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Ethereal Photographs of Salt Flats

Photographer Murray Fredericks took sixteen solo trips over eight years to the center of Lake Eyre in Australia, the largest lake in the country and one that forms salt flats every year when the water evaporates. These salt flats provide a perfectly flat, featureless landscape that extends to infinity in every direction, and allow for beautiful abstract photographs.

Light Painting Art Done Using Swarms of Robot Vacuum Cleaners

This light painting photograph was created by a group of students over in Germany using a swarm of seven Roomba automated vacuum cleaners. Each one had a different colored LED light attached to the top, making the resulting photo look like some kind of robotic Jackson Pollock painting. There's actually an entire Flickr group dedicated to using Roombas for light painting -- check it out of you have one of these robot minions serving you in your home.

Chromogenic Prints Modified with Bleach

These bizarre looking images are what you get when you "modify" chromogenic prints with chlorine bleach. Flickr user Sarah Palmer has done a number of experiments with these technique, and the results are pretty abstract.

Soaking Film in Alcohol Gives Photos a Strange Look

Here's something to try if you feel like shooting some abstract analog photos: drop your film in some rubbing alcohol and let it soak for about ten minutes before shooting with it. Just be sure to let it dry out first lest you want to sanitize the inside of your camera. The resulting photographs should have a blue, green, and purple tint, along with tiny brown dots in random places. These photos were shot by Flickr user Casey Holford using soaked Kodak Ultramax film.

Lake Photographs Made Abstract Using Lake Water

For his project Lakes and Reservoirs, photographer Matthew Brandt exposed using both light and water -- after shooting photos of each lake or reservoir (i.e. exposing with light), he made a chromogenic print and then soaked the photo in the water that was photographed, thus exposing it to water.

Abstract Pinhole Photos Created with Distressed Color Film

Drew Kunz has a pretty neat way of creating abstract pinhole photographs. Using a film canister as his "camera", he drills small holes into rolls of color film, distresses the film further with a small nail, and then develops the exposed film first with coffee and sodium carbonate, and finally with C-41.

Spider Webs and Galaxies

This is another post geared towards ideas and experimentation, rather than practicality and general photography. Here are two (kind …