abstract

Undoctored Abstract Aerial Photos of the World’s Largest Beta Carotene Farm

Australian engineer turned photographer Steve Back has been working for several years to put together the completely un-edited images you see here. Although they may seem like abstract art you might find on a museum wall, they're actually aerial photos of Kalbarri, Western Australia's Hutt Lagoon, the world's largest Beta Carotene farm.

Photographer Captures Abstract Photos Showing Lava Up Close

Want to see what lava from a volcano looks like up close? Photographer Daniel Fox has spent a number of weeks this year photographing lava near Kalapana on the Big Island of Hawaii. Rather than photograph the lava in the context of its surroundings, he decided to get in close and create abstract images showing its intensity.

Photos Created by Coating Negatives with Gasoline and Setting Them On Fire

Lisle, Illinois-based photographer Peter Hoffman's "Fox River Derivatives" project is a series of abstract photos that question mankind's relationship with natural resources. The photographs have a strange purple bubbles and colorations across the surface that are the result of an interesting technique: these images are what you get when you burn your negatives.

Colorful Photos of Paint Being Flung by a Spinning Drill

Swiss photographer Fabian Oefner calls himself a "curious investigator," and says that his mission is to "harness elemental forms of natural phenomena and capture them in the most stunning way possible." An example of this can be seen in his recent project titled "Black Hole," which features photos showing lines of color emanating from a "black hole."

Big Bang: Abstract Photograms Created by Exposing Photo Paper to Fireworks

What kind of imagery results when you mix photo paper and fireworks? That's a question photographic artist Ross Sonnenberg has been exploring for the past few years. He creates one-of-a-kind camera-less photograms that look like abstract images of galaxies, but are actually random and colorful patterns created by the light of firecrackers.

Abstract Long-Exposure Photographs of Colored Paper in a Cave

Los Angeles-based photographer Brice Bischoff has a project titled Bronson Caves. Between 2009 and 2010, Bischoff visited the caves in Los Angeles' Griffith Park with his 4x5 large format camera and some very large sheets of colored paper. He then used long exposure times to paint colorful blurs into the photographs by waving the papers around.

Abstract Art Created by Exposing Photo Paper with a Dripping Candle

Photographer Caleb Charland is an artist who perpetually thinks outside the box for his photo concepts. In the past we've featured experiments that include a 14-hour exposure of a lightbulb powered by an orange and using scientific principles for creative images.

Charland's latest project continues this outside-the-box trend. The yet-to-be-named series features abstract images created without a camera -- the artist simply used photo paper and a candle.

The Beauty of Decayed Daguerreotypes

The Library of Congress has an extensive collection of daguerreotype photographs captured over the past two centuries. In addition to browsing the technically perfect ones that document history and people, it's also interesting to look at metal plates that are flawed.

Major Cities Around the World Captured in 8-Second Double Exposure Photos

One method for capturing "multiple exposure" photographs is to shoot a long exposure photograph of a scene with your camera pointed in different directions while the shutter is open. Photographer Nicolas Ruel uses this concept in an ambitious project that has taken him around the world. Titled 8 Seconds, the series features famous cities around the world (e.g. New York City, Tokyo, Beijing, Barcelona) captured in surreal multi-exposure photographs.

Minimalist Photographs Showing the View Through an Alaskan Cabin Window

When photographer Mark Meyer wakes up every morning in Alaska, the first thing he notices is the view through his room's windows. Over time, he began to notice that this view took on a wide range of appearances across different times and seasons (mostly cold weather). He then started capturing a casual series of photographs that show the abstract, minimalist views that appear due to the rain, snow, and fog. The project is called An Alaska Window.

Photographs of Children’s Games Turned Into Single-Color Sculptures

For his project titled "Game Over," Brooklyn-based photographer Henry Hargreaves took a number of popular and instantly-recognizable children's games (and toys) and painted over all the colorful designs and branding with single pastel colors. He then photographed the games on backgrounds of the same color.

Abstract Photographs of Human Bodies in Motion

Japanese photographer Shinichi Maruyama has an interesting series of photos simply titled, "Nude." Each image shows an abstract flesh-colored shape that's created by a nude subject dancing in front of the camera.

Gorgeous Photos of Light Experiments Shot Using Ordinary Objects

Based in San Francisco, Kim Pimmel is a photographer, a user interface designer, a DJ, and a "maker." Take a look at his experimental light painting photographs, and you'll see each of these interests shining through. Pimmel has spent years experimenting with long exposure photographs that show different light sources as brushes. His beautiful images are created using custom rigs and common objects -- things like turntables, ping pong balls, fiber optic cables, pendulums, iPhone screens, and more.

Beautiful Animations Showing MRI Scans of Fruits and Vegetables

Most photographers and artists will never have the opportunity to make the kind of images that Andy Ellison does. As an MRI technologist at Boston University Medical School, Ellison has access to extremely expensive imaging machines. More specifically, he runs a research-only Philips 3 Tesla MRI machine. When he's not using it for official purposes, he experiments with it by placing various fruits, vegetables, and flowers inside. The resulting still images and animations are beautiful and abstract, and form a project that he calls "Inside Insides." The images above show a pineapple and an artichoke.

Artist Finds and Develops Ancient Photo Paper, Some Older Than a Century

Using expired film is pretty common among analog photographers, but have you heard of anyone using expired photo paper... from over a century ago? That's what artist Alison Rossiter does. For her project "Lost and Found", she collected hundreds of sheets of expired photo paper from decades past -- some more than 100 years older than the expiration date found on their packages -- and then developed them to uncover abstract images.

Beautiful Photographs of Patterns Seen from a Helicopter

Aerial photographer Stephan Zirwes shoots amazing images of patterns and repetition seen in landscapes while looking straight down from a helicopter. From his perspective, things like cars, shipping containers, and people blend together into abstract designs.

Ruined Polaroid Pictures as Abstract Art

While many photographers aim for technical perfection, photographer William Miller goes the opposite route. After "rescuing" an old and barely functional Polaroid SX-70 instant camera from a yard sale, he began taking advantage of its glitches by viewing the resulting photographs as abstract art. He states,

The camera sometimes spills out 2 pictures at a time and the film often gets stuck in the gears, exposing and mangling the images in unpredictable ways.

Over time I’ve figured out how to control and accentuate aspects of the camera’s flaws but the images themselves are always a surprise. Each one is determined by the idiosyncrasies of the film and the camera.

The images look like landscapes taken on strange alien planets. He has titled the project Ruined Polaroids.

Abstract Photos of Bullets Fragmented on Bulletproof Plexiglass

For her project "The Big Bang", photographer Deborah Bay captured macro photographs of plexiglass sheets that had various types of firearms fired at them. After having professional law enforcement officers fire bullets into the glass, she brought the sheets into a studio and "shot" them again with a Contax 645 and a 120 macro lens. She writes,

I began thinking about "The Big Bang" after seeing a sales display of bullet-proof plexiglas that had projectiles embedded in it. The plexiglas captured the fragmentation of the bullets and provided a visual record of the energy released on impact. As I began to explore this concept further, I also was intrigued by the psychological tension created between the jewel-like beauty and the inherent destructiveness of the fragmented projectiles. Many of the images resemble exploding galaxies, and visions of intergalactic bling sublimate the horror of bullets meeting muscle and bone. In fact, Susan Sontag described the camera as "a sublimation of the gun" -- load, aim and shoot.

Abstract Images of Famous Landmarks Created by Blending Snapshots

"The Collective Snapshot" is a series by Spanish photographer Pep Ventosa (previously featured here) that consists of abstract images of famous landmarks created by blending together dozens of ordinary snapshots. His goal is to "create an abstraction of the places we've been an the things we've seen", and to create images that are both familiar and foreign at the same time.

Abstract Images Created by Tearing and Layering Photographs

Raleigh, North Carolina-based artist Scott Hazard creates abstract images by tearing shapes into multiple prints of the same photograph, and then stacking the images on top of each other. He uses the technique to create things such as smoke, clouds, and portals in walls. He calls the project "Photo Constructs".

Beautiful Mosaics of Trees Photographed Across Time

Photographer Noel Myles has been working for the past 15 years on "still films" of trees across the countryside of eastern England. He originally created platinum/palladium prints of the trees around the year 2000, and then photographed the trees a decade later using color film. He then combined pieces from the different photos into single mosaics, which he tells us are "the antithesis of the notion of a decisive moment".

Sound Painting Photographs with Paint and Speakers

Photographer Martin Klimas, whose porcelain figurine photos we shared yesterday, has a series of photographs that look like 3D Jackson Pollock paintings. He spent six months photographing portraits of sound by playing music through a speaker that's crowned with paint. Klimas dials up the volume and then photographs the paint coming alive from vibrations caused by the sound waves.

Abstract Photos of Faces That Resemble Exploding Fireworks

Photographer and makeup artist Nadia Wicker has a beautiful series of abstract photographs titled Ursides in which she captures self-portraits in which her face looks like exploding fireworks. While her method is secret, Wicker says that she uses her experience with makeup -- rather than Photoshop -- to create the photos.

Street Photos Shot Through Puddles

Reflections is a series of photographs by New York-based fine art photographer Ira Fox. Shot through the reflections seen in puddles on their ground, they show shadows of passers-by as they cross paths with Fox on a rainy day.

Photos of Carousels Seen From All Sides

Photographer Pep Ventosa made these abstract composite images of carousels in various amusement parks around the world by photographing them from multiple angles and then blending the photographs together.