Abstract Photography

During these tutorials you will learn how to take amazing abstract photographs. These would look really cool framed as gifts or backgrounds for Media products such as apps, websites, presentations, posters etc. Abstract photography is used everywhere! This lesson is in three parts:

  • Part 1 - What is abstract photography?

  • Part 2 - How to take an abstract photograph using just your mobile phone or digital camera with everyday objects that you can find around your home.

  • Part 3 - How to edit and distort your photographs to create cool abstract art.

WAGOLL:

Below are some of the abstract photographs you can create following these tutorials. Click on the 'student examples' link to see real student's creations.

Part 1: What is Abstract Photography?

There has been abstract photographers since the birth of the camera. Some of the earliest abstract photographers took photographs that are still to this day considered amazing examples of abstract art and can fetch up to tens of thousands of $/£ at auction. It is important that you have a look at the amazing examples of abstract photography before you take any photographs yourself.

  1. Search for 'abstract photography' on Google and look through the images. Find one that you particularly like and save it to your device.

  2. Go the following website https://expertphotography.com/abstract-photography-examples/ and read the article on 25 inspiring examples of abstract photography. You will see that there is an emphasis on form, shape, pattern, colour and texture.

  3. Using what you have read and the image your downloaded, write a brief description of what makes a good abstract photograph.

Part 2: How to take an Abstract Photograph

  1. Now that you have more of an idea what abstract photography is, watch this YouTube video that demonstrates how to take an abstract photograph using just the items you can see around your home: https://youtu.be/Xs-EoNc7mTc

  2. Take a variety of different photographs. At least 3 photographs of 10 different objects around your home (so 30 photographs in total)

Part 3: Editing your Abstract Photographs

In part 2, you took a variety of photographs of abstract photographs. In this lesson you will learn how to edit the photograph using a free online image editing software called Photopea.

  1. look through your photographs and choose a few that are the most in focus. Don't worry too much if it is slightly dark or if the angle of the shot isn't exactly perfect. We will fix that with editing in this lesson.

  2. Watch the following YouTube video in full. It will teach you a variety of ways that you can edit your photograph to make them look more abstract. You will learn how to adjust the brightness/contrast, gradient map, vibrance, photo filter and threshold tools https://youtu.be/kuXbAbaCtOs or watch this one if you are using your mobile phone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR6sDAjKpmE&t=3s

  3. You can access and edit your photographs using your phone, but it is slightly easier to do this using a laptop/desktop computer. One easy way of transferring your photographs is to email it to yourself from your phone as an attachment. Then log onto your email using your laptop/desktop computer and save the photograph to your device. Then go to https://www.photopea.com/ and follow my YouTube tutorial above.

Lesson Resources

Right click on the images below to save them to your device. The images are the ones I used in my YouTube video above. You can use these to practice your editing skills on or you could start with your own abstract photograph to edit. It is entirely up to you.