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Frost Abstractions Project

The idea for this project was probably planted in my mind in March of 2008. The humidity in my house was rather high, and that night, the temperature had fallen, so when I awoke and raised the drapes on my window, I was presented with a pane completely covered in condensate but with streaks formed by beads of water running down. This conjured up an image of a forest of slender tree trunks and I became quite excited. I quickly set up my view camera and made several exposures. The result was most pleasing and that photograph has become one of my favorites.

I thought nothing more about this until last December when we were hit with a severe and sudden cold snap. I remember the excitement I felt when I raised the drapes and saw the amazing frost patterns on the pane. I remembered the image I had seen the year before and realized the possibilities of these frost images becoming a project. This time I decided to use a digital camera as I wanted to work very quickly and wanted to explore several possibilities. I used, for the most part, a long focal length lens as I wanted to get as close as possible in order to get the abstraction I was looking for.

This then became the pattern as long as the temperature remained low. I would wake up early, set up my camera and shoot as many pictures as I could before the heat in the house melted the frost. I would download the images and then the real fun would begin, because I was not making realistic and recognizable pictures of frost, but abstractions that changed from day to day as I explored what was possible with the digital process. I became more and more excited about the project and continued to be amazed as new possibilities and images emerged. I also experimented with different toning effects and finally settled on a split toning that was subtle but which did not obscure the fact that these were primarily black and white images.

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Frost Abstraction #1
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Frost Abstraction #2
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Frost Abstraction #3
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Frost Abstraction #4
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Frost Abstraction #5
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Frost Abstraction #6
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Frost Abstraction #7
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Frost Abstraction #8
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Frost Abstraction #9
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Frost Abstraction #10
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Frost Abstraction #11
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Frost Abstraction #12
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Frost Abstraction #13
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Frost Abstraction #14
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Frost Abstraction #15
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Frost Abstraction #16
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Frost Abstraction #17
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Frost Abstraction #18
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Frost Abstraction #19
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Frost Abstraction #20
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Frost Abstraction #21
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Frost Abstraction #22
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Frost Abstraction #23
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Frost Abstraction #24
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Frost Abstraction #25
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Frost Abstraction #26
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Frost Abstraction #27
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Frost Abstraction #28
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Frost Abstraction #29
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Frost Abstraction #30
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Frost Abstraction #31
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Frost Abstraction #32
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Frost Abstraction #33
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Frost Abstraction #34
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Frost Abstraction #35
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Frost Abstraction #36

All 36 photographs © David Butts



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