Abstractions have attracted and fascinated photographers since photography's inception.  Abstractions in art are, by definition, free from "representational qualities." (OED) But that definition doesn't really explain how the term is used in photography, and implies that an abstract image says nothing about what an image depicts - or seems to depict.   Rocks photographed by Weston were still recognizable as rocks despite the possibility the shapes might equally represent human torsos or vegetables.  An isolated flower fragment still conveys some information about the flower. 

There is no common explanation for the images that follow below, but I regard them as abstractions as I use the term.  Texture, shape, color, isolation, and shadow variously attracted me when I took them or when I processed the image files.  These are sometimes "graphic" in the technical sense: curves, lines, shapes that are interesting (to me) without regard to the thing depicted.  I photographed the weathered, fissured stump because it was interesting, not because it is a stump and was once a thriving tree.  Its canyons, peaks, and caves made it interesting.  On another occasion perhaps a stump picture's messages - either inferred (the one the photographer derives from the object or the image) or implied (the one the photographer intends to convey, however subtly) - will be thematically much different: the stump represents death, age, entropy, and so on, and it silently and invisibly refers back to its past condition as a strapping tree at its peak.  But not today.

And raindrops on highly cropped petals don't here represent rain, storms, or the optimistic dawn of a hopeful new day.  The drops are graphically interesting shapes that depict, if anything, rain droplets held by surface tension on crepy fields of subtle colors.  If these photos are interesting, it is because of their geometry and texture and hues as isolated from an explicit image of an entire bloom, or, for that matter, the entire garden.  

But then how to explain the last image, of the little (maybe an inch in diameter) green knobbed bud with a few water droplets?  It is a cool shape of a cool color and the little knobs are seemingly perfect, symmetrical.  Here the isolation permitted by the lens and tight cropping allows an appreciation of the knobs and brown leaves that fly like pennants.  Maybe not as abstract or graphic as the others. But too cool to omit.  

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Floatie heaven: drifting over palm shadows in light morning airs in an empty and silent pool:

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Having tasted freedom while drifting, recaptured floaties
appear trying to escape their corral.

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Motion and distorted color processing emphasize the ocean's surges against the lava shore.   EF4A8665

 Isolation focuses attention.

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