Abstractions

When you are solving a problem it's essential to understand the scale of your problem. Big or little? How many people affected by how much? Cost of equipment damaged or destroyed? Lots of people get all wrapped up in an issue without understanding the problem is not worth solving in any real sense. The person might get a sense of satisfaction about dealing with it, but maybe they should have been dealing with something else that really needed doing. 

At the other end are problems so big we have trouble coming to grips with it. Climate change is a current example. We mostly understand that it's a real problem and getting worse, and that humans have largely contributed to it. (There are still some dinosaurs fighting back against this, mainly because they perceive the solutions as goring their pet ox, if you don't mind me mixing metaphors.) We are struggling to understand what we (both we as a species and we as individuals) can do about it. 

Often it's useful to look at the problem in an abstract way, hopefully before it becomes a real problem with real personalities attached to it. My experience tells me it's the personalities that are usually the problem. As long as you understand the level or granularity of your abstractions, so you know what is or is not being considered, you should be fine. If someone walks into the conversation, they could easily get lost because they don't know where they are.

Photographs can be like that. Often they are of a thing, or a person, and people can readily recognize that. But play with it a bit, looking really close, or really distant, or where scale is ambiguous, or change the colour balance, and people can become really interested, or really turned off. I like images that do this, as I try to find interesting photographs of ordinary things.

So here's a bunch of photographs from the last year or so. Some work, some don't. Some are more abstract than others. None of them are driftwood, if you're sick of them and stop scrolling down at that point, and are worried about me sneaking one into the body of the blog. In contrast to my usual practice, I'm going to make you look at the photo first, then I'll talk about it. Don't expect to be told what it is, or how I did it. If you're that curious I'll oblige you; think good coffee, awesome treats, that sort of thing. 

This was shot in a forest at dusk. Some special editing, but not as much as you might think.

Those two are similar things from a field near Medicine Hat.

These two aren't abstracts, technically speaking, because it's easily recognizable what they are. Mostly. 

A January sunrise.

This is part of a much bigger object that a Maori would recognize instantly, but won't be familiar to many Canadians.

There's a tiny bit of background to give you a clue.

Tree bark. I think it's a eucalyptus tree.

On a beach. But is it from a drone I borrowed, or a close up of the top of a rock?

A piece of a wine diamond.

I'd meant to include this with the edges blog the other day, but I missed it. You've seen other photos of this in the blog a while back.

A ranch rock. Well, two different rocks not far from each other. They give their rocks special feed.

Would you believe lizard skin? I thought not.

I suppose these are more a still life than an abstract. Maybe if I zoomed in a bit more. Then again, I don't know when I would have blogged these if not today.

This has had drastic manipulation of the photo to disguise what it is. This isn't ever this beautiful colour, especially after all the rain we've had lately.

I love reflection shots.

Am I standing back looking at a huge wall, or am I right up close?

To bring you full circle, this was shot in the same place as the first one, a few minutes earlier.

Rock of the Day

Driftwood of the Day