Anyone interested in impressionistic or abstract photography?

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bleirer

Bill, Cleveland OH.
Supporting Member
Marketplace
I came across this webinar featuring Charles Needle, with links to his website as well. I do quite a bit of squinting in the field to look for opportunities for intentional camera movement or multiple/blended exposures. Sometimes the magic works and sometimes...


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Photo Masters LIVE with Charles Needle

This is the replay video for our recent Photo Masters LIVE webinar with guest co-host pro photographer Charles Needle. Charles specializes in impressionistic and macro photography, and he shares many lovely images and techniques in this webinar.
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I’ve tried to do this occasionally over the years, and when I look at the photos I can’t help but see the technical “faults” as faults. Imposter syndrome kicks in and I can’t pick the good photos from the bad ones.

Funny that sometimes my wife would see one of those shots and say “oh, cool!”. I keep those, but I’m unable to see the virtue in them.

I guess I have never been able to break down my compulsive need for a technically-well-formed frame, in the pursuit of creating art.
 
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Thank you for posting! Interesting. I've exchanged a few emails with him and I am actually wait listed for the macro workshop once he opens it up for registration! It is especially nice to find a workshop within 200 miles of me!

I am interested in many genres of photography, especially those emphasizing creativity.
 
I think that's what they said about impressionistic painting when it first started back in the day. The critics were aghast at the "fuzzy" images when realism in painting was the goal.
 
Chris K said:
I’ve tried to do this occasionally over the years, and when I look at the photos I can’t help but see the technical “faults” as faults. Imposter syndrome kicks in and I can’t pick the good photos from the bad ones.

Funny that sometimes my wife would see one of those shots and say “oh, cool!”. I keep those, but I’m unable to see the virtue in them.

I guess I have never been able to break down my compulsive need for a technically-well-formed frame, in the pursuit of creating art.
Click to expand...

What do you mean by "faults?"
 
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For example, if I purposely misfocus for effect, I don’t see a beautiful collage of colors, I see aspherical bokeh balls and onion rings.

If I shoot a landscape at night, I love the sharp photos, but if I do the old zoom-while-exposing trick to make some cool light streaks, I throw the shot away when I see a slight “hitch” in the streak from inconsistent zoom speed or a slight camera shake.

Or, when I’ve tried to do intentional-camera-movement, I have a hard time seeing the abstract shapes as art when my “culling” brain is so geared towards the exact opposite. Everything looks “wrong”.

More traditional abstracts, like patterns and shapes and textures aren’t so much an issue for me. I love shooting macro abstracts of interesting patterns, especially with a twin flash. It’s throwing out Photographer’s Dogma that is really challenging for me.
 
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bleirer said:
I think that's what they said about impressionistic painting when it first started back in the day. The critics were aghast at the "fuzzy" images when realism in painting was the goal.
Click to expand...

Yes, exactly. I don’t intend to judge the style as technically-flawed, but 99.9% of my photos are not in that style, so I have a hard time judging my own work.

It’s kind of like heading out with a telephoto and a macro lens and realizing you’ve been looking for birds for a half hour and walked right past some great flowers.
 
The in camera multiple exposure example shown in the video was cool. Of course you can do the exact same in post by taking the mean of the layers. But saying it is SOOC has a certain brag factor.
 
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I find certaain subjects, like flowers, lend themselves to creative shots. You can play with focus, DoF, shutter speed, etc., pushing them to extremes to get unusual starting shots. Then I will take it to where I want to go in post. Just not good enough to do it all "in camera" but intrigued with the idea.
 
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I took a workshop on this stuff and was pretty amazed by what you can do ” in the camera” with multiple exposures and intentional camera movement. I got some interesting shots but in the end found it a bit gimmicky and have not pursued it further.

Some examples…

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