An Abstract Point of View

Graffiti Wall shot with 24mm tilt-shift lens

I'm getting settled into our new home near Charlotte, NC and learning the area. The move has been long, difficult, and, at times, very exhausting.  I've started to explore a few of the numerous camera clubs in the Charlotte area and I'm hoping to become a regular member of at least a couple of them.  The first club I visited, the Ballantyne Photography Club, has a monthly morning coffee meeting...how could this not be a good thing!? They are a great group of folks and I've enjoyed the few meetings that I've attended, so far.  I recently went on a photo shoot with a few folks from the Ballantyne Photography Club to a artsy part of town called NoDA, short for North of Davidson. The idea for this outing was to shoot abstract images.

I saw a large mural where part of it had this scene with the yellow stripe in the road and I decided to make a couple of images from it.

I shot this image with a 24mm tilt-shift lens. My intent was to alter the plane of focus to blur the top and bottom and to hopefully draw your attention along the yellow line.

Then I moved in closer and tried an abstract of the blue beams at the top of the image. I like the pattern of the beams and the detail of the brick wall.

This mural covered the entire wall of a building. There was so much detail and so many people doing different things. The piano player in the image caught my eye so I switched to my 105mm macro lens to move in close enough for the detail of the hand on the keys.

As I walked along the street, I noticed that some of the benches at the bus stops were covered in mosaic tile. This is from one of those benches. It's also a close up macro shot of just a portion of the whole bench.

The streets of NoDA had many older brick buildings with various murals and other forms of art on the walls, doors, etc. There were numerous photo worthy subjects but limited time. I enjoyed my first trip to NoDA and I'm sure that I'll be spending more time in this part of town.

As always, if you have any comments or questions, i'd love to hear from you!

Posted on June 13, 2017 by Gary Stiles.