The Reston Photographic Society will hold its January meeting on January 19 at 7 PM on Zoom. Greg Holden will present “Abstracts All Around Us”.
Greg Holden is a photographer from Longmont, Colorado. His photography explores interesting shapes, textures and juxtapositions in nature and the little scenes often overlooked by others fuel his photographic creativity. Although he won’t pass by a chance to photograph a beautiful landscape or a tranquil sunset, he’d rather be exploring abandoned places and capturing the details of the layers of paint and rust on a discarded automobile. Photography is his way of sharing with others how sees the world and provides an artistic escape from his day job as an aerospace engineer.
While much of his photography focuses on abstracts and details, Greg finds inspiration from photographers within a wide range of subjects. Greg has a collection of over 180 books of photography, including by many lesser-known photographers, obtained from years of searching used bookstores. Some of his favorites are the close-up beach studies by Minor White, the early portraiture of Steichen and Stieglitz, and street scenes by Andre Kertesz. He enjoys teaching others and sharing his passion for photography and regularly speaks and judges for camera clubs across the country. You can see his work on his website: www.imagesunderfoot.com
Abstracts are one of Greg’s favorite things to photograph and he views it as an exercise in learning to see things in different or unusual ways. Often, an abstract is capturing a small part of a larger scene and attempting to offer an alternate perspective.
As a child, Greg’s art teacher father showed him a set of French curve stencils to which his father explained could be used to draw every possible curve. It was this early understanding that shapes can be reduced to a series of lines and curves that stuck with Greg and later influenced his abstract photography.
This presentation Greg will show you how both natural and manmade objects can form the basis for an abstract image and will showcase Greg’s continuing quest the see the world around him not as people, places or things, but as a series of shapes, lines and curves.
