A couple of photographic abstracts

 Just playing here, really. I took a few shots at a low shutter speed while moving the camera, then ran them through some filters with a simple photoeditor. I do it fairly frequently, actually, but these ones turned out kind of neat so I thought I'd post them.

I'm of two minds about things like this, to be honest. On the one hand, I made choices here. I decided where to crop, I decided what and how much colour I wanted, how many layers there were going to be, and how much of the original photo was still identifiable. But... does that make it art?

I suppose it does under most definitions, but it just doesn't feel like it to me. Manipulating photos, at least the way I do it, just seems too... I don't know, easy? effortless?... to count. I mean, don't get me wrong. I am definitely not saying that digital artists aren't artists. Not everything everyone does is to my tastes, of course, but I'm not trying to imply that there's not art there. There is. For me, though, when I do things like this I don't feel like I'm making art.

I'm playing. I'm seeing what happens when I press a particular button. If I don't like it, I try another button until I find what I want.

But doesn't that make it art, then? Do I really need to be holding a pencil in my hand to give myself permission to think that the end result could be considered art?

By the way -- for those stumbling onto this blog for the first time, I should say that when a post is nothing but questions it generally means that I really don't know where I'm going with this...

Anyway. I know that many people out there wrestled with this question ages ago and came down on whatever side suits their philosophy best, and that I probably seem pretty late to the party. I'm not; I think about these things a lot. I just don't usually post the things I'm playing with while I'm thinking of them, that's all.



Maybe I should do it more often.