Weekly Photography Challenge – Christmas Light Abstracts

A Post By: Darlene Hildebrandt

By Ted Murphy

This week’s photography challenge is all about experimentation!

Try something new

Step out of the old comfort zone

Dare to be different

Dare to mess it up even!

I’m talking about creating abstract images, and there is no right or wrong. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and abstracts bring art down to its simplest forms: color, shape, and light. Couple tips for doing this:

• use a tripod if you want steady images (if you want zig zaggy then hand hold and see what happens)
• you’ll need long exposures, usually a few seconds long, to create light abstracts
• try zooming
• make it completely out of focus on purpose
• try moving yourself and the camera around during the exposure
• get out of your head that it has to be sharp and a focused, crisp subject and just let go and play!

By Joe Duty

By Chris Jagers

By inabeanpod

By Javier Alvarez

If you want to read about some techniques on how to get started, here’s a few ideas for you:

• 3 Tips for Creating Dramatic Images using Motion
• 15 Tips for Successful Fireworks Photography
• Nightscapes: Photographing the City at Night
• 5 Impressionist Photo Techniques
• 12 ways to add randomness and creativity to your photos
• Capturing the City in Motion

Weekly Photography Challenge – Christmas Light Abstracts

Okay, your turn! Let’s see you have some fun with this.

Share your abstract light images!

Once you’ve taken your ‘abstract light’ shots we’d love to see them in comments below. Simply upload your shot into the comment field (look for the little camera icon in the Disqus comments section as pictured below) and they’ll get embedded for us all to see or if you’d prefer upload them to your favourite photo sharing site and leave the link to them.