.

Great start so far! Keep posting pictures.
Thanks for sharing and participating,
barondla

I'd call this experiment a success. It creates an unusual view of a well known subject. Haven't seen this exact technique before and have no idea what it is called. I will give this a try.
Thanks for sharing and participating,
barondla

Excellent image. The rapid little ripples add nice distortion to the reflections. The long lens attains a great ratio of subject to surroundings.
Thanks for sharing and participating,
barondla

Creative idea and implementation. It is an unique experiment in the usage of mirrors. I will pay more attention to mirror-land.
Thanks for sharing and participating,
barondla

Reine des Alpes

I do a lot of experimenting with multiple exposures, playing with superimposing images in-camera. One day, I accidentally turned on 'high res mode' and made an image (without tripod). It resulted in an interesting 'multi exposure' effect, so I played some more 😁. This was one I liked.

I thought I replied to this earlier but it seems to have disappeared...
Lovely effect. The B&W enhances the ethereal effect nicely.It's something I've tried a few times, usually with trees, and using in-camera multi exposure (you have to underexpose each shot if the blending is additive).
There are some really beautiful examples of this technique on Valda Bailey's website;
www.valdabailey.com/portfolio/view/blossom-blizzard-iii/Blossom-Blizzard

Wonderful shot! The different sizes are awesome and the gradient in the background works very well.

Very well done - it gives an interesting look to something common. I've never really tried that technique, perhaps I will in the future though.

Capture by simple.joy, on Flickr

No fancy technique behind this one, but of course some experimentation with perspective, distance and different light sources.

Thanks Woodlander. The Valda Bailey site is a goldmine. I'm exploring both the images and the thoughts in her blog.
Many years ago I played around with locking the film advance and doing multiple exposures with very slight movements between each exposure. I was doing about 10 exposures (on 35mm film) and for each I tried to set the exposure at about 1/10th of what might have been expected for the scene. I liked the results. The shots and negatives are lost. You have rekindled my interest. Digital tech will give far more precision. To be explored.

Excellent multi exposure. Your method causes the camera to "automate the process ". Quite creative and pure genius. How many exposures does the Olympus take in hires mode? Looking forward to seeing more of your multiple exposures.
Thanks for sharing and participating,
barondla

Love the bokeh balls and the fantastic mixing of elements. The simplicity makes a very strong image.
Thanks for sharing and participating,
barondla

Agreed. That's a very clever way to do multiexposures. It's now on my "to do" list.

I believe it fires eight shots, using electronic shutter.
It's a very hit and miss technique. Simple subjects work best. One potential problem is that it creates little patches of hatching when viewed at 100% on screen, but I doubt this would be a problem in normal viewing or printing. Here's another favourite.

Looks great - I love the diagonal composition and the texture in the grass is fantastic! Looks like a painting on canvas.

Here are two shots taken with a Zeiss Graphikon ~6 cm f/2.3 lens (roughly 90 years old). The first one is intentionally out of focus to get an abstract landscape shot, the second one is a close-up taking advantage of the interesting out of focus rendering of this lens. It was never intended to take shots like that (it was optimized for 1:1 magnification according to Zeiss specs) but I find the results interesting:

The diagonal color layout is clean and refreshing. The strip of white flowers divides the other colors nicely. The multiple exposures add an unique feel.

Eight exposures provide a nice number to work with. My Pentax only does four. Still want to try this. Many years ago Nikon ran an ad where the photographer used something like 100 exposures to photograph a little boat tied to the dock. One doesn't use much film when there's one hundred exposures on one frame🙂.
Thanks for sharing and participating,
barondla

This lens draws beautifully. It escapes that modern lens, hyper etched, detail. Very nice. I enjoy pushing optics and cameras into areas they weren't designed for. Experimentation is fun.
Thanks for sharing and participating,
barondla

This one is lovely.