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A Blog Post You'll Flip Over

Tuesday, April 19, 2022 | By: Mark Gardner

I was recently browsing through my Lightroom (Lr) catalog, finishing the processing of images made during our recent workshop on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state.  I had made several abstract images of the patterns in the sand at low tide at 2nd Beach in the Olympic National Park.  As I looked (again) at those images, I was reminded of a question that my friend Laurie Klein asked me a while back (Laurie is a very creative and artistic photographer, https://www.laurieklein.com/) - "What would they look like if you rotated them to the right or left, or flipped them vertically or horizontally"?
 
So I began to play with the photos in Lr, rotating and flipping them to see what would happen.  As shown in the images below, the results were amazing and fun.  The first image is oriented as made in the camera.  (Click on an image to see full size and browse through the images) The next has been rotated 90 degrees clockwise to create a completely different image. The first one looks like overlapping plates, or fish scales or roof tiles, and the second looks like troughs with spikey ridges. Third image has been rotated again, 90 degrees clockwise, from the second, or 180 degrees from the original, and looks like the second image.  The last image was rotated 90 degrees from the third (270 degrees total), and now we're back to fish scales or tiles. As you can see, these are very different images - all from the same original photo.  Which one do you like best? What do you see and feel in each?

Original Photo

Image 2 - Rotated 90 degrees clockwise

Image 3 - Rotated 90 degrees clockwise

Image 4 - Rotated 90 degrees clockwise

Of course, rotating and flipping just any image won't necessarily produce three new photos that are so different and yet work as photos.  But you can have a lot of fun experimenting.  Abstracts, small scenes or details, and photos without a horizon lines are good candidates to play with.  Photos with recognizable elements that are more literal, may not work as well.  But try anyway to see what happens, and some of your more literal photos may turn into abstracts.
 
I was having so much fun, that I went on a deeper dive in my Lr catalog for additional photos to play with.  Having recently photographed at Joshua Tree National Park, I went to that folder in Lr to explore my photos of rocks. I love to find emotive compositions in the shapes of the rocks, and thought some of them would be good candidates for experimentation.
 
The first of the four photos below is the original photo as made in camera. To me it suggested two figures snuggling. In the next photo, I rotated that original photo 90 degrees clockwise. I still see two figures but one is on top of the other, not snuggling. In the third photo, I rotated the second photo 90 degrees clockwise. So it's upside down from the original. I see figures in this one but very different from the first two. And finally, I rotated that photo 90 degrees clockwise to create the last photo in the series. I like the movement of the image, but don't see it so much as figures. But again, I made three completely new and different photos simply by rotating the original image in Lr. This is somewhat analogous to changing your point of view when making the photo in camera.  So I guess, I'm just changing my point of view in the digital darkroom, which seems ok to me.
 
Click on an image to see full size and browse through the photos.

Image 1 - Original Photo

Image 2 - Rotated 90 degrees clockwise

Image 3 - Rotated 90 degrees clockwise

Image 4 - Rotated 90 degrees clockwise

One more from Joshua Tree - the first photo is the photo as made in camera. I repeated the process of rotating clockwise by 90 degrees. The second photo is the last in the sequence, rotated 270 degrees from the original. Again, quite a change! The first photo is a standing figure, and the second a napping figure. To me the first has more energy, and the second is more relaxing.  Click on the image to see full size.

Image 1 - Original Photo

Image 2 - Rotated 270 degrees clockwise

I searched in my Lr catalog to find the photo that Laurie Klein suggested that I rotate to see what would happen. The first image is as made in camera. It's a very literal photo of a lake shoreline with a reflection. I liked the geometry of the rocks, the patterns in the vegetation and, of course, the reflection. However, turn it 90 degrees counter clockwise, and you get an abstract that suggests (to me anyway) a pathway across the lake or tops of the trees. Turn it 270 degrees, and I feel like I'm on the ground looking up at the pathway, like an elevated train or road. Same image, but a simple change creates two new and very different photos, with very different feelings.  
 
Even a simple horizontal flip creates a image with a different feel. The fourth image in the series flips the photo horizontally to the left. In the original image, I get a feeling of movement and progress. In the flipped image, much less so. To me, the rocks seem to be just be relaxing on the lakeshore and not really going anywhere.
 
Click on the images to see full size.

Image 1 - Original Photo

Image 2 - Rotated 90 degrees counter clockwise

Image 3 - Rotated 270 degrees

Image 4 - Flipped horizontally to the left

And now back to the beach abstracts, this time flipping and combining images. The first image in the series is as made in camera, and is a pattern found in the sand on the beach. In it, I see the impression of the bones of a bird's wing. The second image flips that image vertically, resulting in a different feel. It seems to be emerging from the sand, rather than an impression in the sand. I then made a copy of the second image and flipped it horizontally, and combined the second image and the flipped copy in Photoshop to create the third image, which makes a pattern that seems like a bird's wings as it's taking off.  And the last image, is the third one flipped vertically, which creates an image with a very different feel, at least to me. It's more of an impression in the sand of a bird's wings made when it landed. What do you see and feel in these different images?

Image 1 - Original Photo

Image 2 - Flipped Vertically

Image 3 - Combined Image

Image 4 - Combined Image Flipped

So get creative and have some fun with your photos. I did this mostly in Lightroom, but you could also achieve the same in Photoshop. I'm sure you could create lots of new images from the photos that you have in Lr catalog or in your drives. Sure this is just "play", but like all play, it can lead to better work. I now find myself composing photos in the field, keeping in mind how I might rotate or flip the image to create new and different images. And it has worked more than once.

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6 Comments

Apr 26, 2022, 12:52:58 PM

Mark Gardner - Thanks Jeff. It has been so long since I've looked through a view camera, that I had forgotten this!. :)

Apr 26, 2022, 11:41:13 AM

Jeff Curto - I spent the first 30+ years of my career using 4x5" and 8x10"cameras for both personal (fine art) and commercial projects. The non-reflex viewing screen on the view camera flips the image upside-down and reverses it laterally left-to-right. So... you got used to seeing the composition in that abstracted way and sometimes you discovered that it did look better the way you'd seen it on the ground glass rather than the way it was "supposed" to look. Of course, presenting the image this way worked a lot better for personal fine-art projects than it did for commercial work. :-)

Apr 25, 2022, 11:25:20 PM

Mark Gardner - Have fun!

Apr 25, 2022, 11:15:05 PM

Fred Littooy - Great idea. I plan to try it out.

Apr 25, 2022, 10:21:38 PM

Mark Gardner - Thanks Laurie!

Apr 19, 2022, 1:55:17 PM

Laurie - great article Mark

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