Abstract Photography

Perplexity, by Otto Berkeley

Hidden away at Lorrimore Square in South London is St Paul's Church, which I came across during September's Open House weekend. The church is a small but remarkable Grade II-listed building built in the late 1950s after the original church burned down during the second world war. Replacing the original 19th-century Victorian Gothic style is an innovative post-war design by John Wimbleton of architect practice Woodroffe, Buchanan & Coulter, built from a mixture of brick, copper and rubble stone from the old church.

I was drawn to the elegance of the triangular motif around the church and the way it represents the importance of the Trinity in Eucharistic worship, but there was also something remarkable about the balance the architecture struck inside the building: an abstract and almost minimalist quality to its structure, and at the same time an atmosphere within the church -- situated on the first floor above a day centre -- that was warm, welcoming and full of character. The Open House staff volunteering at the church were incredibly gracious about allowing me to photograph the interior from every angle, but I kept coming back to this look-up of the church's beautifully geometric roof, which seemed to convey the airy simplicity of the building's structure as well as its progressive design.

The image was straightforward to shoot -- with the camera resting on the ground, the settings dialled in and the exposures triggered using a shutter remote -- and equally straightforward to edit. Seven exposures were blended in Photoshop using luminosity masking, balancing darker exposures for the light streaming through the windows and brighter exposures to bring out the rich detail within the roof's steep timber. Once the exposures were blended, I used the Pen Tool to create a selection of the concrete frame, desaturating its warmer tones and then using my brighter exposures at a low opacity with the blend modes set to Soft Light and Screen. This helped to reinforce the bold framework within the image and created a nice contrast against the darker and more detailed texture in the timber.

Colour-grading the image was a mixture of Curves and Levels adjustments, with Colour Balance and Selective Colour adjustments to find the right combination of yellow, red and magenta. It was important to me to bring out the warm tones within the roof, but I was also wary of the image becoming an overload of red and orange, and used a Gradient Map to add a hint of dark blue in the shadows to offset this. The final result was a quick and easy image to capture and edit, but it was also one of the most rewarding to visit, with the aspiration and thoughtfulness of the building's design leaving a lasting impression.

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decay colors of door details ... by José Eduardo Silva

at the Forbidden Purple City, Hué, Vietnam

Urban Landscape #4 by Aileen Mozug

Cincinnati, OH

Green Space, by Esther

Back to kindergarten : what can you do with paper?

lime corrosion by Jan

just paying for the car parking on the island of lindisfarne and noticed the meter was painted a wonderful shade of toxic lime and corroding in the seaside air, northumberland, uk

Macro Mondays week1 - Double exposure, by Inna Malostovker

Photo by oldTor

Winter colors, frost and sun. Bamboo board. Fluorescence. HDR. Macro

Зимние краски, мороз и солнце. Фрагмент шлифованной бамбуковой доски, пропитанной минеральным маслом, во флуоресценции. Макрофото с объективом Fujinon-EFC 55mm. f/6.0 с макрокольцами. Масштаб съёмки 1,6:1. HDR из 4-х кадров. Освещение УФ-светодиодом 365nm со светофильтром ZWB2.

Winter colors, frost and sun. Fragment of a polished bamboo board impregnated with mineral oil, in fluorescence. Macrofoto with Fujinon-EFC 55mm. f/6.0 lens with macro rings. Scale of 1.6:1. HDR of 4 frames. UF-vedoid light 365nm with ZWB2 light filter (Translation via Firefox)

Photo by 2c.. Seaweed, Surf & Sand.

from the wonderful empty golden beaches of north Donegal.

Photo by Catherine Silks

playground equipment that's been scratched up (and color-altered in processing.)

Photo by oldTor

Crystals from a solution of salicylic acid in a dark field under a microscope.

Кристаллы из раствора салициловой кислоты в тёмном поле под микроскопом. Микрофото с объективом Mitutoyo M Plan Apo 10x0.28 с Raynox DCR-150 в качестве тубусной линзы на штативе микроскопа МББ-1А. Безлинзовое темнопольное освещение.

(Crystals from a salicylic acid solution in a dark field under a microscope. Microphoto with lens Mitutoy M Plan Apo 10x0.28 with Raynox DCR-150 as a tube lens on the tumage of the microscope MBB-1A. Unlenscary dark-floor lighting.)

Translation via Firefox

Sonnenhyroglyphen (Sun Hyroglyphics) by Guido Kulecki

Wasserspiegelungen im Gegenlicht. (Water reflection in backlight.)

Translations via Firefox

fabric abstraction, by Victor Stepanow

Vertical aerial shot of fabric cover adjacent to a water reservoir taken at first light on a frosty morning with the shadows of a line of pine trees at the top,

602092015, by 2c..

moving pictures..... on still waters, by Edinburgh Nette ...

Photo by Jessica Kolosso

Photo by Rita Peralta

Abyss by 80D-Ray

6530082015 by 2c..

Abstract by Mah Nava

equinox by Edinburgh Nette ...

.... warm by day, freezing by night

Hessle, England by stuart allen

Underneath the Humber bridge on a rather murky day

Orange Minimal by stuart allen