Part 1: Abstract Photography for Students, All of my Mentees from Westlake High School

Part 1: Abstract Photography for Students

All of my Mentees from Westlake High School.

Abstract Photography for Students is a challenge. I thought it was time to assemble all of the educational photographic projects I have done with my senior students of the Independent Study Program at Westlake High School over the last 8 years. I was surprised when I went back into my photography archives to see some of the projects that I have forgotten about. I am doing this in 5 Posts so the reader does not get overwhelmed. This first post is about our Abstract Photography exercises. So here we go.

When I agree to teach a student, I tell them that my approach to teaching is to expose them to as many different genres of photography as possible, so they can learn how to leverage the settings on their cameras, read natural light, learn how to control flash and strobe light, how to work with humans who hate to have their photos taken,  and evaluate the environment for challenges.

The photography genres I like to introduce them to are:

• Abstract Photography
• Portrait Photography
• Still Life and Landscape Photography
• Architectural Photography

ABSTRACT PHOTOGRAPHY:

My first student 8 years ago was Elena. With her I learned how difficult shooting rising smoke is. We learned that having a flash at 90 degrees to a smoking piece of incense was better than having two flashes, one in each side. The contrast within the smoke was better and made it easier to identify an interesting moment within the otherwise chaotic  billowing smoke. Then we edit the image mostly by eliminating surrounding smoke that did not lend itself to the formation we identified. More often that not (and this goes for painting too) we tend to identify with abstract formations that remind of some variation of human forms. Here are Elena’s images:

I had forgotten about this image, and today it is one of my favorite. It is whimsical and requires some time to process its intricacies.

Elena’s Abstract Smoke by Austin fine art photographer Johnny Stevens

This one I called Wisp of Elena. It clearly has some alien life forms that attract the eye….

Elena’s Abstract Smoke #2 Alien formation by Austin abstract photographer Johnny Stevens

My mentee Nolan shot this smoke image. Very often the way smoke rises and curls, it tends to show formations of vertebrae and human bones.

Nolan smoke abstract photography austin

And this one from my mentee Morgan;

Morgan abstract smoke photography by Austin photographer Johnny Stevens

For Jake’s Abstract Smoke Photography exercise, he created 2 edited versions from this first raw file.

Jake’s original raw file of smoke rising

Final edit of abstract smoke rising photograph

Final edit 2 of abstract smoke rising photograph

My mentee Krishan and I tested our reflexes at shooting water drops in a glass.

Krishan’s composition of 4 drops of water

After an hour of gruelling timing to pull the trigger at the right time we learned that we could not get the effect we were looking for which is achieved by buying a Pluto Valve Drop Regulator. It releases drops timed exactly with the shutter of the camera, but more importantly it releases 2 consecutive drops so that the upward splash of the first drop smashes into the one coming down and creates a beautiful mushroom effect. As seen in these two examples:

water drop 1 by fstoppers

waterdrop 2 by 500 px blog

To introduce my students to compositing in Photoshop, I will often give them the task of taking a series of images and composite parts of them into a master image. In this case I gave Nolan these images from my Mannequin folder of images to create a composite:

Mannequin for abstract photoshop compositing lesson Johnny Stevens Austin Photographer

Final composite by Nolan