Month: October 2023

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Landscape – Untitled #2

This picture was taken on Christmas Day, 2011. The day prior, a trusted friend had told me that his sense was that I need to go to Coffee Creek (Watershed Preserve) to take pictures. While this was the only one of 42 images in that shoot that day that we decided to put into our Etsy Shop “AbbasImages,” it was still a glorious day, as I remember, and the sunrise beautiful that Christmas morning.

Over the years I think there have been some redundant themes with regard to my style of photography; the sun, water, and nuance.

I love playing with the sun though it demands common sense but some sense of risk. One must obviously not compromise the eye nor the equipment. Nevertheless, it’s fun, and challenging, to try to frame the sun in such a way as to make it like hide and seek . . . just enough of the sun to highlight its presence as it highlights that which is framing it.

In this picture, the stone and mortar structure is like a gateway to a stone walkway. Just as the sun is reaching the ideal height, I was able to frame a part of it in the concave part of the mortar. I like the rays as they radiate out from the body of the sun and the way the grass is highlighted and colored with a golden glow. A memorable, illuminating, colorful Christmas morning that never seems to lose its appeal.

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Landscape – Untitled #1

Sunrise, October 9, 2011. We’re at Coffee Creek Watershed Preserve. It’s that time of year in northwest Indiana when the nights are becoming cool but the days still relatively warm. In these woodlands that lie on hills and gentle valleys the fogs and mists appear at first light only to be “burned away” by the sun as it rises and warms the air.

In capturing this moment, we see virtually everything being painted and tinged with the oranges and yellows of the illumination of the sun. Even the fog in the valley, typically more whitish in color, has yielded to the warmer effects of the sun’s rays and power.

I took 93 pictures that morning, two of which are presently in our Etsy Shop, “AbbasImages”: Landscape – Untitled #1, and Trees – Untitled #8. It was a beautiful sunrise which opened a beautiful day.

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Why We Don’t Title Our Works

I began taking pictures with a camera, with purpose, in 2007. At first, I did it for fun; a friend had bought me a point-and-shoot camera and I just wanted to try it out. Some of the images turned out pretty well; friends began to notice, comment . . . I began to hear things like, “You’ve really got an eye.” Some of the pictures began to move people emotionally. I kept at it. I got hooked.

I sought advice and counsel from a variety of people as my dreams for photography began to form, take shape, give me vision, and perspective. One friend, whom I truly respect and admire, an accomplished artist in her own right, urged me to title my work. That prospect immediately caused tension; not with her and me but within me. I wrestled with it, struggled with it, and actually tried it. But it didn’t work. And, I wanted to know, if, for no other reason than my own satisfaction, the why.

What I finally arrived at forms the basis of our personal, very subjective, philosophy on why I take pictures and offer them to the public without affixing a title to each and every one, if not, most.

When I take a picture there is, obviously, a motive; something that drew me, caught my attention, spoke to me, captivated me; something that I felt, in that very moment, that was worth my attention, effort, dream of what it may look like . . . what it may look like to others. In that moment I witness what it communicates to me and the potential of what it may communicate to you; and they don’t have to be the same.

So, I share with you as the moment has been shared with me and I invite you to make the moment your own and whatever it may evoke in you. And title it, for yourself, if you will, or not.