William Oldacre Photography

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Edge of Recognition

Convergent series, day, colour photograph, art, abstract, abstract expressionism, creative, city street, urban, downtown, cityscape, speed, blur, movement, motion, orange, blue, yellow, muted, reflection, buildings, smear, wedges, shape

Cold Front, 2014 – Convergent :: (click to see more)

I’ve been having some interesting conversations about the Convergent images and my photography in general which has led me to think more about recognition.  In the urban environment there is so much visual information everywhere you look. And yet there are larger, subtler rhythms and patterns underlying the relative randomness of the surface information.

I see a parallel of this in the complexity of waves on water. Stormy waves in particular – have many variations in shape and size, smaller waves upon larger waves, ripples from wind, reflections from objects – all of which obscure the larger rhythm of the water.

Sound waves are similar. Look up close at a song waveform, it’s difficult to see the rhythm of the music – not until you pull back can you see the larger patterns and rhythms.

By removing focus and adding motion I’m able to “find” some underlying rhythm and pattern in the urban environment. But for this to work well, the normal visual complexity must be softened just below the threshold of recognition. If not, any remaining recognizable elements will shift our focus and override the subtle rhythms of shape and colour.

Also, today I finally began assembling a layered Light Signatures test piece – a proof of concept. It wasn’t until I began making measurements that I realized at fifteen layers it’s going to take a ton of foamcore and ATG double sided tape – oops – and it’s slow going to carefully construct it too. So far it’s starting to look good though. Four layers done only eleven more to go.

Blue Horizon 2014 – layered test print

blue horizon 2014 william oldacre - layer example two

Blue Horizon 2014 –  layered test print detail