Photo Gallery Saturday is a second Saturday monthly photo series by the Long Beach Post staff that aims to highlight unique scenes across the city. To contact us, email Visuals Editor Thomas R. Cordova at [email protected]. These photos are not Photoshopped. 

This month, the photographers at the Long Beach Post took on the challenge of abstract photography, shooting macroscopic views of natural and man-made objects in and around the city.

It’s difficult to define or impose rules on abstract photography. It can be a surreal swipe of colors, a purposely out-of-focus view making the common uncommon, the easily recognized uneasily recognized. Or isolating fragments of nature and objects and transforming them into something seemingly unreal or at least otherwise overlooked through the use of color, focus, light and shade, texture and shape.

Photographer and Psychology professor John Shuler took on the task of defining the art, writing, “Here’s the acid test: If you look at a photo and there’s a voice inside you that says ‘What is it?’….Well, there you go. It’s an abstract photograph.”