Colour photography is photography that uses media capable of reproducing colours. By contrast, black and white (monochrome) photography records only a single channel of luminance (brightness) and uses media capable only of showing shades of grey.

Texture is the perceived surface quality if a work of art. It is an element of two dimensional and three dimensional designs and is distinguished by its perceived visual and physical properties. Use of texture, along with other elemental design, can convey a variety of messages and emotions.

Texture in photography can be used to create strong images in an architectural and structural way like this

It can be used to show off the beauty and different surface feelings of nature, like this

It can even be used to show the certain characteristics and age of a person like this

I like this type of photography as it allows you to have more freedom over the camera as you can use both auto and manual focus, letting you get as close or as far away from the subject as you want or need to be. It also means that anything can be your subject as anything and everything has a different surface and texture.

I also like the use of Colour photography as it can be original or edited to have a great outcome. There are many different types of ways you can have an outcome of photography. You can have multiple or the same colours in your original photoshoot, you can add a layer of colour on top of the frame during editing or even make the whole frame black and white and only select specific parts of the photo to have colour.

I found while using the threshold tool on Photoshop, that the photos with the most number of hard lines would translate most effectively when using the threshold tool. This gave the images a very abstract feel.

Abstract photography, sometimes called non-objective, experimental, conceptual or concrete photography, is a means of depicting a visual image that does not have an immediate association with the object world and that has been created through the use of photographic equipment, processes or materials. An abstract photograph may isolate a fragment of a natural scene in order to remove its inherent context from the viewer, it may be purposely staged to create a seemingly unreal appearance from real objects, or it may involve the use of color, light, shadow or texture.

I quite like the abstract minimalist photography as it involves the use of editing, warping, and making the photo seem unreal, or edited to an extent where it seems unnatural. In some examples of minimalist it makes the object in focus either seem larger than life or smaller than it should be.

I also like the use of changing the colors to make it seem neon, brighter or even electrified. This effect can be used on people for portraits and can be used on everyday objects.

Julian Schulze became a master of minimalism, his work is eye-catching and very impressive. He is focused on geometric abstraction and minimalistic compositions. His images can range from simple shots of everyday scenes made up of a small number of elements to mind-bending abstractions that will leave in confused as to which direction he took the shot. Each shot he takes is expertly composed using light, shadow and color to create 2D and 3D illusions and scenes.

I really like Schulze’s work as some of his work is simple by just taking of a photo with a wide range of colors in an everyday normal environment, whereas others involve black and white structures and taking them at obscure angles to change the interpretation and the way we look and understand the photographs.

“No Focus”

Ralph Eugene Meatyard (1925–1972) lived in Lexington, Kentucky, where he made his living as an optician while creating an impressive and enigmatic body of photographs. 

https://fraenkelgallery.com/artists/ralph-eugene-meatyard
Meatyards images are usually deliberately unfocused. Therefore for my shoot I deliberately unfocused my camera to try to get the same effect as meatyard. In my images I experimented with ISO, focus control and depth of field.

Here are examples of Meatyard's work:

Here are unedited JPEG examples of my shoot:

Here are some of my favourite photos from the shoot that I have edited. I used adobe lightroom to manipulate these images. I applied a black and white preset to all of my images because Meatyards images were mainly in black and white. I then manipulated the exposure, contrast and cropped some images until I was satisfied with the outcome.

Although I like the outcome of the photos of the trees and the lake, I particularly like the photographs I took of the cat behind the fence. I like the depth of field created by the unfocused fence, which therefore focuses the audiences attention on the cat. I feel the black and white preset also aids in directing the attention on the cat because the bold and vibrant colours of the green grass and ivy could redirect and confuse the audiences attention.

Photo manipulation

In this task i am going to use Adobe Photoshop to make my images more abstract. In order to do this i will do a ‘ Conceal and Reveal’ edit where i purposely cover my image and have parts of the image showing.

I firstly chose the image i wanted to use which ended up being a spare image which was not used in any other abstract posts. I then added a new layer and a layer mask.

I then used a the paint bucket to fill in my image with black.

I also ended up changing the opacity when filling in the image so that i could see what i was doing.

Lastly, i rubbed out different parts in my image which i wanted to be viable through the black background. I then changed the opacity back down again so that the parts of the image which were not selected weren’t viable.

End image

I am really happy with this edited version of the image. I think that having the parts i chose to show through the black was a good idea due to it being very simple and also unique.